How Spotify Sees the Next Era of Music Streaming w/ Sam Duboff

24:43Yeah. So what do you say to those who feel like it's not going far enough? It's early days for AI tech. I know it feels like it's moving fast, but consumption of prompt-generated music is insanely low. We have some time for artists, songwriters, producers to take the lead in figuring out how they want to use these tools. We don't want to act like we know where AI music's headed and exactly every policy and rule. we need now that's going to be future-proof for the next two or three years as things evolve. On the other hand, we didn't just want to wait and do nothing. There's some areas we all can agree now that we need to act now, no matter where AI tech heads, it's going to be necessary to have great systems in place to stamp out spam, deception, impersonation.

25:24And so that's our starting point. We try to be upfront. We see these as first critical early steps, more to come. you're going to see kind of more and more updates from us in this space and we'll try to do it in lockstep with how the technology is evolving but importantly also how we hear and see artists songwriters and producers using it we want to follow their lead a little bit I think I've seen a lot of your reporting on the topic it's evolving kind of in in real time like I think you start to see the dial turn of more artists and producers being willing to talk about how they use it But there's still being a lot of, it's a hard topic to talk about.

25:59It's in every industry talking about AI, what it means for the future of our work and artistry and our careers is a hard one. And so, you know, I know I personally respect hearing all the different opinions about it. And we're trying to be decisive and authoritative in the areas where it seems clear what's going to need to happen. And then really kind of follow the lead of the creative community as we see where, you know, it starts to evolve. I mean, it's all evolving so fast. And right now, what I'm hearing a lot from songwriters and producers in my orbit is a lot of them are willing to tell me like off record when we're like at dinner that they're using AI tools or that they've experimented with it or they're using it on their demos.

26:37But they oftentimes still don't want to talk about it publicly or they're not quite there yet. They're not sure if they're going to use it, you know, in finished products for songs or not yet. So I feel like although like the tides are turning behind the scenes in the music industry and you're starting to see more people being open to it, we still have a ways to go before it's totally normalized and we totally know where it's heading. So I do know where you're coming from on that. Deezer has been, Deezer is a French streaming service. If anyone's unfamiliar, they're a much smaller service than Spotify, but they've been very proactive about kind of taking charge on what they want to do with AI music.

27:14I think of all the streaming services I've been reporting on, they've been by far the most vocal. Recently, they reported that 28 % of songs that are delivered to Deezer Daily are fully AI generated. I'm wondering at Spotify, have you guys seen those same figures? Because that feels like a shockingly high number of songs. Yeah, it's like, you know, AI detection tech isn't really foolproof yet. So it's hard to get the exact estimate from there. You know, every streaming service has pretty much identical catalog. You know, we have no reason to disbelieve it's a similar amount on any streaming service.

27:45That said, I think they also shared 0.5 % of streams. Yes. That's the songs we're getting. And we've tried a few different tactics to test out different detection tech, test out different proxies to understand how much prompt generated music might be on Spotify. And we find way lower than 0.5 % in kind of stream share and total consumption. And so I know sometimes it can feel scary when you see those like upload percentages where it's like, oh, my God, is 28 percent or, you know, any percent of music that's being listened to prompt generated. And that would feel really scary and unsettling. What we're seeing is, yeah, there's a lot of uploads.

28:24We're doing a lot of work to police that kind of spam where there are mass uploads that can add up to those kinds of percentages. but keeping a close eye on the part that actually matters which is are listeners listening to it is it generating royalties um and you know i think all streaming services are showing the same data right now which is uh infinitesimal amount of streaming of this music um and that's one of the reasons i feel like we have time to do things like an industry standard and music industry can be slow i know you know that all too well we have some time before um you know maybe consumption will never increase.

28:58Maybe it'll look, you know, AI music will have a totally different shape. Hopefully it'll be more professional artist led as, you know, some of the use cases you're talking about where artists start to use it in really powerful, interesting new ways. And so, yeah, consumption remains really, really, really low. And so that gives us some confidence we have some time to figure this out. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, consumption being really low makes me think that like it is kind of a burden maybe on streaming services to hold all of this music, especially when no one's listening to it. So would you guys ever remove tracks that are just getting absolutely no traction?

