Launching Spotify Free on Bose Speakers
How should Bose expand its music service integrations to continue to be relevant for its customers?
The Context
The key value proposition of a Bose smart speaker is quicker access to the music you love. With presets that take you straight to your favorite playlist across music streaming services, and Alexa and Google built in, you can reach the music you want with the press of a single button, or a simple voice command.
Prior to Fall 2019, Bose smart speakers worked with Spotify Premium accounts, but not with Spotify Free. This meant our smart speakers were irrelevant to the 230 M monthly active Spotify Free users. I worked with our partners at Spotify to green-light and execute the integration of Spotify Free into Bose smart speakers on a tight deadline in order to make the Free tier compatible with Bose products before the key holiday shopping season.
The Outcome
We launched Spotify Free on all Bose smart speakers (old and new generation) in November 2019.
Since the launch of Spotify Free, Spotify has reported a signifiant increase in Spotify listeners using Bose smart speakers (Actual numbers confidential).
The Deliverables
Business case for pursuing Spotify Free integration, Product requirements, KPIs
The Team
Product Manager (me)
Cloud Technical Lead
Embedded Firmware Technical Lead
App Technical Lead
Design Lead
Project Manager
Cloud Scrum Team (7 engineers)
Embedded Scrum Team (5 engineers)
App Scrum Team (2 engineers, Product Owner, Designer)
Notable Contributions
Negotiating and aligning on integration timeline and requirements with Spotify.
Meeting an aggressive deadline to launch the Spotify Free integration smoothly and on time.
Working with our internal marketing team and Spotify’s marketing team to generate press for the launch of Spotify Free on Bose speakers.
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key tasks
Presented business case outlining why we should pursue Spotify Free integration to internal stakeholders, including a compelling by-the-numbers look that demonstrated a sizeable increase in our total addressable market with the integration of Spotify Free
Communicated key requirements, updates and roadblocks to Spotify and our internal technical team
Worked with our Data Insights organization to ensure we could track Spotify Free usage separately from Spotify Premium usage
Kept up team moral and motivation under tight deadlines
Carefully coordinated the rollout and communication of Spotify Free with our Cloud, Embedded, App teams, Customer Support and Marketing
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in app screen announcing Spotify Free integration
