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Spotify, Social Networks, and Music Discovery

Founded in Sweden in 2006, Spotify emerged as a leader in the music streaming service industry and has remained so amidst a growing war between alternate services such as Pandora, Apple Music and Tidal. As Jessica Edmondson claims in her article, “How Social Media and Streaming Have Influenced the Music Industry”, music streaming in general has transformed how music is listened to; physically downloading and syncing songs with mobile devices is steadily becoming less and less relevant along with listening to the radio. Services like Spotify not only promote wider (and free in the case of Spotify) access to millions of songs but also foster an environment to discover new music through social networks.

Allowing users to link their Facebook profiles to their Spotify account, Spotify creates its own form of social network; users are able to follow their friends and their favorite artists which enables them to see friends’ playlists as well as the music they are currently listening to. In the case of the artists, users receive notifications when new music is released and are also able to view Related Artists, a discovery feature Spotify offers which, according to Paul Ford in his article, “Other People’s Playlists: Spotify’s Secret Social Network”, functions by tracking what everyone listens to. If many people listen to the same two artists, they’re marked as related.

In relation to the course, Spotify’s social network functions as a form of triadic closure. Assuming that users have friends with similar music tastes to their own, users will be much more willing to listen to new music that their friends listen to as their similar preference creates a level of trust. Additionally, when users follow new people in different friend groups, it is likely that the music shared between the user and their original friend groups differs from the new person’s preferred musical taste. A song recommendation from this person would serve as a bridge or a local bridge to a discovery of a whole different genre.

The Related Artists feature also functions similarly to the Strong Triadic Closure Property in that artists are deemed related if many people listen to both of them, creating a strong tie. When users visit a new artist’s page and sees two other of their favorite artists listed as Related Artists, representing two strong ties to the artist, they will most likely listen to and like the artist, allowing them to discover similar but new music.

 

Sources:

Other People’s Playlists: Spotify’s Secret Social Network

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121794/other-peoples-playlists-spotifys-secret-social-network

How Social Media and Streaming Have Influenced the Music Industry

http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/12/02/how-social-media-and-streaming-have-influenced-the-music-industry/

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