29:32Like I'm talking zero streams. I don't think so. You know, whether they're AI or otherwise, people upload their music to streaming services for all different reasons. I have family members that upload music to send to family and friends. That's a great thing. At Spotify, we are focused on emerging and professional artists trying to make a career in music, building a business in music. Our policies are in service of professional artists and emerging artists on their way to that. And so we take on the burden of how many songs are uploaded. And certainly the overwhelming majority of songs aren't getting streamed much.

30:06I still think it's really important for there to be this open outlet where you pay a low annual fee to a distributor and you can upload music and send it to anyone in the world. That would have been unthinkable 15, 20 years ago. And it's unlocked a lot of really cool expression. So we take on the burden of what to do with all these uploads. But we definitely want there to be this path for anyone with music to be able to share it with the world. Got it. Is there like any cloud storage issue? Like, I don't know how like big of a deal, like how big songs are to hold on to. But maybe someday with AI scale, it'll be at some scale.

30:42I can't even picture. Yeah. Five years from now, we'll have you back on the pod. Right. Yeah. And we'll do a flashback to me saying it was all OK. And I'd be like, oh, we were wrong. Yeah. Right now, it looks like we have some great engineers who work on all the smart ways we like, you know, store the files and things I couldn't even talk about if I wanted to. But yeah, that is a goal of ours. We're happy to host music for anyone who kind of wants to get it out to the world. When I thought about like AI music starting to make its way onto streaming services, one of the things that my mind went to immediately was that some streaming services, including Spotify, have had to deal with other waves of audio content, I guess I should say, that is being used by bad actors typically.

31:23For example, I'm thinking about how Spotify has developed policies around noise tracks. If someone doesn't really know about this noise track thing, there are some very savvy people who will upload white noise to streaming services or bird sounds or something that doesn't have it. It's not music. It's definitely not music. And they'll hopefully get some traction on that and earn some streaming royalties without really having to put much artistic effort into it. But Spotify has a policy against that, which kind of it doesn't totally demonetize it, but it kind of gives it a lesser royalty. Right.

31:56That's right. Yeah. Okay. So did you think about some of these other policies that you've created, like the ones around noise when you're looking at AI music? Definitely. It's a good example where our policies focus on the output of the recording. We never know the creative process behind a recording. We get the finished output and we're focused on that output. So when it comes to our noise policies, we don't know if you're brushing your microphone. I won't attempt to do it, but you could do it analog and ASMR style. You could use digital tools to make a noise recording. You could use AI tools to generate, you know, bird chirps or whatever it may be.

32:32One of the things we found is, you know, 10 years ago, Spotify was paying out about a billion dollars a year to the music industry, which was something, but in the scale of the music industry, you know, wasn't enough. People wondered, would we be able to scale? We're paying out$10 billion a year now. And so when you think of that 10x in 10 years and things that used to be 0.1, 0.5, 1 % of royalties, wouldn't be such a financial opportunity for bad actors to try to kind of head in that direction. as we've 10x the royalty pool and we're paying out you know over 10 billion a year um you know types of consumption that are 0.1 0.5 1 percent of consumption are pretty material potential earnings yeah um so noise is an example where we started to see an oversupply it's so easy to make a noise recording a lot of listeners you know if they're trying to study focus sleep meditate want to play noise recordings on streaming services it's a great service to provide for people who want to listen to it but what we didn't want to see was this flood of undifferentiated noise recordings um trying to kind of compete and seo hack their way into a portion of this you know one percent of the of the royalty pool so yeah we introduced a few rules uh one is um noise recordings under two minutes aren't eligible for royalties at all you'd see people have 35 second playlist you know playlist of 35 second noise tracks because you play it when you're going to bed and then it would kind of maximize royalty bearing streams.

33:57So we demonetized all noise recordings under two minutes, had to kind of reduce the financial incentive to keep flooding us with noise recordings. So we now value noise recordings at a fifth of the value of music, try to, you know, right size what the financial opportunity is to, you know, brush your microphone in seven different ways and release it with different SEO terms in it. Uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees hotter. Stay cool and save up to 50 % off custom window treatments during the 4th of July mega sale at blinds.com from outdoor shades to room darkening blinds finding the perfect fit is easy get free samples expert design help and professional measure and install services or diy with confidence and support every step of the way shop up to 50 % off site-wide plus huge savings on doorbusters right now during the 4th of July mega sale at blinds.com if we knew more about our sleep what would we do differently would we go to bed at a consistent time or take steps to reduce interruptions to our sleep?

