NerdOut@Spotify

About NerdOut@Spotify

NerdOut@Spotify is a technology podcast produced by the nerds at Spotify and made for the nerd inside all of us. Hear from Spotify engineers about challenging tech problems and get a firsthand look into what we're doing, what we're building, and what we’re nerding out about at Spotify every day.

Publisher

Spotify R&D

Category

technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Feb 2022

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

40 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   37: Dev Mode: Dividing Work & Delivering Context

   Welcome to Dev Mode, where we show you how Spotify builds, with live demos on our own repos and PRs. No slides. Just the workflows we actually use on real Spotify problems, plus an honest conversation about what’s working and what still trips us up. In this episode, Dave Zolotusky is joined by Jonatan Dahl (JD), Staff Engineer, and Stuart Clark, Sr. Developer Advocate, to tackle a problem you’ve probably run into: you hand an AI agent a big task, and somewhere along the way it runs out of context, starts going in circles, and forgets what it was doing. So what if you stopped asking one agent to do everything? JD shows us how he splits one big piece of work across a bunch of agent sessions in ⁠Xirp⁠, our mission control for AI coding agents, and keeps tabs on every one of them as it moves from in progress to merged. Then we get into the part that really makes or breaks it: context. What does each agent actually need to know, what should you leave out, and what happens when you get it wrong? (Spoiler: things go off the rails pretty fast.) Along the way, Dave, Stuart, and JD tackle the questions we all have: When is one session enough? When does splitting work into smaller PRs make life easier for the people reviewing it? Which habits have actually stuck around at Spotify, versus the ones we quietly dropped? If you’ve ever watched an agent lose the plot halfway through a task, this one’s for you. Give Xirp a spin 👉 xirp.spotify.com (xirp.spotify.com)

2. 

   11 Jun 2026

   36: How the BBC Experiments at Scale: Learning Since 1922

   How do you build a culture of experimentation inside a 100-year-old institution? This episode is part of our special miniseries on product experimentation where we go beyond A/B testing basics to explore how teams build experimentation culture, move faster with data, and make smarter product bets in practice. Hosting this series are two of Spotify’s finest experimentation nerds: Luke Frake, group product manager for subscriptions, and Mårten Schultzberg, staff data scientist for Spotify’s experimentation platform, Confidence (confidence.spotify.com (https://confidence.spotify.com/)). In this second episode, we explore what it’s like when your streaming content provider is also a national institution. As the UK's national public service broadcaster, the BBC produces everything from news and sports to drama and education across major digital services used by millions every day. With products spanning iPlayer, Sounds, and over a dozen mobile apps, experimentation at the BBC means optimizing for vastly different formats, platforms, and audience needs — all without the subscription metrics that most digital companies rely on. Luke Frake and Mårten Schultzberg are joined by Divya Isaiah, Head of Experimentation at the BBC. She walks us through how the BBC runs a decentralized experimentation model supported by a center of excellence that acts as an in-house consultancy, filling gaps across teams at different levels of maturity. The conversation also explores how Divya approaches experimentation velocity (both the number of experiments and the number of teams experimenting), why the BBC's editorial teams are now getting into A/B testing, and where AI is showing up in experimentation tools versus where it's actually adding value. Hear what happens when a venerable institution like the BBC embraces a culture of experimentation in order to inform smarter product decisions. Learn more about how we experiment at Spotify: Dive deep into experimentation nerdiness on the Confidence blog (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog) 👉 Here’s a good post to start with: “Beyond Winning: Spotify's Experiments with Learning Framework (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog/experiments-with-learning)” Get started with Spotify’s product experimentation platform: Confidence (https://confidence.spotify.com/) Become an experimentation expert with our free experimentation bootcamp (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog/confidence-bootcamp) Follow the Confidence team on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/confidence-by-spotify) for product updates, event announcements, experimentation insights, and more 👋 Follow Luke on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-frake/) 👋 Follow Mårten on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/m%C3%A5rtenschultzberg/) Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com (https://engineering.atspotify.com/) You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng (https://twitter.com/SpotifyEng), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/spotify-r&d), and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHBvqSwbfAf5Vx1jrwkG43Q)!

3. 

   28 May 2026

   35: How Huel Experiments at Scale: Beyond A/B Tests

   What happens when a seven-person data team restarts an experimentation program from scratch — and gets the whole company running experiments within months? Welcome to the first episode of our special miniseries on product experimentation. Now that you can build almost anything faster than ever, what matters most is learning what to build, what to keep, and what to put back on the shelf. Over the next few episodes, we go beyond A/B testing basics to explore how teams build experimentation culture, move faster with data, and make smarter product bets in practice. Hosting this series are two of Spotify’s finest experimentation nerds: Luke Frake, group product manager for subscriptions, and Mårten Schultzberg, staff data scientist for Spotify’s experimentation platform, Confidence (confidence.spotify.com (https://confidence.spotify.com/)). In this first episode, we head outside Spotify to explore how Huel, the UK-founded nutrition brand, approaches experimentation across a rapidly growing omnichannel business. Unlike pure digital products, Huel sells direct-to-consumer on its own site, on Amazon, in supermarkets, and on TikTok Shop — which means you can't always rely on a classical A/B test to measure what's working. Luke and Mårten are joined by Bhav Patel, Data Director at Huel, to dig into how his lean team rebuilt Huel's experimentation culture from the ground up. They discuss why Huel lets experiment ideas come from anyone and how a founder-led, data-first culture drove strong adoption of experimentation across the entire org. You'll hear how Bhav's team tackles the unique challenges of omnichannel measurement: building synthetic control groups to evaluate TV ads, running geo-lift tests, and stitching together fragmented user data across platforms, plus how AI is fast-tracking experiment design and more. If you care about building better products with data, check it out — and stay tuned for more episodes in this series dropping soon. Learn more about how we experiment at Spotify: Dive deep into experimentation nerdiness on the Confidence blog (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog) 👉 Here’s a good post to start with: “Beyond Winning: Spotify's Experiments with Learning Framework (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog/experiments-with-learning)” Get started with Spotify’s product experimentation platform: Confidence (https://confidence.spotify.com/) Become an experimentation expert with our free experimentation bootcamp (https://confidence.spotify.com/blog/confidence-bootcamp) Follow the Confidence team on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/confidence-by-spotify) for product updates, event announcements, experimentation insights, and more 👋 Follow Luke on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/luke-frake/) 👋 Follow Mårten on Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/m%C3%A5rtenschultzberg/) Read what else we’re nerding out about on the Spotify Engineering Blog: engineering.atspotify.com (https://engineering.atspotify.com/) You should follow us on Twitter @SpotifyEng (https://twitter.com/SpotifyEng), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/spotify-r&d), and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHBvqSwbfAf5Vx1jrwkG43Q)!

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

2,467,696

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

4.9 / 5

173 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 58 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

42

Social presence

0

YouTube

93

Engagement

92

Contact NerdOut@Spotify

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.