Case Study: Spotify achieves emotion-based music discovery with Element Human

Spotify - Customer Case Study

The music streaming service Spotify partnered with the vendor Element Human to explore a new method for music discovery. Spotify's existing system relied on user data analysis, and they sought to understand if emotional engagement, measured via facial coding, could reveal listener preferences beyond what users explicitly state.

Element Human implemented a solution where participants watched a music video mashup while their emotions were coded. This generated personalized reports that compared emotional engagement with stated genre preferences. The project yielded 97 emotional discoveries and identified 87 potential new listeners, achieving a 48% lead conversion rate. This allowed Spotify to begin developing a groundbreaking, emotion-based music recommendation platform.

Spotify