Why Spotify should become more social

Today we have so many apps that stream music, book concert events, or music news sites and even a bunch of apps to actually create music… But there aren’t enough apps out there to really support engaging with your friends in a conversation about music.

There are so many enthusiastic music souls out there posting YouTube music videos on Facebook (only to get two likes), creating Slack channels in their companies for sharing playlists (and annoying co-workers), curating mixtapes and sending group emails to friends… Sad social stories from desperate music lovers that did not yet comprehend that technology already moved towards the direction of personalization.

Meaning that these users are also left without a proper channel and a fitting target audience to share their music- nobody out there, other than your best friend, randomly cares about a rare Grateful Dead video you just found at 2 O’clock in the morning.

Why talking about music can only happen on a streaming platform?

Music is eternal! Usually… Good music… And you can hear those same albums and songs forever. That’s also why (usually) there is no urgency to really talk about what you’re listening to right now, as opposed to watching a tv series or film that are most relevant when they come out or air. Though true, new album releases or singles can have a viral effect as well, but most of the time people just listen to what they like or discover.

Sharing music becomes most relevant when you are actually listening to it! It’s a spontaneous reaction. You hear something. It’s great. And you want to shout out to everyone you know to start listening to that now!

And that’s where streaming platforms come into place. Since you’re already engaging in an online music experience, it’s natural that the interaction should happen at the very same place.

Why is Spotify the best candidate to start these conversations?

The simple answer- A lot of people already use Spotify. It’s easy to use. It includes almost all the music in the world. It’s personalized on many levels. It’s already somewhat social.

In 2011 Spotify announced their-then-revolutionary Facebook integration into the activity stream. When it came out it was a one of a kind sharing experience of real time music streaming, allowing you to see what your friends are listening to. It was super cool… At least until people started switching it off.

The reason why people switched it off is because it was too annoying, out of context, and shared with too many people. It was not the right channel for such a heavy sharing functionality, but it was a great marketing tool for Spotify and I believe, had a massive impact on their growth.

Regardless, Spotify still have a lot of other social capabilities, which are more relevant to today’s user. From embedding and sharing possibilities, to integrations with numerous platforms, an open API and more. But there is a key social feature in Spotify which can be used already in a much more functional way.

Spotify have their own activity stream inside their app, which is in my opinion a much more accurate tool than the described popular Facebook updates. Enabling you to follow real time streaming of only those friends/ people of which you share a specific interest in their musical taste and you choose to see what they are listening to and share your stream as well.

This feature obviously can become much more than an informative feed, it lacks the interaction between users. By simply adding reactions (similar to what Facebook introduced) you could easily give a quick response to what your connections are hearing.

Just imagine giving a shocked emoji face to your best bro, who you catch listening to the latest Justin Bieber album. I’m sure everyone of us has at one point or another listened to something they weren’t exactly proud of… And that is part of what makes music fun. And it’s not going to really embarrass anyone. If anything it will give a playful aspect and possibly engage people in discovering and being more self aware about their music.

Another option is to add personal conversation threads to streaming updates from your connections. Giving reasons for users to actually message other users. Oddly enough there already is a message inbox in the Spotify app, but for most people it’s just empty.

Lastly, each user on Spotify has a profile and can create personal playlists. These have got to improve. Users hardly visit other profiles, and some are too lazy to create their own playlists, mostly because it’s so difficult for other people to discover your playlists and unless you share them like a mad man, these playlists will hardly get any followers. I would also vote for highlighting songs played from a personal playlist, which might have a higher value to friends with similar interests.

To sum it up, people need a place to share and react to great songs without regretting it a few hours later and the best place to do that is on a platform that already encourages social discovery in real time. All it needs is a small push and more interactions. Conveniently all the features are there, you just need to connect the dots and let the users do all the work.

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Yoav Yeger is currently a Senior Product Owner based in Berlin, working for Erasys GmbH. Feel free to connect on LinkedIn.