First Principles Thinking Applied: Spotify with Audrey and Nick

Do you remember buying CDs? Or buying an album or individual tracks on iTunes? When was the last time you did this? Exactly! So, what happened? Let me tell you what happened: Spotify came along and completely changed the way we access and consume music. They changed how we discover music. They changed how artists and labels are compensated. But how did they come up with such groundbreaking changes that completely disrupted the music industry? The answer is: they applied First Principles Thinking.

And today, we’re having Audrey and Nick explore what happened when the team at Spotify asked themselves this one fundamental question: "If I started from scratch, what would I create?" Spotify broke with many traditions and long-held beliefs. Remember that even Steve Jobs believed that people wanted to OWN their music and had rejected the idea of a music subscription service in the early days of the iTunes music store. Spotify, however, disregarded the status quo and defined and designed their revolutionary streaming service around a new set of paradigms – the first being: “Music is about access, not ownership”, which ran completely contrary to conventional wisdom back then.