What should Spotify build or buy to accelerate Playlists

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 wants to accelerate the value and growth of Playlists for premium subscribers in a highly competitive global audio market. Playlists are central to how listeners discover music, express identity, create routines, share with others, and stay engaged over time. The question asks you to evaluate whether Spotify should build new playlist capabilities internally or buy/acquire capabilities, technology, content, or companies that could strengthen the playlist experience faster.

Assume Spotify is competing not only with Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music, but also with broader discovery and entertainment platforms such as TikTok, Audible, and SiriusXM. Your strategy should consider how playlists contribute to premium subscriber retention, listening frequency, personalization, creator engagement, and broader audio monetization across music, podcasts, audiobooks, and potentially other formats.

This is a strategy question, so focus on the decision framework rather than designing a single feature. You should define what “accelerate Playlists” means, identify the most attractive strategic opportunities, compare build-versus-buy paths, and explain how Spotify should make the decision under constraints such as speed, differentiation, cost, integration complexity, data advantage, creator relationships, and competitive response.

The experience should consider:

- The role playlists currently play in premium subscriber engagement, discovery, retention, and perceived subscription value

- Which user or creator segments matter most, such as casual listeners, power curators, social sharers, artists, podcasters, or audiobook listeners

- Strategic options Spotify could pursue through internal development versus acquisition or partnership

- The trade-offs between speed to market, defensibility, personalization quality, brand fit, and operational complexity

- Spotify’s right to win, including its data, recommendation systems, user scale, creator ecosystem, and cross-audio platform position

- Competitive threats from music streaming rivals and discovery-led platforms that may shape urgency or differentiation

- Key risks, such as poor integration, creator backlash, licensing constraints, privacy concerns, or features that do not improve retention

- Decision gates and success signals that would indicate whether to build, buy, partner, or deprioritize

Your goal is to present a clear strategic recommendation framework for how Spotify should decide what to build or buy to make Playlists a stronger growth and retention engine for premium subscribers, without jumping directly into a feature list or acquisition target.