Spotify and Facebook Hook Up
http://blog.sfgate.com/culture/2011/09/23/as-facebook-and-spotify-hook-up-shawn-parker-parties-hard/?gta=commentlistpos#commentlistpos
http://www.thespacelab.tv/spaceLAB/2011/09September/MusicNews-099-Spotify-Facebook-Integration.htm
Spotify, the Swedish music streaming service, announced that new users would have to log into their accounts via Facebook Connect. Spotify is a music streaming service that allows users to stream music from a variety of record labels including Sony, Warner Music Group, EMI, Universal, etc. One of the major features that separates Spotify from other music streaming services, aside from its large collection of music, is its sharing capabilities. Users can easily send songs and play lists to friends via email or direct link through instant messaging. With Facebook integration, Spotify users share what they are listening to with their friends in real time by posting playlists/songs to their friends walls.
Listening to music is inherently a social activity; music is best enjoyed by listening to it with friends. By collaborating with Facebook, and other social media channels like twitter, Spotify taps into our natural tendency to experience music socially. Spotify users will be able to go on their Friends walls, and see what kind of music they are listening to. Spotify hopes that this sort of transparency with regards to people’s musical tastes will increase people’s exposure and access to new music.Furthermore, this will allow users to bond with friends over music, and possibly strengthen ties with Facebook friends who have similar tastes in music. The possiblities for socialization with regards to music sharing among facebook friends are boundless. It will be interesting to see if certain songs or music genre’s rise in popularity within a Facebook user’s network by sharing songs/playlists.
However, Spotify’s intentions for utilizing social networking platforms with their service is not only for the sake of improving the user’s music listening/sharing experience. Forcing users to use Facebook to log onto their Spotify accounts allows Spotify to leverage Facebook’s massive userbase to attract more customers. This harkens back to the concept of Strong Triadic Closure that we learned earlier in the year: if a FB user has many friends who use Spotify, then they will be more likely to create a Spotify account to join in on the music sharing. Conversely, if a person wants to create a Spotify account, but does not have a Facebook account he/she will have to create a Facebook account to use Spotify.