34:56With Sleep Score, Apple Watch measures your bedtime consistency, interruptions, and sleep duration. Then, every morning it combines these factors into an easy-to-understand score from 1 to 100, so you'll know how to take the quality of your sleep from okay to very high. Know your sleep score with Apple Watch. iPhone 11 or later required. You know, I'm always astounded by how smart people are at doing such bad things because like my brain would never I wish the world didn't work that way yeah I imagine so much of your job is just trying to anticipate what someone will do if you make a rule about this how will they get around it potentially the fun parts are like tools for professional artists to use in awesome new ways and then unfortunately that comes along with uh um some stuff on the margins that aren't always as fun but uh you know they're intellectually interesting at times.

35:48How do we try to stay ahead of some of these tactics? Yeah. Yeah. Back in April, I did a story with Selena Ong. I guess her title is like global head of editorial, head of playlist, basically. So I talked to Selena and I asked her about whether or not she would ever forbid AI tracks from living on Spotify editorial official playlists. And she didn't really have a clear answer at that moment. It wasn't a yes, but it also wasn't a no. So I'm wondering, could you ever imagine fully AI-generated tracks living on a Spotify playlist? Yeah, it's a hard question because I think as we recognize AI music is this spectrum.

36:26And certainly the plugins that people have been using in DAWs for years, you can't differentiate from what we now call AI tech. So I'm sure there's lots of culturally relevant great music that incorporates AI tools. I think what you're getting at is completely prompt-generated music without any human input. Is there some world where listener behavior really changes and there's huge musical cultural relevance from, you know, music that doesn't spam, deceive or impersonate, but somehow finds an audience? You know, could it be like a viral hits, you know, sort of playlist where there's some song that's doing that well?

37:03Maybe I can't speak for their team. but fundamentally you know 100 % of the focus of our editorial efforts are helping to identify uplift you know develop the careers of professional artists who are making amazing music and so yeah it's always hard to answer questions and absolutes but certainly that's not the focus of any editor at Spotify or I think any streaming service. Earlier this year I think a lot of people realized that there is a lot of AI music that lives on all streaming services when this band called the Velvet Sundown, it's an AI generated band, started popping up. And at first as a reporter, when I saw it, I was like, this is not that compelling to me as somebody who follows AI music so closely, because I've seen plenty of AI songs, AI bands, whatever, that have ended up on streaming services.

37:52So it didn't feel particularly unique. But I think that it really brought this idea of AI music living on streaming services alongside human artists into the zeitgeist. I think people really realized it for the first time. I'm wondering, based on your new policies, are bands like the Velvet Sundown, which it's all AI generated music, AI generated images, does that violate any of your policies or no? In general, we're just looking at signs of spam. I haven't looked at their account recently, but I don't think they were flooding. I haven't looked at it recently either. Yeah. I don't think they were flooding the platform with spam or I'd have to look in more close about what tactics they were using.

38:32They aren't spamming. I don't think they're impersonating other artists. The one that's kind of interesting is when you think about deception, AI transparency. That's one where I think at first they had an artist bio on streaming services that had a fake quote from a magazine. Was it Billboard? From Billboard. From Billboard, right. Yeah. So many people hit me up and they were like, did you write about them? I was like, no. Right. People probably thought it was you. I know. I searched all over our website trying to figure out if, you know, we had written about this AI generated band that no one's ever heard of called the Velvet Sundown.

39:06We did not for the record, on the record, for the record. Yeah. At some point they changed their bio across Spotify and everywhere else to make it. I think they framed it as like a synthetic project or, you know, something of the sort. You know, this is part of why we think about the DDEX AI credits, because for a project like theirs, where they're happy to disclose they're a synthetic project, there isn't really a way to share on streaming services that you're using AI. And I think probably a lot of the conversation would have looked really different back then. And I think a lot of what makes people curious about novelties like that are, you know, is there a conspiracy I need to research online if they're AI or if they're not?

