Qvist has a watchful eye on some of the local genres that are making waves globally, such as K-Pop. “Which is nothing short of amazing for us, because that was one of the bets that we took… so we will continue to innovate on format and different types of content”. In 2019, Latin America was one of Spotify’s fastest growing regions in terms of podcast listening. One of the things I personally think we will see more in this space is health. We call it podcasts but it’s actually a lot of things going in to that,” she said. “One of the things we haven’t seen too much about is the formats. Later in the keynote, the conversation would come back to this point. Much shorter formats, different kinds of genres… That is the exciting part, to continue to develop this fairly nascent industry both in terms of format but also in terms of content,” she said. What resonates with users here in the US is not the same as what resonates with users in India. What’s driving this growth for Spotify? “To me it’s formats. “We had about 1.5bn hours of podcast consumption on the platform in 2019.” “Last quarter we saw a 39% podcast audience growth quarter-on-quarter,” she said. Podcasts loomed large in Qvist’s keynote, as they have done for Spotify over the past year. The right managing director, the right head of content and the right head of marketing, to make sure they really understand the cultural narrative.” At the end of the day, what makes culture so unique is exactly that: the culture… We are really passionate about getting the right team on the ground.

“Also for me it’s a lot about finding the right people. But before we move into a market there’s a lot of research,” she said. “We don’t normally put the team on the ground until we decide that we move in. Qvist talked about how Spotify approaches new territories. Qvist was interviewed on-stage by Music Biz president Portia Sabin.

She was also the opening keynote at NY:LON Connect, the music industry conference that Music Ally co-runs with the Music Business Association (Music Biz), as part of its track on ‘global streaming’.

We are just on the tip of the iceberg of what this will become.”Ĭecilia Qvist is global head of markets at Spotify, tasked with overseeing the streaming service’s continued expansion into new territories, as its content continues to spread beyond music. “I think it’s good that we have a lot of players in the market, because it means we all get better… The streaming landscape, and particularly for us the audio landscape, will continue to grow.

Music iceberg