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Spotify

Music Streaming Platform

500M+
Active Users
180+
Countries
100M+
Songs
$12B
Annual Revenue

Company Overview

Spotify revolutionized music consumption by providing unlimited access to millions of songs through streaming. Founded in 2006, Spotify now serves over 500 million users across 180+ countries.

The platform's success demonstrates how machine learning, personalization, and global content delivery can create a superior user experience in the music industry.

Business Model

  • Freemium model with ad-supported free tier
  • Premium subscriptions for ad-free experience
  • Revenue sharing with artists and labels
  • Podcast and audio content expansion

Context

  • • Global music streaming platform serving 500M+ users
  • • Real-time audio streaming with global CDN
  • • Machine learning for personalized recommendations

Patterns & Typical Choices

API Gateway: rate-limits, auth, request shaping (e.g., Zuul/Envoy)
Storage: metadata (KV/Doc), sessions (in-memory), search (inverted index), analytics (data lake)
Messaging: queues vs streams; idempotency; outbox/CDC to avoid dual-writes
Caching: edge CDN + service caches; stampede protection (locks, jittered TTLs)
Observability: trace IDs across hops; RED/USE metrics with SLOs

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