39:47And what's the nature of the project? And I'd love to build a world where there's an easy way to identify the role of AI in music. You can decide whether to listen to it or not. You know, for that project specifically, I know a ton of the listing was driven by Reddit and social media and traditional media covering it. the you know on spotify the monthly listener count is about a fifth of what it was at that peak when everyone was writing about it but i get it was kind of an interesting thought experiment for people to talk about um yeah i don't i don't think it ever even would have taken off in the commentary at all if we had tools and easy ways to have them disclose clearly where they're using ai and where they aren't and you know i think they've started being pretty open about it on their social channels and you know that's kind of how we would think about it yeah it was just one of those interesting moments i think we've had a few of them where it's not necessarily that it's the first time anything has happened in that realm but as ai is developed it's just like whatever that moment is when everyone catches on yeah i feel like that band just for some reason based on this reddit post which kind of made it go viral then made it into this big media thing yeah definitely i don't want to undersell um the importance of talking about the role of ai in music but there's definitely been a few of these moments i think of like 2023 uh this you know artist ghostwriter um released a drake the weekend you know deep fake song that took over tiktok for a weekend and there's tons of conversation about it's a watershed moment there's gonna be tons of songs like this and we need to act now to you know make sure that doesn't happen and since then i don't think we've really seen any songs like that take off you know we we take vocal impersonation seriously.

41:27We just rolled out some new policies about it, but it's not like there's been any kind of viral tracks similar to that one since then. Same here where Velvet Sundown seemed to capture the imagination. We found it really useful to read lots of opinions and thoughts on it. It was a good way for us to get a sense, a pulse check of how people are thinking about it. But it was a bit of a novelty moment. Huge spike of streams and everyone's talking about it. It's cratered since then. I think it kind of became a little bit more of a lightning rod to talk about rather than something that's culturally relevant or musically relevant.

41:57Yeah, as I mentioned, consumption of prompt gender music overall, by any estimation we have, is incredibly, incredibly low. So it's an interesting anomaly to talk about because it's kind of a thought experiment. But it hasn't signaled some huge trend of anything we're seeing on Spotify or I think any other services are seeing either. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So let's get to some of the new features. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening at Spotify. Like I said, I do feel like I'm hearing about something new every week but well first of all like what why is there so much happening right now is this just like happenstance or are we building towards something uh always building towards something a few years ago we set a really clear vision for where we want to head with music which is this kind of shift from just being a place for the songs where you might listen to the music and go elsewhere for the context and the world the artist world around it to a place where you know Spotify can be like the place where your music world lives and you can see everything an artist is doing you know merch and tickets uh videos get lyrics get behind the song information and so I think with that level of clarity um we've seen the team really start shipping and delivering and it's been kind of awesome to see yeah it feels like almost an answer to this like TikTok age that we're still in where a lot of music discovery started shifting over towards social media where people were discovering songs as they were scrolling on TikTok in the background of the videos that they were seeing.

43:20And then they would eventually go to Spotify as the final destination. But basically what you're saying is like Spotify wants to be like the destination for all of it, period. Well, what we're hearing from artists was you'd have these viral moments on video apps, and then maybe it could make people fans of that song and playlist that song on streaming services. But it didn't make them a fan of the artist, right? As soon as you hear that song in a meme, you swipe up, you're seeing a cooking video and a celebrity video and artists are competing with the entire world of video content. So we really heard that need from artists.

43:52I can like, you know, break viral songs on, you know, TikTok or video apps, but I can't build a career. And so the role we see Spotify playing as this kind of music centric place where you can rabbit hole with music and artistry. And if you're an artist, you know, instead of having to upload, you know, short video every six hours to keep up with an algorithm, you can make three really intentional clips and attach them to your single. And anytime in the next day, week, month, when you're listening to a song, you scroll down, you see the clips that they made, explains the context of the song, why they wrote it, it's attached to your catalog.

44:28You go from there to see that they're touring near you with our new Concerts Near You playlist. You buy their vinyl. A bunch of markets outside the US, you can go watch the music video, watch their live performance, and you're not competing with this whole world of content outside of music. We think we can be this kind of really kind of special experience for our fans and listeners where they just rabbit hole on the music and therefore artists have permission to share with more quality, with more intention to be about the music instead of having to be a personality. And so that artist feedback is really what we've been trying to build towards.

45:00And so one of the big announcements that you guys have had recently is that you're having new lossless audio features rolled out. Yes, at last. And that is where my question is going. In 2021, early 2021, Spotify announced that it would be coming out with lossless audio or high fidelity listening. And then it never came. And a lot of the competitors started rolling out HiFi, but it never happened for Spotify until 2025. Why now? Lossless has been like the top comment on a lot of Spotify posts for the last few years. As with lots of things in music, licensing is always a big part to figure out.

