John Stein

Spotify has promoted longtime employee John Stein to head of North America, editorial, the company announced on Tuesday (Dec. 20). He reports directly to Sulinna Ong, global head of editorial at the streaming service.
Stein joined Spotify in 2013 after the streamer acquired his previous company, the playlisting firm Tunigo. Prior to his promotion, he worked as lead of music culture and editorial, overseeing strategy and curation for Spotify’s U.S. editorial playlists and becoming a strong voice on the company’s editorial team and the music team as a whole.

In 2018, Stein co-created Spotify’s successful genre-less playlist Pollen, which today boasts more than 1.3 million likes on the platform. Due to Pollen’s phenomenal success, the streaming service began leaning into the concept of playlist-as-brand and eventually introduced other similar playlists, including the pop-leaning Lorem (more than 969,000 likes) and the Nordic region-focused Oyster (more than 102,000 likes).

With his promotion, Stein has three new direct reports on his team. They include Rachel Whitney, head of Nashville, editorial; Antonio Vasquez, head of U.S. Latin, editorial; and Ronny Ho, head of dance and electronic development, editorial. The trio joins Stein’s existing team, which includes Ehis Osifo, editor, editorial partnerships; Jess Huddleston, editorial lead, Canada with her direct reports Marc Matar, junior editor, Canada and Karla Moy, editor, Canada; Talia Kraines, senior editor, United States with her direct reports Fredrik Fencke, editor and Lulu Largent, junior editor; and Elizabeth Szabo, senior editor, along with her direct report William Nellis, junior editor, North America.