Well, Spotify has tried very hard to convince people that its profit margins are gonna improve.

Because the big challenge for them, as successful as they've been in creating this market for on-demand music

and really lifting the record industry up after several years of decline,

the company itself is not profitable because it pays out so much to rights holders.

And all these other types of programming, whether it's news, culture, podcast, video,

are ones where… if they're successful in them, they can bring in new customers,

maybe sell some ads and they don't have to spend as much and it will improve the margin picture,

which is a big concern both for the current investors and for future shareholders.

Right, the cost of music rights is incredibly high, Spotify has been steadily diversifying,

so what are some of the other projects they've been working on and how successful have they been?

It's been mixed, you know, for the past few years they've dabbled in video and then forms of audios that aren't music.

So they initially hosted videos from media companies like VICE and ESPN, then they funded original video series.

None of the video projects really worked and the executives are pretty aware of that.

Podcasting holds more promise.

They've had some uptake with some of the big podcasts like the New York Times - The Daily.

And now Spotlight is trying to fuse these two ideas together where you take audio and enhance a little bit with some visual elements.

Because I think Spotify has come to the conclusion that

having the original video and trying to compete the head-to-head and that way with YouTube won't work,

but if they can take the thing that people come there to do, which is listen to audio, and make it a little better,

then that can work and maybe they can sell ads at a higher rate because there's a visual element to it.

What do you think consumer adoption will be like for news and political coverage on Spotify?

I mean there's already a huge competition as you mentioned coming from Apple and Google.

I think there's huge potential for it because if you think about someone, I mean I just think about it personally.

On my way to work, I tend to toggle between listening to podcasts, listening to music and listening to the radio.

And switching from the podcast app to Spotify for listening to music is kind of a hassle.

So if they can deliver podcast and news in a way where I can do that in the same app where I'm listening to music,

that's the behavior that it's replicable for a lot of different people.

But they do have a lot of competition and they do have to get the word out there

that if you want to listen to podcasts, which is a growing medium, you can do so on Spotify.

You don't have to do so using the Apple app, which is still the market leader

and accounts for fifty or sixty percent of all podcast listening.