4 ms·

This is a bizarrely short-sighted move. I have to wonder if Spotify has fallen victim to the siren's lure of "social". Perhaps they believe their future lies i

by cletus 15y ago

This is a bizarrely short-sighted move. I have to wonder if Spotify has fallen victim to the siren's lure of "social". Perhaps they believe their future lies in integration with the social graph and news feed. If so (IMHO), they are sorely mistaken. I believe some services already have you tweet or post that you've listened to a particular song. Zuckerberg seems to believe in "sharing and more sharing" [1] and automatic sharing. What would be the end result of this? On a particularly music-filled day I might send 100+ posts about songs I've listen to? Really? People will ever look at that? If it's part of the main news feed, it's spam. If it's not, nobody cares... except Facebook, who can mine such data. And maybe Spotify except... they already have access to this data (for their subscribers). It just makes no sense. Spotify is also late to the party (in the US at least). Any kind of restriction like this is incredibly risky. Other established players don't have this restriction. While you can argue that "normal people" don't care, who recommends such services to family and friends? It's us. And any player in the music space would be remiss to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the room, being Apple's iTunes. iCloud launches soon. Honestly I think it'll kill a few of these "upstarts". Also, I am less than convinced of the utility of mobile streaming. Bandwidth and connectivity are still issues. Increasing storage and all-you-can-eat subscription models seem like a far better solution (IMHO). [1]: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/zuckerbergs-unspoken-law-sharing-and-more-sharing/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/zuckerbergs-unspoke...

