Why? (Objective)

1. For business:

<aside> 💼

• Increase re-engagement and listening frequency by giving users more reasons to return to Spotify beyond discovering new releases.
• Increase streams of back-catalog music by resurfacing music users previously enjoyed.
• Create additional opportunities for personalized and shareable experiences, potentially driving organic engagement and retention. </aside>

1. For users:

<aside> 👤

• Help users rediscover music they previously loved but have stopped listening to, without relying on remembering the song title or artist.
• Make it easier to reconnect with music associated with different periods or moments of their lives.
• Turn a user's listening history into something useful and personally meaningful, rather than simply a record of past activity. </aside>

1. V1 Scope:

   The prototype focuses on the core rediscovery experience proactively resurfacing previously loved, dormant tracks and allowing users to move between recommendations or take immediate action.

How do we measure success?

1. Associated OKR/Goal

   Working Product Goal (assumption): Increase user engagement and re-engagement by helping users reconnect with previously loved music.

2. Success Metrics

   <aside> 📈

   • Rediscovery Success Rate: % of users exposed to Rediscover who play at least one resurfaced track within 7 days of exposure.
   • Increase in streams of tracks with no play in the previous 6 months.
   • Session frequency / return visits attributable to the feature
   • Save/replay/playlist-add rate on resurfaced tracks (signal that the rediscovery was relevant, not noise) </aside>

3. Guardrail/Do not disturb metrics (These metrics shouldn’t be negatively affected)

   <aside> 📉

   • Overall app session length and skip rate should not decline
   • New-release discovery engagement (Discover Weekly, Release Radar plays) should not drop as a result of users spending more time in rediscovery
   • Overall listening diversity should not narrow unhealthily (i.e., users shouldn't get stuck in a nostalgia loop at the expense of broader engagement) </aside>

Who are the users:

1. Persona

   Working Persona (assumption): "The Nostalgic Listener" an existing Spotify user with a substantial listening history who has a strong emotional relationship with music tied to specific life periods (school, a relationship, a trip, a particular year) but doesn't actively curate playlists to preserve that history.

2. Problems we are solving [Needs, Problems, Jobs to be done]

   <aside> 📎

   • When I remember a song I used to love but can't recall its title or artist, I want an easy way to find it again, so I can listen to it without relying on my memory.
   • When I want to revisit a particular period or memory in my life, I want to rediscover the music I listened to then, so I can reconnect with that moment or mood.
   • I want my listening history to help me understand and revisit my musical past, rather than simply act as a record of what I played. </aside>

3. How do we know these problems exist (research)

   Hypothesis: Users with extensive listening histories may struggle to rediscover previously loved music as newer discoveries accumulate.

   Evidence to validate:

   <aside> 🧾

   • User interviews focused on music rediscovery behavior
   • Survey measuring frequency of "forgotten favorite" experiences
   • Behavioral analysis of searches for previously played tracks
   • Engagement with Spotify's existing nostalgia/rediscovery experiences </aside>

Solution:

1. Brief of the solution.

   Spotify already offers listening-history experiences such as Wrapped, On Repeat, and Time Capsule. However, these experiences primarily provide fixed or algorithmically generated views of a user's listening history rather than enabling intentional exploration of specific periods or previously highly engaged with music that has since become dormant.

   Spotify Rediscover is a proposed personalized experience designed around this gap. The default experience proactively surfaces a track the user previously played frequently but hasn't listened to recently, with lightweight historical context to help trigger recognition.

   Users can play, save, or continue exploring additional resurfaced tracks. For users who want more control, an optional Browse path allows them to explore their listening history by year, season, or custom date range and discover previously engaged tracks from that period.

2. Other alternatives are considered with prioritization metrics.

   Alternative	Description	Why not chosen for V1
   Enhanced search/filters on existing history	Add sorting and filtering to Liked Songs and playback history	Still requires users to know roughly what they are looking for; doesn't proactively surface dormant favorites
   Expand On Repeat / Time Capsule	Iterate on existing personalized experiences	Existing formats are primarily algorithm-driven and don't give users control over the specific period or listening pattern they want to explore
   Conversational/search-based rediscovery	Natural-language input such as "that sad song I listened to in college"	High potential, but introduces NLP complexity and requires validation of whether users actually want conversational retrieval
   Spotify Rediscover -proposed	A dedicated experience combining proactive resurfacing of dormant favorites with optional time-based exploration	Best fit with the core JTBD while keeping cognitive load low; selected for V1

   ---

Product flow (Details of the feature/product):