45:37we were trying to figure out the right way to deliver lossless with a business model that would make sense for artists, for rights holders, for Spotify. Competitive dynamics definitely did change things and we had to pause and make sure we were doing in the right way. Feel really good about the lossless offering now. It's been rolling out. I think we might even be done with the rollout by now. I got it recently, like within a week or so. So yeah. Yeah, exactly. And lossless meaning no change from how the quality is delivered to Spotify to how listeners hear it. So, you know, as the artist intended, really cool way to deepen that artist fan connection like we're talking about.

46:16Make sure you get as high production quality experience that you can get when you're listening to your favorite artist. Yeah. So back in 2021, like hi-fi was such a hot topic in the music industry. I feel like everyone was talking about how this could be like a way to unlock greater royalty streams for artists. like maybe you could charge more for like a more premium streaming experience. And at first, like Tidal was, I think, the first one that had it, and they were charging more for it. But then Apple and Amazon came in and decided to offer it for free as part of their traditional premium offering.

46:48Did the fact that Hi-Fi went from something where you could finally up your prices and charge more and move into an extra premium tier, and then it became something that actually was just offered for free did that weigh into spotify's decision to hold yeah as you know like roughly two-thirds of all the revenue we make for music goes back to artists and songwriters rights holders so when we look at things like lossless or any other experience if we can find ways to charge more for it that means more revenue for artists for songwriters for creators i think lossless probably could have been a good opportunity to do that and the industry norm went a different direction.

47:26But I think in general, you know, we're excited about ways where, you know, our incentives are aligned with artists and songwriters and with the industry. If we can find more premium experiences that listeners love and fans love, that's a great thing for artists and songwriters that it helps power that next stage of industry growth. So yeah, I think, you know, maybe there's a different timeline where that would have played out a different way. But, you know, I'm really happy that, you know, hundreds of millions of premium subscribers around the world kind of get to experience it now. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

47:57Another new service from Spotify is the DM feature, but this is actually not a totally new thing. I remember DMing. I remember it too. Yeah. Inbox. No one remembers this but me. It was early, early days. I had a friend that I used to DM on Spotify when I was like in high school and I loved doing that because he had such good music taste. And then I don't know, I guess I just like woke up one day and realized it was gone. but every time I mention to people like you know Spotify used to have DMs they don't remember it but I'm excited that DMs are back I think that's fun to me it signals a little bit more of like a social direction about interconnecting not just you to the the artist and what they want to share on their page but also how you can how we could connect with each other on Spotify if we wanted to or how friends can connect is that the intention behind it to start moving more in a social direction?

48:49Yeah, but social specific to music or podcasts and audiobooks too. The way we think about it is trying to build all the best ways for fans and listeners to connect with music, more deeply, listen to more music. So there's a bunch of social listening music. Fandom's quite social. And so we try to build some cool ways for fans to connect with each other. So Blend is a really popular feature where with up to 10 friends you share a link everyone joins and we make a personalized mix that updates every day that's a perfect blend of everyone's taste it's like i recently had a road trip upstate there was five of us we made a blend and then as the songs are playing we'll be like oh that one's actually for me and or you know my friend a song is like you know their taste profile that played it i'd ask them about the artist and then i'd open you know open up the artist profile and follow them myself it's a great example of how that social experience can build you have jam which is another kind of live listening experience like instead of passing the aux cord um you can build a collab collaborative playing queue together with friends it's like college parties or you know any sort of event like that an inbox is another um iteration of this so you could send music or podcasts or audiobooks to your friends discuss them um you know i don't think it's the sort of place where you're going to be like texting all your details every day, I think it could be a really cool place to curate a playlist, send an artist to someone, you know, your best friend or your crush or someone who you think is going to love it, to be able to talk about the song after you listen to it.

50:19So we think it's a really cool kind of complement to things like Jam and Blend, where you can connect with your friends over the music. Earlier this year, there were reports that Spotify was working towards like a super premium tier or something of that like, basically something that costs more than your traditional paid service on Spotify and through it, you would get new features. But a lot of these features that are rolling out now are things that I would have expected to be in that super premium tier. So is that still in the works? Yeah, no specific details on that. But, you know, our focus has always been how do you make Spotify premium, like a no brainer to subscribe to?

