Digital Service Platform Evolution: How Spotify Leveraged Boundary Resources to Become a Global Leader in Music Streaming

Abstract

Research on digital platform evolution is largely focused on how platform-owners leverage boundary resources to facilitate and control contributions from external developers to extend the functional diversity and scope of a digital device. However, our knowledge of the digital platforms that carve out their existence exclusively in the service layer of industry architectures, i.e. without proprietary device connections, is limited. The concept of digital service platforms directs attention to such platforms, the role of end-users as value co-creators, and devices as requisite, but not necessarily proprietary, distribution mechanisms for service. Based on a longitudinal case study of Spotify, this paper contributes by demonstrating that digital service platform evolution is characterized by specific architectural conditions that rationalize the use of boundary resources for extending scale rather than scope, and for resourcing and controlling not only developers but also end-users as a means to strategically adjust the evolutionary process.