jmathai 15y ago
>> don't care, who recommends such services to family and friends? It's us. I completely agree with you but with Facebook they don't need us to tell family and friends.
prostoalex 15y ago
>> all-you-can-eat subscription models seem like a far better solution Far better than Spotify? You do realize that Spotify is an all-you-can-eat subscription model?
- techpeace 15y ago
  I believe he was referring to an unlimited sync-to-mobile, since he references unlimited storage in that sentence, as well. He's probably referring to a model like Rdio's.
  - prostoalex 15y ago
    I'm not a premium user but this page http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/premium/ http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/premium/ implies that it's part of the package "Add Spotify to your mobile phone and you’ll have immediate access to all that music - wherever you are, on or offline."
    - tuhin 15y ago
      Yes it is part of the premium model. Offline playlists and mobile sync of those as well as other playlists is too. Sad to see them using the Facebook in such a short sighted fashion. They had till now been my best music service, not sure anymore.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
suivix 15y ago
You can easily disable sending songs from Spotify to your Facebook wall. It's an option in Spotify. However, it's very useful to see what your friends are listening to inside of Spotify.
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  I disagree. In combination with the new "send a notification every time a friend inhales or exhales" model that Facebook put into place, it's extremely annoying to me. I don't want to be notified every time a friend listens to a new song on Spotify. My friends who have Spotify appear to concur -- every one of them disabled this "feature" as soon as they figured out what was happening.
  - suivix 15y ago
    I also disabled it because it's somewhat too spammy. They didn't get the wall-posting feature right. I like seeing what music friends are listening to within Spotify (without being notified).
- sthulbourn 15y ago
  Sure, but this should remain in Spotify, and not posted to your activity stream on Facebook.
codejoust 15y ago
I signed up without connecting my facebook account to spotify (or at least, giving it permissions), and there have been multiple nag screens when I start spotify now to connect to Facebook, some without a close button, where I would just deny the facebook connection request. I wonder how long they will let me skip the publishing connection to facebook.
- rhizome 15y ago
  If they're anything like Yahoo and their "new mail interface" initiative, you still have a couple years.
- russell_h 15y ago
  I've had the same problem. On the rare occasion that I can launch Spotify without it crashing it forces me through a bunch of modal dialogs begging me to connect my Facebook. Needless to say they won't be getting any more of my money.
tallanvor 15y ago
I generally don't want to link any of my accounts - especially when I'm paying for the service - to another system. I don't trust Facebook, Google, Twitter, or any other company to act as a centralized place for managing my identity. And given Zuckerberg's statements on the idea of having multiple identities online, I trust Facebook even less than the others.
tybris 15y ago
In the businesses that I've worked for we always took rational decisions based on the numbers, feedback from customers, our capacities, deals, etc. If you know those things, the vast majority of business decisions that companies take are really quite understandable. There are several reasons they might have taken this decision, one might be that it was part of a deal they made with Facebook. Spotify is probably aware that like most websites, they are a fad, and they need a way to survive. They've chosen to become a cleaner fish for a much larger animal that will provide them with food and protection, in return for a valuable service. It's neither a good, nor a bad business decision. It's a rational one.
- knowtheory 15y ago
  I disagree on your analysis of reasonability. Much of life does not progress linearly or even continuously. Business planning requires that business people make assumptions. Some of those assumptions are good, but most are probably not. The question is what one will do to cope when your assumptions go bad. Some failed assumptions you can shift with, others are fatal. Spotify has made the assumption that people won't flock away from facebrick. There are all sorts of events that can kill social networks, and they're betting against that happening.
  - tybris 15y ago
    Yep. They're betting on Facebook and that might cost them. Business is about taking risks and the job of the people at the top is to assess those risks, and they're usually in a better position to do so than anyone else.
    - joenathan 15y ago
      Just because it's their job doesn't mean they are any good at it.
r00fus 15y ago
Spotify seems like they're gunning to become the Zynga (meaning: first among equals) of social music.
mlinsey 15y ago
This isn't really about the main thrust of your argument, but I wanted to address this: What would be the end result of this? On a particularly music-filled day I might send 100+ posts about songs I've listen to? Really? People will ever look at that? If it's part of the main news feed, it's spam. If it's not, nobody cares... except Facebook, who can mine such data Perhaps the key mechanism for new Open Graph developers to present their content in the news feed (and thus take advantage of the distribution possibilities there) is through aggregations. The workflow for signing up to be an Open Graph Developer actually makes you create one. What this means is that while there will be hundreds of posts from your friends about listening to songs in the Ticker, the news feed will have something like "10 of your friends listened to Foster the People today!", which actually happened to me yesterday and was actually the first time I had heard about that band. One click allowed me to listen to them on Spotify. I ended up finding a new band I liked through my friends, and I used Spotify a little bit more. So there are use cases here that can work really well, with aggregation making the volume of content that comes from autosharing more manageable.
lazybabe 15y ago
Totally agreed with: While you can argue that "normal people" don't care, who recommends such services to family and friends? It's us. So, I am telling friends/family now that the folks at Spotify are a bunch of corporate tools. Whereas I used to tell them how incredibly awesome the Spotify service was. I am not a lab rat to be analyzed. I do not want corporate data miners pawing through every move I make. My god.

by cletus 15y ago

jmathai 15y ago

>> don't care, who recommends such services to family and friends? It's us. I completely agree with you but with Facebook they don't need us to tell family and friends.

prostoalex 15y ago

>> all-you-can-eat subscription models seem like a far better solution Far better than Spotify? You do realize that Spotify is an all-you-can-eat subscription model?

techpeace 15y ago
I believe he was referring to an unlimited sync-to-mobile, since he references unlimited storage in that sentence, as well. He's probably referring to a model like Rdio's.
- prostoalex 15y ago
  I'm not a premium user but this page http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/premium/ http://www.spotify.com/us/get-spotify/premium/ implies that it's part of the package "Add Spotify to your mobile phone and you’ll have immediate access to all that music - wherever you are, on or offline."
  - tuhin 15y ago
    Yes it is part of the premium model. Offline playlists and mobile sync of those as well as other playlists is too. Sad to see them using the Facebook in such a short sighted fashion. They had till now been my best music service, not sure anymore.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

suivix 15y ago

You can easily disable sending songs from Spotify to your Facebook wall. It's an option in Spotify. However, it's very useful to see what your friends are listening to inside of Spotify.