50:54We just rolled out a bunch of improvements to our free tier as well, because we know that freemium business models, what's helped us grow from a billion dollars in royalties paid out to the industry per year 10 years ago to 10 billion now 60 of premium subscribers start on free so we're trying to improve that free experience then once you get to premium we want it to be an experience you never want to leave so you know lossless quality sound playlist mixing features that we recently launched the uninterrupted listening experience in general and so that's always been our approach with premium we've tried to be thoughtful about making sure you're getting as much value as possible from that because it's good for for us and for the industry and for listeners if we kind of keep people on that premium experience got it so kind of maybe tbd yeah i mean certainly you know we'll look at concert tickets that we now list on the app where you know we send you out to the um ticket provider to go buy tickets from your favorite artists or merch that we let artists uh sell There's lots of kind of different ways we're merchandising things.

51:59You know, we don't take a cut of merch sales or anything like that. But certainly in the fan economy, there's probably lots of interesting ways that we can power artist businesses and power ours. But fundamentally, we want premium to be kind of a no-brainer, always adding value to it and always feel like you're getting your money's worth. Got it. And I know that you all did make some improvements to the free tier. And I wonder, do you fear when improving the free tier that you might empower people to just stay on it because it gets too good that they just don't want to pay for it? You know, what I always say to that, like the reason you can believe us about trying to convert people to premium is because incentives are aligned here.

52:39We want a free tier that brings in the most free users for the top of the funnel. We're really, really good at moving people from free to premium. as I said 60 % of premium subscribers start on the free tier so yeah by kind of modernizing the free tier so I think a lot of younger listeners especially expect to be able to pick what song they listen to they can do it on other services and so we still have a shuffle only experience yeah what we've seen in the data already is because we have this you know better free experience where you can play the songs you want to we're getting way more users in there we're still really really good at upgrading them to premium.

53:16Like we talked about adding more and more premium only features that you kind of feel like you must have. And once you have them, you don't want to give them up. Incentives are aligned here. We're trying to get people to premium. Two thirds of that premium subscription goes back to artists, songwriters, and rights holders. We generate around a billion a year in music advertising on the free tier. So there's good monetization happening there. But monetization definitely is even stronger once you upgrade. So we're all on the same team. The industry is on a path to a billion paid subscribers at this point, which is pretty wild across all streaming services, which is kind of wild if you think about where we were 10 years ago at the low point of the recorded music industry.

53:53It was bleak. Yeah, we're definitely still on that path. You know, we think subscription is the right business model and premium is the right way to maximize it. To do a lot of the stuff that y 'all are doing, I imagine these new licensing agreements that you guys have been announcing periodically at Universal, Sony, Warner, BMG, Cobalt. I'm trying to think who else in Merlin. Yeah, a lot of music companies have renewed or upped their licensing deals with you guys. There's not too much information that I have seen on exactly what that entails. And I understand that those are private agreements.

54:25But one of the things that a lot of them note is that it improves remuneration for songwriters on the platform. That's been a big issue in the music industry. It's kind of an inside baseball thing. If you're listening to this and you're not very familiar, in like March 2024, Spotify moved premium to being a bundle, which basically just means the same price tag. They're dividing the royalties between audiobooks and music, which meant less money for music. But this improves. A lot of these deals are improving the royalty rates for songwriters from that bundling moment. Right. Can you tell can you give us some more information on what that all means?

55:06Yeah. So now if you're a premium listener on our core premium tier, you also get 15 hours a month of audiobook listing on Spotify. Really cool. The reason that we do these bundles, that we think about music and podcasts and audiobooks together is all these things massively increase the number of people we can ultimately get onto Spotify, get to pay for a premium, and continue into music. And so a lot of the data we've been able to share with our partners shows how we bring in a different type of listener for audiobooks. Maybe you sign up because you heard how great that model is for audiobooks.

55:44Instead of buying in credits where you have to buy a whole book, you can split it up. and whatever you want to listen to for 15 hours that month. Once you sign up for premium, two-thirds of that revenue is going to music rights holders. And once you're listening to audiobooks on Spotify, we're pretty good at getting you to start to listen to music too. We follow the rules about how payouts work for bundles the same way. All our competitors do bundles as well. Apple One, YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime. We all follow the same rules. we're really excited to do these direct deals with publishers because all these new experiences that we're talking about we you know fundamentally think licensing's the you know core of the music industry you want you know permission and proper compensation for all the experiences that we're building on Spotify and so we're really happy to have more direct deals with a lot of publishers so that we can work through those dynamics with them directly make sure they feel great about how payouts are working, make sure that we're getting all the rights we need to build fan experiences.

