We are now a few weeks into the great Facebook/Spotify experiment. When I first heard about the open graph idea from Facebook, I cringed. The world does not need to know when I listen to washed up 80s pop music and watch romantic comedies. Such media cocktails are best consumed alone, in the privacy of your home, in a locked bedroom, under the covers with the lights out.
There is a lot of music out there not made for consumption within visibility of my 600 closest friends on Facebook. There are ways around this dillema, however. Spotify now has a private listening feature, legitimizing their presence independent of Facebook. Now, they need to free the service up so that you can sign up without the Facebook account. The social aspect is nice, but it should not completely define this program.
The privacy feature makes it a lot easier for people to take advantage of their wide search feature. It makes them more likely to sample an album they may be 50-50 on. This will only increase the usability of Spotify. Now you can enjoy the music of the Village People as well as Led Zeppelin.
There’s also a powerful search feature that allows you access to just about anything you want. This can be reason enough to stay holed up in your house for long periods of time doing nothing more than listening to music. There’s no reason to ever buy an album without listening to it first.
If you can’t get enough of an album you don’t want to share, you can also listen to it on iTunes, or whatever music software you had on your computer before social sharing. This is another easy way to dodge the watchful eye of the Facebook posse.
I have to say I already made a few additions to my music collection thanks completely to this new way to share music. They were albums I noticed on friends’ playlists that I had to have for myself. I generally had a pretty good idea of the friends that I share a similar music taste with. That gives me a good idea of whose Spotify activity to monitor.
Spotify means a better soundtrack for being plugged in at the computer, and that’s a good thing. Facebook’s open graph idea will bring you ideas you may not have considered for any media consumption. In the end, this is a good thing. As long as there are methods available for taking evasive action, enjoy finding what your friends want you to see. Have you discovered any new music this way? If not, why not?
I saw your LinkedIn question, but I figured that I'd answer here (I'm an "answer at the original source" kind of person).
ReplyDeleteFor me, the limitations on Spotify's free service make it a non-starter for me. While I cannot completely control the music that last.fm serves up to me, I can listen to last.fm for hundreds upon hundreds of hours every month if I so desire. I can't do that with Spotify, and until recently I couldn't do that with Pandora.
So while Spotify is fun to play with, it's not going to become a major music listening tool for me.
Agreed. There are some limitations, and it's not perfect. I think it's a great way to sample an album before you buy it though. If you're feeling a little unsure about it, you can set it to private listening, so that the world doesn't know what you're doing. It's also a great way to tell your Facebook friends you like something, by playing it publicly.
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