Please give us “Stories”: an open letter to Spotify!
Let us see the last 24 hours of play history from our friends.
My proposal: “Spotify Stories”
The answer to a truly social music experience has already been figured out — we can thank Evan Spiegel and his team at Snapchat for the greatest social UI (User Interface) discovery of our time: “Stories”; a true snapshot into the lives of those we want to follow.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, broke the ice for all other companies earlier this year when he rolled out “Stories” across all Facebook mobile products.
The first chapter that made sense was to release products that people were familiar with…
-Mark Zuckerberg (response to press regarding Facebook copying Snapchat)
This commodity of a UI can be used in many different applications, and in my opinion, Spotify is in the best position to finally give their users a valuable social experience around music by implementing “Stories”.
It’s not about “copying”, but rather about giving users a feature they’re already familiar with (and love).
Social music and why now is the right time
Diversity of music has never been more easily accessible. With this, the hunger to discover new music is in need more then ever.
SIDE NOTE: when I say new music, I don’t just mean “new releases” — I’m referring to those hidden gems and songs from our past that we simply forgot existed.
Critical mass is another major factor. With over 100 million users across 60 different countries, I believe that Spotify, of all music streaming apps, is best suited to leverage their user base to deliver them a social experience that can be meaningful and diverse.
The Secret Sauce ?
Automatically post what users are listening to, to the people that have chosen to follow them.
Here’s how it would look & work:
1. “Stories”
Take the simple UI of “Stories” and bring it front & center into the main dashboard of the Spotify UI. Allow users to follow their friends and/or influencers. Every time a song is listened to by the users you follow their “Story” is updated.
When you tap on a user’s “Story” you’re taken to a playlist of their “Last 24 hours of play”. This gives you a snapshot into what a user has listened to, displaying songs in reverse chronological order. By hitting shuffle, or choosing songs individually that interest you, you can instantly enter their world and begin discovering.
SIDE NOTE: if a user listens to the same song multiple times, it will only show once based on the most recent play.
Oh, and don’t worry about privacy. If you don’t want your plays broadcasted, you can simply turn off the “Auto Broadcast” feature. When enabled, only songs you’ve listened to for >25 seconds will appear in your “Story”.
Also, if disabled, you can always add songs manually to your “Story”.
2. Message Center
The message center is the hub for messaging within the Spotify platform. Like “Stories”, Spotify should bring the messaging hub front and center in the central dashboard.
Anytime a song is shared, or a message is received, the message box will turn green.
The message center is a simple dashboard where you can see messages that have been sent or notifications received from Spotify.
You can choose to begin messaging someone by tapping on the message box in the top left corner or you can tap on your unopened messages to see what was sent to you.
My final thoughts
It has increasingly been said in the media that as Spotify gets ready for their IPO, they’re looking for more leverage in negotiating better licensing deals with more margin from the major music labels.
“Stories” is an opportunity for Spotify to solidify its leadership in music discovery and do what so many predecessors have failed to accomplish: merge social and music under one roof in a meaningful way.
If Spotify can succeed at building a true social experience on top of their music streaming platform, they will, in my opinion, have the strongest moat and therefore the most leverage when negotiating their music licensing.
Business aside though, this really is just a kick ass feature, so please if somebody at Spotify reads this, make it happen for me & for us, your users.
If you want this to be a reality as bad as I do, please hit the ❤ button and let’s make sure Spotify hears us!
(note: I’m aware that this feature exists in a very unutilized manner on the Spotify Desktop app)