Turing_Machine 15y ago
I disagree. In combination with the new "send a notification every time a friend inhales or exhales" model that Facebook put into place, it's extremely annoying to me. I don't want to be notified every time a friend listens to a new song on Spotify. My friends who have Spotify appear to concur -- every one of them disabled this "feature" as soon as they figured out what was happening.
- suivix 15y ago
  I also disabled it because it's somewhat too spammy. They didn't get the wall-posting feature right. I like seeing what music friends are listening to within Spotify (without being notified).
sthulbourn 15y ago
Sure, but this should remain in Spotify, and not posted to your activity stream on Facebook.

codejoust 15y ago

I signed up without connecting my facebook account to spotify (or at least, giving it permissions), and there have been multiple nag screens when I start spotify now to connect to Facebook, some without a close button, where I would just deny the facebook connection request. I wonder how long they will let me skip the publishing connection to facebook.

rhizome 15y ago
If they're anything like Yahoo and their "new mail interface" initiative, you still have a couple years.
russell_h 15y ago
I've had the same problem. On the rare occasion that I can launch Spotify without it crashing it forces me through a bunch of modal dialogs begging me to connect my Facebook. Needless to say they won't be getting any more of my money.

tallanvor 15y ago

I generally don't want to link any of my accounts - especially when I'm paying for the service - to another system. I don't trust Facebook, Google, Twitter, or any other company to act as a centralized place for managing my identity. And given Zuckerberg's statements on the idea of having multiple identities online, I trust Facebook even less than the others.

tybris 15y ago

In the businesses that I've worked for we always took rational decisions based on the numbers, feedback from customers, our capacities, deals, etc. If you know those things, the vast majority of business decisions that companies take are really quite understandable. There are several reasons they might have taken this decision, one might be that it was part of a deal they made with Facebook. Spotify is probably aware that like most websites, they are a fad, and they need a way to survive. They've chosen to become a cleaner fish for a much larger animal that will provide them with food and protection, in return for a valuable service. It's neither a good, nor a bad business decision. It's a rational one.

knowtheory 15y ago
I disagree on your analysis of reasonability. Much of life does not progress linearly or even continuously. Business planning requires that business people make assumptions. Some of those assumptions are good, but most are probably not. The question is what one will do to cope when your assumptions go bad. Some failed assumptions you can shift with, others are fatal. Spotify has made the assumption that people won't flock away from facebrick. There are all sorts of events that can kill social networks, and they're betting against that happening.
- tybris 15y ago
  Yep. They're betting on Facebook and that might cost them. Business is about taking risks and the job of the people at the top is to assess those risks, and they're usually in a better position to do so than anyone else.
  - joenathan 15y ago
    Just because it's their job doesn't mean they are any good at it.

r00fus 15y ago

Spotify seems like they're gunning to become the Zynga (meaning: first among equals) of social music.

mlinsey 15y ago

This isn't really about the main thrust of your argument, but I wanted to address this: What would be the end result of this? On a particularly music-filled day I might send 100+ posts about songs I've listen to? Really? People will ever look at that? If it's part of the main news feed, it's spam. If it's not, nobody cares... except Facebook, who can mine such data Perhaps the key mechanism for new Open Graph developers to present their content in the news feed (and thus take advantage of the distribution possibilities there) is through aggregations. The workflow for signing up to be an Open Graph Developer actually makes you create one. What this means is that while there will be hundreds of posts from your friends about listening to songs in the Ticker, the news feed will have something like "10 of your friends listened to Foster the People today!", which actually happened to me yesterday and was actually the first time I had heard about that band. One click allowed me to listen to them on Spotify. I ended up finding a new band I liked through my friends, and I used Spotify a little bit more. So there are use cases here that can work really well, with aggregation making the volume of content that comes from autosharing more manageable.

lazybabe 15y ago

Totally agreed with: While you can argue that "normal people" don't care, who recommends such services to family and friends? It's us. So, I am telling friends/family now that the folks at Spotify are a bunch of corporate tools. Whereas I used to tell them how incredibly awesome the Spotify service was. I am not a lab rat to be analyzed. I do not want corporate data miners pawing through every move I make. My god.