Spotify Music Streaming Service Looking to Create Their Own Hardware

Following popular social media sharing website Snapchat’s lead with the release of their own Spectacles hardware tied to their own platform, it appears that streaming music service Spotify is also looking to build a mobile device and venture into hardware wearables. Spotify is looking for a Senior Hardware Product manager with the intention to create “a category defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo and Snap Spectacles”. The job description was posted on Spotify’s Career Opportunities section on their website and lists the job as a position looking to be filled in Stockholm, Sweden. Although not much information is available yet, the job listing describes the project as a “fully-connected hardware device”.

The work expectations for this job listing includes:

• Deeply understand Spotify’s mission and strategies, manage product vision for the cross-functional team, set qualitative objectives and quantitative goals.
• Partner with hardware initiative program managers to build products that can become new Spotify business lines.
• Drive product development with a team of world-class engineers and designers.
• Work directly with suppliers and manufacturers to specify and ensure timely delivery of hardware that supports and integrates Spotify’s software stack.
• Integrate exploratory user research, usability studies, and market analysis into product requirements to improve user satisfaction.
• Define, monitor and analyze metrics for launched products and feed findings back into product development process.
• Clearly communicate product plans, benefits and results, as appropriate, to a wide range of audiences, from internal partners to all Spotify employees.
• Drive Spotify’s invention and innovation success from a hardware perspective.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with other areas of the business, including business development, legal, comms, and marketing to ensure product releases maximise impact.
• Manage end of product life cycle, whether decisions require reinvestment, transitioning to maintenance or product retirement.
• Work from our office in Stockholm, Sweden.

The listings also suggest that the upcoming product will have voice capabilities and describes the project manager as having to work specifically with a team dedicated to this feature. The job listings also show that the company is looking for product directors whose work will focus on “natural language understanding” which specifically is for their conversational interface. This is where the Amazon Echo reference comes in; with the upcoming Spotify device responsive to voice commands and/or could indicate tighter integration with existing voice command platforms.