Spotify Playlist Engagement Drop Investigation

Yuvraj’s approach

Identify potential internal vs. external factors affecting engagement: Internal- UI/UX changes that caused navigation friction, recommendation algo shift that caused less relevant songs being played, technical bugs, reduced notifications causing less engagement. External factors: Competitor features- tiktok, apple music, youtube music etc launching new playlist related features, Seasonal trends- Summer travel, exams, vacations that caused a shift in usual listening habits. Events- Cultural or global events changing user behaviour.

Prioritize investigation methods or data to explore first: Internal product data ( 1st priority): Compare playlist engagement before/after recent app updates. Segment by platform: ios, android, web to detect ux friction. Analyse recommendation click through rates.

Externbal competitive scan (priority 2): Track user churn patterns, overlay engagement decline with competitor launches, seasonal trend analysis-compare engagement for last year during same period to understand pattern.

Explain your reasoning for prioritization: Internal data is fastest to access and most actionable. External and seasonal factors require correlation but can be combines after internal validation.

Identify what decision or trade-off these findings might inform: If internal product issue is confirmed- prioritise bug fixes or algo tuning before launch of new features as an external checkpoint or test case. If external competitor is driving decline- inform marketing and product strategy to gain back traction through counter features or campaigns. If seasonal trend is confirmed- treat it as temporary shift, avoid making permanent changes but plan proactive engagement campaigns for future cycles to maintain engagement rate.

Ishant Juyal’s approach

Here are the steps I would follow to analyse the Root cause behind this:

1. Check the data source and how we measure the metric. Is there any change in how we measure playlist engagement rate? If there's a change in how we measure, we need to see the actual change in metric by calculating metric for previous period in the same way. We also need to check if our data pipeline is working well and data is accurate.

If there is no problem with data or how we measure the metric, we move on to next steps.

1. Is this change sudden? Or has this drop been happening gradually over some time?
2. For which geography is this happening?
3. For which platform - Mobile (iOS vs Android), Web, Desktop/ Mac - is this happening?
4. For which app version is this happening?
5. Playlist engagement rate = Users who engage with playlist/ Users who open the app. Check if the decline is due to increase in the denominator or decrease in the numerator.
6. Is this change happening for only new users on the platform (new signups in last 7 days) or for all the users?
7. Break down the user journey into a funnel - app open, search for playlist or come to the explore section, click on a playlist, Open playlist details, play one song. Then we see if there's a sudden drop in any of the steps here. This will tell us where the major drop off is happening.

After we do all this analysis, we will be able to identify if there's any problem in our internal systems, or if the issue is external.

If nothing comes up in this data, we look at external factors.

1. Any new competitor who might be taking the users?
2. Any change in pricing or marketing?
3. Any negative company PR?
4. Any geography facing changes in how we operate?

After we answer all these questions, we should be able to find out the root cause.