Video Helps the Audio Star
How video and audio are used to provide best user experience at Spotify and Google Meet products.
I am the product manager for the media experience at Spotify and my responsibility is allow for Spotify users having the best media experience for all network condition and on all network.
As most of you know, audio is the main focus for Spotify. That was also emphasized by the widely shared Audio first strategy.
Audio first doesn’t mean Audio only. In my team, we identified video as an important media type that can enrich audio experience. In-stead of starting with big video elements, we started small.
Since 2016, Spotify added multiple video features starting from the Metallica video documentaries, then the video Canvas, later came the Video podcast shipped last year and now the newly announced video clips.
What these products all have in common is a shared vision and strategy, since they all enrich the audio experience.
The other common aspect among all these shipped products is that each of these product steps served to inspect the video value and adapt the next steps based on the data it provided.