Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan

In this episode, Gustav Gyllenhammar, VP of markets and subscriber growth at Spotify, joins host Nandagopal Rajan to discuss Spotify’s growth strategy in India, how operating in India has helped the company problem-solve in other countries, playlist curation, and future plans.

TRANSCRIPT

Nandagopal Rajan: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Our Own Devices with Nandagopal Rajan. And as you guess, right, this is Nandagopal Rajan bringing you another guest. And this time we have a guest from Stockholm, and I'm in sunny, very hot, very sultry Kerala. And our guest is in the beautiful weather of Scandinavia, but he'd rather swap places with me. Welcome to the show, Mr. Gustav Gyllenhammar.

Gustav Gyllenhammar: Well, thank you so much. It's such a delight to join your podcast today. And yes, as you said, it's icy and snowy here in Stockholm. I'm dreaming of sunny Kerala. But next time we'll try to do this in person.

Nandagopal Rajan: So Gustav is Spotify's VP for markets and subscriber growth. And he is the guy who knows all about podcasts and the entire audio space. So Gustav, let's start by asking you what is Spotify 's strategy for India? And where is Spotify placed in this fast evolving space of audio streaming?

Gustav Gyllenhammar: Yeah, listen, India, for us, is a hugely important market. It's obviously, and this is not a surprise to you or your listeners in India, but it's the biggest opportunity market there is in the world. Nowhere in the world is the audience opportunity larger than India. And we're just crossing our third year in the market. And for us, it's been a hugely rewarding experience being in India, where we're seeing strong growth, we're seeing customer delight, consumers are really happy with the experience we're able to deliver to them. And also creators, both on the music and on the podcast side are telling us that they're really happy we are in market and are helping them grow their audiences.

Nandagopal Rajan: So, Gustav I had a very interesting experience this weekend. And I was driving to this place called Wayanad which is a couple of hours from where I am. But it's a very beautiful drive. And I was on Spotify all through and I let Spotify decide the songs for me. And I was really blown away by the selection. Like I absolutely didn't have to skip even one song. Everything was what I would like to listen. And I have a very eclectic choice of music, and I listen to a lot, all sorts of things from all over the world. And it was actually throwing me those kinds of songs. How does that technology work? And that's something really fascinated me always.

Gustav Gyllenhammar: Yes, I'm really happy to hear about your delightful drive. It's similar for me. I drive up to my parents are up in the North of Sweden. And often you know, I can just turn on Spotify. And it brings me songs, sometimes familiar ones, sometimes really new discoveries. And it's really exciting to let the service pick for you. And technology as you may understand is really the heart and soul of both the Spotify product and the user experience. It's what drives our ability to deliver a unique experience to consumers. And quite frankly, for the more than 400 million consumers we have, every one of them have a unique Spotify experience. And it's because discovery and personalisation are really the two key pillars that we built our service on. Each user has a unique experience. And we build up a taste profile for every single user and then use machine learning technology to deliver personalised content for users. And based on the signals that you then send back: do you like a song? Do you skip a song? Which artists do you follow and so on, we can continuously evolve and deliver a richer and richer and more personalised experience for you as the user. And that also means that we can enable a true engagement with both music and podcast for you and cultivate those connections between you and the creators that you are interested in.

Nandagopal Rajan: So is that tougher to do in a country like India, which is so complex, which is so layered, it has so many regions, so many languages, and people have very different preferences from what you would get in a Europe where maybe a maximum you have two languages, but like, you know, I am comfortable in six languages, for instance, like I would listen to songs, and maybe more. So how do you manage something like that? Because it gets complex, you know, as you go every 10-15 kilometres?

Gustav Gyllenhammar: Yes, you're absolutely right about that. Spotify was founded in Sweden back in 2006. And we launched the service here in 2008. And most of our early years were focused on Western European markets. And we went to the US and even to Latin America. ...

In this episode, host Nandagopal Rajan is joined by Gyanendra Singh, head of audio at Sony India to discuss what truly wireless audio devices are. They talk about how the pandemic and work from home have transformed the audio space, how noise cancellation is growing in India, the demand for audio devices compatible with music as well as online meets, and a lot more. They also discuss what Sony’s truly wireless audio range.

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In this episode, host Nandagopal Rajan is joined by Nimish Dubey to discuss the latest range of new hardware products Apple launched at an event held at its campus in California. From the redesigned iMac to the iPad Pro, the duo share notes on the products and talk about the niche ecosystem Apple has managed to create for its consumers.

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In this episode, host Nandgopal Rajan is joined by Dhaval Ponda who leads media and entertainment globally at Tata Communications. The duo discuss how the world of live sports has managed to survive the pandemic thanks to the innovative use of technology.

In this episode of The Indian Express weekly tech podcast – Our Own Devices, host Nandagopal Rajan, COO, The Indian Express Online is joined by Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Security and Collaboration, Cisco. With every passing day, the importance of cyber security is increasing. And according to our guest, Mr Patel, we need to assume that every organisation at some point in time will get breached. So, how do we deal with this? Through the concept of cyber resilience. But, what is cyber resilience? Does AI play a part in detecting and dealing with cyber threats? Where does India stand in terms of cyber security? To find out all of this and more, tune into today’s episode of Our Own Devices.

Introduction 00:00
What is Cyber Resilience 00:31
How does Cisco cater to organisations and governments 01:58
How does AI help in cyber security 04:23
Does the size of a company co-relate to its use of AI? 06:43
India and cyber security in 2024 07:36
Security index of Cisco 09:36
3Es of cyber security 10:46
Challenges to cyber security in 2024 12:35
Future of AI in the industry 14:18

Edited and mixed by Suresh Pawar