Product-led growth at Epidemic Sound, with Mike Rooseboom

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni Lindgren and Jasmin Yaya talk with Mike Rooseboom. He is a product manager on one of the growth teams at Epidemic Sound. The conversation is about how growth works when it lives inside product.

At Epidemic Sound, growth sits in the product function rather than marketing. Each team has an embedded data scientist. The teams combine quantitative and qualitative signals to find where users get stuck.

Many visitors confused music licensing with streaming. The team responded with licensing information pages, a subscription quiz, and benefit messaging tailored to different segments. Those changes improved signups and retention and cut customer service cases.

Work on website performance through Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) also correlated with better conversion.

An experiment to make music more discoverable through navigation killed conversion. It kept doing so across several iterations. Mike treats experiments as a way to learn.

The hosts and Mike discuss product-led growth as typically built on a freemium model that shows the product’s value. They note that some businesses still need sales or marketing, and that product and marketing collaborate closely on growth.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet for the conversation with Mike Rooseboom. To see how your own growth and retention compare to others in your model, use the benchmark tool: https://benchmark.scilla.studio