56:45That grows the pie. And yeah, you know, we've paid over four and a half billion dollars over the past two years to publishing rights holders, double digit percentage increase from, you know, 2024 to 2025. So publishing payouts are going up. They're going up faster than other services. And yeah, definitely kind of understand where a lot of the public concern came from. And we're happy to kind of have that chapter behind us and really think about how we're building new products together. The MLC is still trying to pursue a lawsuit against Spotify because of the bundle situation. I'm just wondering, like, what's y 'all's take on that situation and where it stands today?

57:25Thankfully for me, I don't have to deal with the lawsuits and legal issues. But yeah, you know, I know to date courts have found we were acting in kind of pretty clear accordance with the same rules everyone's following about how bundles work and what that means for payouts. And I think everyone agrees in the industry bundles are a good thing for growing the pie overall. But yeah, I don't know much about what's going on with our lawsuits. Yeah. And with these direct licensing agreements that you guys have forged with a lot of the publishers, which has improved the rate for the publishers and songwriters who are part of these agreements, does it get it back to pre-bundle royalty rates or is it still a little lower.

58:04I don't think we think about it that way. And, you know, licensing terms stay private with our partners for, you know, clear reasons. But we're always thinking about licensing as a value exchange. Everyone feels really good about where we landed in these last deals where we're able to build some of these really exciting experiences that are going to grow the pie. And all our partners feel really good about, you know, Spotify as the biggest, you know, paycheck in the music industry. And so, you know, we'll continue to work with them that way. Moving on to like Spotify more broadly, I feel like there are so many changes going on as we've been talking about.

58:39One of the biggest ones being that Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, has stepped down as CEO, but he's still going to be chairman. So what does that mean for the future of the company now that it's under new leadership? Yeah, really excited for Daniel, for this next step for him, for us internally, it's not a huge change. Daniel appointed Gustav and Alex, our new co-CEOs. They became co-presidents two years ago, I think. And so I think Daniel's done this really thoughtfully where, you know, that was probably a first step where he was still CEO, but, you know, he elevated the two of them to co-presidents.

59:11And now as it evolves fully to him as chairman and Gustav and Alex as co-CEOs, you know, you'd mentioned the pace of execution of all the stuff we've been launching and building. You know, I think that's thanks to the setup we have. And I'm sure this will kind of continue to accelerate. So it shouldn't feel like too much of a change for us. I know the titles probably feel like a bigger impact externally. But for us, I think Daniel's done a really good job of thoughtfully, you know, setting up Alex Gustav for success. And they've both been at Spotify for an incredibly, incredibly long time. Yeah, they're ready.

59:47I think they've both been there longer than 15 years. Wait, whoa. So, I mean, Spotify hasn't even been in the U.S. for more than 15 years. Right. That's right. Yeah. So they've been there since almost the beginning. Wow. That's cool. Yeah. Really excited for them. Yeah. And I mean, Spotify is a Swedish based company. I'm just curious, like, what are some cultural differences that you've noticed from going back and forth to Sweden? I'm sure you've been a few times. Yeah. You know, I've been at Spotify seven years and my first year was pre-COVID. I got to go to Sweden all the time. And it was like a great benefit of the job.

1:00:21And then ever since, even as we're, you know, returned, you know, back to offices and so on, you know, now we're just used to doing the virtual meetings. So I don't get to Sweden as much as I wanted anymore. I think what's fun, just like Spotify culturally, is we've got a huge Sweden office, huge London office, huge New York office, Miami office, Nashville office, LA office. I focus on my team on in all those offices so you kind of have this like you know global environment where people bring different perspectives and different taste in music and different you know cultural touchstones um totally uh it's kind of like baked into our culture because we're swedish with such a big uh kind of u.s office and do you have like any recommendations of something someone should do in stockholm if they ever find themselves there uh i definitely say this isn't a novel recommendation but the summer months are when to do it you get the like 20 hour days um 20 hour days well i haven't i haven't been to sweden we'll have to fact that one we're gonna have to fact check okay okay i'll fact check if there's like a line that appears below us right now that's a lot of my that's not right a lot of my core stockholm memories like middle of summer like grab locks or you know whatever i tinned fish and then like a pint of beer and it's like 11 p.m and the sun's still out Wow.

