Sharing Music Made Easier
Everyone can recognize the power of Facebook. Facebook gives us the power to connect with everyone in our lives that uses the service and share our thoughts, opinions, memories, interests, and activities. Recently, the streaming music service Spotify recognized this power as well. In late September, Spotify partnered with Facebook and effectively forced all of its users to have a Facebook account in order to join the site. This deal between Spotify and Facebook doubled the number of Spotify’s subscribers in less than a month, from 2 million to over 4 million. Spotify is a music streaming service that offers their services for free or extended services for a price. The connection with Facebook allows users to easily share the music they are listening to with their friends.
The deal with Facebook will allow Spotify to gain even more users through the basic networking concepts we have learned in class such as strong edges, strong triadic closure, and local bridges. All of these connections already exist in the Facebook network and forcing Spotify users to have Facebook accounts will use these connections to advertise their service. When a person posts their Spotify playlist in their Facebook profile, it can be viewed by all of their friends. Because of strong triadic closure and strong connections that exist amongst groups of friends on Facebook, friends may enjoy the same sort of music and be more inclined to join the site. One friend may also serve as a local bridge to a whole new group of friends who may enjoy the same music or just have an interest in joining a sight like Spotify. I know that personally I have seen many friends already using Spotify and have really heard about the site because of Facebook. The agreement with Facebook presents a vast opportunity for Spotify to advertise via the application of basic networking concepts.
The related article is:
http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/03/spotify-growth/