Inside the Playbook: Mike Biggane on Why Playlists Don’t Break Artists Anymore

The Manager's Playbook · Jan 16, 2026 · 28m

Before playlists became leverage, before algorithms dictated discovery, before release strategy turned into guesswork, there was New Music Friday.

In this clip from The Manager’s Playbook, Mike Biggane, creator of New Music Friday and former Global Head of Curation at Spotify, breaks down how one early idea helped reshape music discovery and quietly changed the entire music industry.

Mike walks through Spotify’s formative years, when human curation and algorithmic programming were still in tension, and how acquisitions like The Echo Nest accelerated the shift toward personalization at scale…