Product Improvement: Spotify for fitness enthusiasts
I regularly listen to music while working out, this helps me to keep myself motivated and maintain the rhythm of my workout. Spotify is my go-to app for the same. While Spotify is a brilliant music discovery app, I have always struggled to get personalised workout music recommendations on the app. Unable to find the workout music that suits my taste, I end up playing songs from the followed playlists.
A big downside to this is that I can no longer maintain my pace using music, it rather hinders my pace and energy when a slow song starts playing.
Target Audience
This problem is faced by a majority of fitness enthusiasts around the world. There are two groups in particular:
Fitness Enthusiasts:
- 18–35 yrs, Live in the city
- Love to workout everyday
- Exercise is a mode of relaxation
- Always look for good music recommendations on apps
Fitness Trainers:
- 25–40 yrs., Live in the city
- Exercise is a source of income
- Train customers for 8–10 hrs/day
- Look for good music to keep customers pumped & entertained
What is their customer journey?
The Problem
To keep up the momentum and motivation, fitness enthusiasts regularly listen to music while working out. While Spotify has a good music discovery ecosystem, it is not geared towards the fitness enthusiasts as they:
- Cannot find personalised workout music recommendations on the homepage
- Current workout playlists are static and hard to find from the app search page
- Cannot search or sort music based on the pace or energy to suit the speed of their workout
How big is the impact?
Market Size
- The digital fitness music industry will be 891.2M users by 2021, 40% out of whom cannot workout without music
This comes to a total addressable market size of 357M users
Customer Retention
- 150M (55%) of the Spotify users are in the age of 18–35 yrs, 120M (80%) of whom workout regularly
Hence, the target existing user base for this feature is 120M
Solving this problem would improve:
- Customer Acquisition
- Customer Engagement
Tenets of the Solution:
The solution must ensure:
- Users must be able to search and sort the music based on pace
- Users must get personalised recommendations for workout music based on ideal pace for the workout
Beats per Minute (BPM) is a good measure for the pace of the music
To serve a fitness enthusiast, Spotify needs following competencies:
- The ideal workout playlist:
- Store BPM: Store BPM in metadata for each song along with other parameters
- Recommendations based on BPM: Feed BPM as one of the parameters to the recommendation engine for workout music
- Familiarity v/s Discovery: Workout playlists with 75% familiar and 25% discovery music
Solutions:
Solution 1: Tailored experience for fitness enthusiasts
Part 1: Spotify records the user’s preference for ‘listening to music while working out’ while signing up, to identify and tailor the experience for fitness enthusiasts
Part 2: Spotify uses the existing recommendation algorithm along with BPM to create personalised workout playlists such as Daily Running Mix, Daily Tabata Mix etc.
Part 3: In order to make it easier to discover workout music for fitness enthusiasts, display Workout in top genres in the search section
Solution 2: Search and Sort on Beats per Minute
Part 1: Index the BPM for each song in the search database to enable users to search on BPM
Part 2: Add BPM to the sort options for playlists enabling users to play songs in increasing or decreasing order of BPM
Solution 3: Song radio tailored for workouts
Step 1: User opens the fitness app and selects the workout routine. For example, Light Jogging, Marathon, Warm-Up etc.
Step 2: Based on the workout routine, the app has a pre-set duration of the workout
Step 3: User plays music using the Spotify integration on the fitness app
Step 4: Basis the duration of workout and user’s heart rate, Spotify curates the ‘ideal workout’ radio with songs of varying BPM — increasing (main workout) and then decreasing (cool-down)
Prioritization:
Based on the score, I would go for the ‘Tailored Experience’ solution providing seamless music playing experience to fitness enthusiasts.
Implementation Timeline
As features under each solution are overlapping, we may implement all the solutions to provide the full-fledged experience
Metrics:
Product wide metrics
These metrics will track product wide performance improvements due to the proposed solution
- New Sign Ups: Track month-on-month change in sign-ups
- % Active Users: Track month-on-month change in the number of logins
- Time spent on Spotify: Track month-on-month change
- Average hrs of music played per user: Track month-on-month change
Feature Specific Metrics
These metrics will track feature specific usage statistics
- % users opening workout playlists from homepage: Track day-on-day change
- % users playing workout songs from homepage: Track day-on-day change
- % users using ‘bpm’ in their search term: Track month-on-month change
- % users sorting their song queue on ‘bpm’: Track day-on-day change
- % users invoking Spotify from fitness apps: Track day-on-day change
Potential Pitfalls:
- The recommendations based on BPM may not be precise enough and may require additional parameters such as bass to be added to the algorithm
- The workout music recommendations may overwhelm the user and hinder regular music discovery
- The indexing and storing of BPM for each song may slowdown the search
- The fitness apps may not share data regarding length of workout and heart rate leading to delay in implementation of the feature
Product Strategy:
In order to gain traction, acquire and retain more customers, Spotify can:
- Post beta testing, launch the workout feature in collaboration with other sports apparel brands such as Puma, fitness start-ups such as cure.fit etc.
- For future growth, Spotify can also look at creating shared experiences around workouts by launching buddy workout radio where users can listen to the same song radio while exercising together and therefore improving customer engagement
