Is Spotify Testing Social Song Exploration? | TechTree.com

Is Spotify Testing Social Song Exploration?

A reverse engineering expert has found indications to this effect where users can get inspired by what friends are playing

 

This is one sharing that every music lover would love. For, it would enable one to check out the playlists of friends and get inspired into playing the same via Spotify. Imaginatively christened Tastebuds, the app would allow users to explore the music taste profiles of their friends and is reportedly being tested on the web app currently.

The first to discover the new app that could significantly change the way people listened to music as well as the business model of Spotify, was reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong who shared her discovery via this tweet.

Of course, not much is known about the feature or what it would mean for the company and the users. Spotify had created a dummy landing page which seems to have been shut-down following Manchun Wong’s revelation or it was never active for users attempting to access it from IP addresses outside of the United States.

A report published on the Verge.com says the landing page had the words, “Now you can discover music through friends whose taste you trust”. The report suggests a pen icon on the page let users search through people they follow, view what songs they’ve been playing the most and add songs to their library from there.

This is an intriguing development, given the fact that Spotify didn’t have any features that allowed interacting with friends on the mobile app after it had done away with the Inbox feature in 2017 while restricting interaction via the Friend Activity ticker only to the desktop version. Why so? Quite simply because restricting social features allow it to force users to listen to its own playlists.

The obvious reason for creating this monopoly over playlists being Spotify’s ability to influence artists and music labels, especially when it came to the payouts as artists were under constant threat of being left-out from the playlists in case they didn’t behave. 

Says Dami Lee writing for TechCrunch.com: “That strategy seems to have paid off with Spotify improving its licensing deals and becoming a critical promotional partner for the labels, paving the way to its IPO. Spotify’s shares sit around $152, up from its direct listing price of $132, though down from its first-day pop that saw it rise to $165.”

So, why would Spotify want to change the process that brought them to the top of the pack? By allowing users to create playlists based on their musical taste buds matches, the company was giving up control on the very piece that allowed them to have a handle on the playlists.

In the past, Spotify did make half-hearted attempts to integrate social features but never brought them out into the market. There was a Friends Weekly playlist feature that came and vanished last year while in the Spring of this year Manchun Wong had reported a shared-queue for social listening that allowed the user and their friends to play the same playlist.

Whatever be the case, it appears as though Spotify is making serious attempts now to socialize music as this could result in users remaining hooked to the app for longer hours that would allow the company to target better ads and possibly get them to retain their subscriptions for longer than what is the rate at this moment in time.

Maybe, social sharing and listening is what would differentiate Spotify from competition in the form of Apple Music and YouTube that offers similar playlists but keeps users away from the fun of listening to music with friends and experimenting with their choices. 


TAGS: Spotify, Tastebuds, Music Sharing, Jane Manchun Wong, Apple Music

 
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