Build a metric tree for Podcasts after a major redesign at global scale

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Spotify is an audio streaming company; its products include music, podcasts, audiobooks, playlists, recommendations, creator tools, subscriptions, and ads.

Spotify has just launched a major redesign of its Podcasts experience across global markets. The redesign may affect how podcast fans discover shows, evaluate episodes, follow creators, resume listening, and move between music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other audio formats. The business needs a clear metric tree to understand whether the redesign is improving the podcast experience without harming broader Spotify engagement or monetization.

Your task is to define a structured measurement framework for Podcasts that connects a top-level product or business outcome to the key drivers, input metrics, diagnostic metrics, and guardrails. The metric tree should be useful for product leaders, designers, engineers, data scientists, creator teams, and regional teams making launch, iteration, and investment decisions after the redesign.

The experience should consider:

- The primary outcome metric for Spotify Podcasts and the exact denominator, time window, and user population it applies to

- How to separate acquisition, discovery, activation, engagement, retention, and monetization within the podcast listener journey

- Metrics for podcast fans across different cohorts, including new podcast listeners, existing heavy listeners, reactivated listeners, paid users, ad-supported users, and regional markets

- Instrumentation needed to capture redesigned surfaces, podcast impressions, clicks, follows, starts, completions, saves, shares, downloads, and listening sessions

- Diagnostic metrics that explain whether changes come from better discovery, better content relevance, improved playback behavior, or creator-side supply

- Guardrail metrics for music engagement, app performance, user satisfaction, ad load, churn, creator health, and unintended shifts between audio formats

- How the metric tree should support decision-making at global scale, including market comparisons, experimentation, rollout monitoring, and post-launch iteration

The goal is to produce a clear, actionable metric tree that can help Spotify determine whether the redesigned Podcasts experience is creating durable value for listeners, creators, and the business while identifying where teams should investigate or intervene if performance changes.