1:01:35I think that's the vibe. So it's like go in summer. Especially in 2019, the joke used to be that everyone had an excuse for why we needed an offsite. In Stockholm, every summer, somehow, there was like an urgent reason we all needed to go to Stockholm, but in winter, there never was. Yeah, just in July. Yeah. Weirdly, there's a business critical reason we had to go in July, but never in the winter. Wow. I love that. Yeah, I'll have to go to Stockholm. I've been to Oslo a few times. Great city. I know if there's someone in Norway who's listening to this for some reason, I'm sorry that I just compared Sweden and Norway.

1:02:06I know that they have differences, but I do enjoy Scandinavia. It's a great place to be. It really is. To end off this conversation, we've talked about so many things, but now let's get to music. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills. but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months, $90 for six months, or$180 for 12 month plan required.

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1:03:17The most memorable gifts aren't found, they're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product. A mug, a card, a tote, a phone case, and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke. The kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find. Right now, save 25 % on your first order at Zazzle.com. That's Zazzle.com. Make it z-amazing. At the end of every single conversation that I have on On the Record, I ask people to make me a playlist, and we're going to add it to this kind of compulsive... It's actually on Spotify.

1:03:56Oh, I love it. Plug for Spotify. You can DM it to me now. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. So whenever I do Make Me a Playlist, I have people pick three songs for me based on three prompts. So the first prompt is, what is a song that you can no longer gatekeep? I've been really liking Romy Mars lately. A-lister, Ego, amazing. I'm anxiously awaiting the first album so people can get on board now before the first proper project. That's such a great pick. I wouldn't have pegged you as a Romy Mars fan. I'm surprising. What is a favorite throwback? Probably got to go with my go-to karaoke song, Natalie Imbruglia Torn.

1:04:34Oh, yeah. I have a terrible singing voice. It's a problem. People hate doing karaoke with me, but Torn, I sing it with passion. But somehow, even though it's like she sings it amazingly, you can kind of chant, sing it. Yeah. And for people with my vocal challenges, it's a great selection and a great song. I once tried with a group of people that I didn't know on New Year's Eve. I tried to do Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood at karaoke, which is one of the hardest. I mean, why would I do that? You have to properly like belt that. I know. And I'm not a bad singer, but I could not do that. My vocal cords hurt even thinking about trying to sing it.

1:05:09It's a great, a great song, though. Yeah. But maybe I'm going to take up Torn. Yeah. That seems like a little bit of an easier one. It is pro tip. Okay. Last one is what is a guilty pleasure of yours? Guilty pleasure. I'm going to say Kelly Yokey from The Kelly Clarkson Show. Good one. All of her covers, there's like, you know, we all loved her from American Idol originally. So there's something just like that brings you back to childhood. It's so solid. When you have her sing covers and Happier Than Ever is probably her best one. But all her covers are amazing and they put them all on Spotify also.

1:05:43I didn't mean to plug Spotify with that. I'm sure they're on all streaming services. But, you know, if like it's a hard day or you just need something just like truly joy inducing, the Kelly Oki playlist is really solid. she's unbelievable that's a great pick well Sam thank you so much for being here it means a lot of course really fun another big thank you again to Sam Duboff from Spotify for sharing his insights with us this week here's the Hot 100 Top 10 for the week of October 25th at number 10 is Actually Romantic by Taylor Swift number 9 is The Life of a Showgirl

1:06:22number 8 is Wood

1:06:28Number seven is Wishlist.

1:06:33Number six is Father Figure.

1:06:39Number five is Elizabeth Taylor. Ordinary by Alex Warren re-enters the top 10 this week at number four. Number three is another re-entry, Golden by Huntrix. Number two is Opalite by Taylor Swift. And number one for its second week in the top spot is The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of On the Record. And another special thank you again to this week's guest, Sam Duboff. If you enjoyed today's show, please give us a rating, a follow, a thumbs up, any of those things. They all really help a new show like ours to reach new audiences. Again, I'm your host, Kristen Robinson, and tune in next week for even more industry insider knowledge.

1:07:28I'll see you then.

1:07:45Thank you.