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Learn how to design Spotify from scratch in a system design interview and the exact decision-making process senior engineers use, from capacity planning and database design to CDN strategy and scaling to 50M users.

This video is based on my guest article published in Neo Kim's System Design Newsletter. Read the full written version with diagrams here: https://newsletter.systemdesign.one/p/spotify-system-design

🔖 Sections
0:00 Introduction
1:10 1. Design Requirements
2:45 2. Capacity Planning
5:30 3. High-Level Architecture
7:28 4.1. System Read Workflow
9:11 4.2. System Write Workflow
11:35 5. API Design
16:10 6. Data Storage
20:42 7. Scalability
24:53 How to Design Systems From Scratch

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A comprehensive walkthrough of designing a music streaming platform like Spotify, covering requirements gathering, capacity planning, high-level architecture, API design, database schema, and scalability strategies. The guide demonstrates how to handle 500,000 users and 30 million songs initially, then scale to 50 million users and 200 million songs using techniques like CDN distribution, database sharding, read replicas, and regional blob storage. Emphasizes the importance of planning and architecture over immediate coding, highlighting the skill progression from mid-level to senior engineering roles.

Design Spotify Like a Senior Engineer (System Design Interview)