Summary

This week we get to hear about the latest news... Spotify wrapped! We take a deep dive into the architecture of the application and how the software relates to cybersecurity! Stay *tuned* for this technical article from our She Wires Words writer Raidah! And, check out the opportunities we have for students like you!

Spotify and Its Shenanigans

by Raidah

With Spotify releasing its yearly Wrapped and user data analysis as a personalized present for every user ahead of New Year’s this week, we thought it best to take a look at what fueled this Tech Startups’ generational climb to popularity.

Scroll below and take a closer look at the key aspects of Spotify’s strategy, both technical and commercial which turned it into a Gen Z sensation and a tech industry dominator.

Background playing mechanism

One of the key features behind Spotify’s increasing success is the app’s ability to allow the music or audio being streamed to continue playing even when the user isn’t open on the app itself. For example you can have a Spotify playlist running while you’re working on a Google doc on your phone, without the need to keep the Spotify app itself open throughout. This feature sets it apart from other streaming services like YouTube, where multitasking while having an audio playing in the background isn’t possible.

But I’m sure many of us have wondered why other streaming services never thought to do this. Is there a secret potion allowing Spotify’s background playback feature? They use a commonly available feature on devices called “background playback” which allows the device to run an audio file in the device even when the screen is locked or the user is working on a different app. So in reality, the truth behind other streaming services not using this functionality isn’t due to a technical limitation, but rather a commercial and strategic one.

Spotify is an app that solely allows playing audio files of almost every song and music track out there, but other streaming services like YouTube are used to stream many different things from music videos, to educational content etc, meaning that the screen itself is necessary to portray the graphic content and hence even if they enabled background playback, it wouldn’t be of much use. Another concern is other streaming platforms heavily dependent on users viewing their ads which pop up several times between a video and require the screen to serve their purpose, for Spotify the their ads are also only audio files which can play along the background playback without requiring them to sacrifice on the advertisements.

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“Wrapped Gift”

Another sensational aspect of Spotify luring in users is the year end “Spotify Wrapped” that they deliver to every single one of their millions of users. This requires months of continuous monitoring, data analysis and machine learning which is a huge investment on their end, something bigger streaming services can’t solely focus on due to having a greater variety of user history and data to analyse.