The Future of Social Music

by admin

Open up your Facebook page and do a search for “new Facebook.” Unsurprising to anyone who has been on the social networking site in the last five years, the results page is littered with links to groups dedicated to the hatred of whatever the most recent updates are. Groups like “I Hate the New Facebook Profile,” and “Can we find 500,000 who hates the new Facebook chat bar?” have memberships in the tens of thousands and at their height, even more.

In my opinion, none of this resistance matters. Aside from the most recent changes, no one can even remember what Facebook looked like before? If history has taught us anything when it comes to redesigns on the web, people will be resistant to the changes at first, then grow accustomed to them, then forget about life before those changes entirely.

While it’s still fresh in our minds, let’s review what the most recent “enhancements” were. The chat function was converted from a small tab in the bottom right hand corner to the entire right side of the screen resting beneath a second news feed updating in real time. Another change mad was the creation of twitter-like rss which one can subscribe to.

Now, as Facebook, as it is want to do, makes recommendations to its users.  Today my recommendations are a “person you may know” that I actually did go to high school with, and a popular rss feed belonging to Sean Parker, who is listed as a director at Spotify.

Hold on for a second…. Justin Timberlake?

More seriously, how did this happen? This guy is genius. Despite recent detractions, Spotify may be the first real competitor itunes has had. Personally, I find the program’s layout slightly more user friendly. Also if I actually paid for my music it would make a lot more economical sense to use Spotify.

Don’t just take my word for it, look at Parker. The man single handedly changed the way the world bought music a little more than ten years ago, and then helped reshape the way humans connect only a few years later. All signs point to this guy being a magnet for success on the internet so why should Spotify be any different.

Aside from the cost effectiveness of Spotify premium, my favorite part of the Swedish music service is the ability to sync your account with Facebook. Now I can make playlists for my friends and see what all the people I know are listening to. It’s just another way Parker has allowed us all to stay connected.

admin