NextLeap AI PM Fellowship case study

Spotify Journeys: From Streaming to Skill-Building

Turning passive listening into a daily learning habit

Product Strategy | AI & No-Code MVP

Prototype walkthrough

Role: Product Manager (self-directed)
Timeline: ~3 weeks
Context: NextLeap AI PM Fellowship case study
Tools: Lovable, Airtable, Zapier, GPT

60%
target: set a goal in week one
40%
target: finish a full track
25–30%
target: come back on day 7
40%
target: say "I'm learning"

The problem

Millions of 18 to 30 year olds already learn through audio on Spotify, but nothing gives that listening structure or progress, so learning intent leaks to YouTube and Duolingo.

What I did

Framed the problem, cut scope to one testable loop, and built a zero-engineering MVP of Goal-Based Audio Journeys in 3 weeks with AI and no-code tools.

The result

A working prototype and a metric tree for a 1,000-user pilot. The numbers above are projected pilot targets, not shipped results.

The brief

Spotify India's leadership wanted to test whether audio could become a personal-growth tool, not just entertainment.

01
Ship an MVP
A skill-building feature, in 3 weeks
02
No India dev bandwidth
A PM, a designer and an analyst, using AI builders and no-code tools
03
Pilot to 1,000 users
Students and early-career users

Wide reach, shallow engagement

Every day, over 100 million Indians open Spotify and stream for hours. But the experience is passive. Nothing turns that listening into something that feels like progress, and nothing makes leaving cost anything.

On price and catalogue alone, Spotify is one tap away from JioSaavn, Gaana or Wynk. Retention looks healthy. It isn't defensible.

No structure on what people already stream
No sense of progress; sessions blur together
Switching cost to a rival is near zero
Learning intent leaks to YouTube and Duolingo
Retention is high but undifferentiated

Who we're solving for

18 to 30 year olds who already use audio to learn, like streaming English music for vocabulary, then leave for YouTube and Duolingo the moment they want structure.

Two users: Aarav, 22, wants to sound natural in English but dropped Duolingo in a week; Riya, 26, wants her focus playlists to count toward speaking up in meetings

Closing the loop

Today: opens Spotify, plays a playlist, listens passively, closes the app, leaves for YouTube — Today: listening goes nowhere

With Journeys: opens on day 4, plays the track, marks it complete, streak grows, nudge tomorrow — With Journeys: the loop closes

The whole design goal: close the loop before the user leaves for YouTube or Duolingo.

Why now, and why it wins

Behaviour proven
Audio-first learning already has mainstream adoption.
Platform ready
Spotify already owns daily audio consumption.
Window closing
Learning intent is moving to competing platforms.

For users

Build consistent 10 to 15 minute learning habits.

Learn without leaving an app they already use daily.

Feel progress through streaks and structured goals.

For the business

Differentiate beyond catalogue and price.

Lift retention through accumulated progress.

Build an intent graph for future personalisation, advertising and premium learning.

Compounding flywheel: structured content, daily listening habit, higher switching cost, defensible retention, richer intent data — High retention isn't the same as defensible retention. Journeys make leaving feel like abandoning progress.

What went in, and what I cut

With 3 weeks and no engineering, I scored every feature on value versus effort and kept one rule: ship only what tests the core hypothesis, that a structured audio track feels like skill-building and users notice their progress.

Value vs effort matrix: ship goal selection, structured track, progress tracker, light nudges; defer AI-personalised paths, quizzes, creator marketplace, certificates

Deferred

Quizzes: proxy learning with a survey first.

Certificates and badges: retention amplifier, premature.

AI-personalised paths: with 3 goals and 3 weeks, curation beats a model.

Creator marketplace: a separate monetisation product.

Ships

Structured daily track: 4 songs, 1 podcast clip and a daily focus line.

Goal selection: 3 goals, with English vocabulary as the hero.

Progress tracker: streak and completion %.

Light nudges.

The daily loop

Four screens carry the loop: goal picker, daily track, mark complete, progress.

Spotify home with a Your Journeys card: keep your streak alive

Journey playlist: Learn better English, today's focus, songs with words to know, mark day complete

Open the live prototype ↗

Measuring learning, not listening

The trap: minutes streamed is the entertainment metric this feature is trying to move past, so it can't be the success measure. The metric tree is deliberately narrow, and every target is a projection for the 1,000-user pilot.

01
North star
Weekly structured-track completions per active user.
02
ActivationTarget 60%
% who set a goal.
03
Core loopTarget 40%
% completing a full track.
04
Habit
% reaching a 7-day streak.
05
RetentionTarget 25–30%
Day-7 return to the journey, not just an app open.
06
Perceived learningTarget 40% yes
In-app survey "do you feel you're learning?" plus willingness to pay.
07
Counter metric
Does core listening time drop, or do users get confused?

What I'd build next

Quizzes, to validate learning beyond self-report.
Real personalisation, once there's completion data to train on.
Badges, to reinforce streaks and social proof.
Then the creator marketplace, the supply-side bet.

NextLeap AI PM Fellowship case study · 2026