Food for Thought Regarding Spotify

The beauty of Spotify in comparison to iTunes is that of paying a small library membership fee and having access to millions of books vs. buying each book separately. This is obviously advantageous when you take into account how many songs are being released daily. This is why Spotify will probably be the number one music service in due time and hopefully eradicate piracy. Now here are some elements Spotify needs to implant:

Facebook – Spotify relationship:

Suggestions/Ideas:

• The Spotify updates on Facebook seems to be a nuisance – not because people don’t want to share their music, but because of how it is presented. This problem may be solved by integrating Spotify updates into a side tab on the user’s profile (possibly a y/n settings option), so that it will show the music being listened to as a list (ex. Friend’s list). This could even be used to list the user’s playlists and such.

• Whether the latter suggestion is used or not, another idea is to update what playlist is being listened to – rather than just only what song – as this will obviously promote Spotify playlists and therefore the use of Spotify rather than just promote the mere song.

• Why stick to mere music? I am not sure whether Spotify has started to or not, but if the service also begins to include sermons, seminars, speeches, would it not be attracting another demographic? Spotify can evolve into an audio service rather than just a music service (although it would and should probably keep the music image), where the user is enlightened in more than a musical way. Like I said, a mere suggestion as I am not aware of the copyright elements of that issue.

• The current amount of music you can sync onto your phone is 3333 tracks with a premium subscription; this may not be a sufficient amount for some audiophiles. So how about an add-on fee (or a completely different subscription plan) for a larger track amount available to be synchronized onto the user’s phone?

• As silly as it sounds, for the repeat button, a repeat one option would be helpful (seeing that currently the only way a user can listen to just one song is by making a new playlist just for that one song, meaning that once the user is bored of it, he’ll have to delete the playlist).

• Tabs: yes, somewhat like a browser, but so that it is possible for the user to search for more than one artist or song at a time. Likewise, for a playlist folder, aside from of showing all of the songs in the playlist folder once you open it, having the playlists within the folder as tabs.

• This is for the years to come, but how about car compatibility? Think XM radio, the user would have access to Spotify Radio in the car and if possible, is able to listen to the playlists that he made or has subscribed to on Spotify.

Issues:

• Deactivating the Facebook account connected to the Spotify subscription signs the user out of Spotify. Not only this, but the user cannot sign back into Spotify unless he reactivates his Facebook account. Being a service that is paid for, Spotify should not be unusable after the user deactivates his Facebook account; this is an issue of severe dependence on Facebook by Spotify.

• Spotify needs to exist independently in regard to Facebook. If for some reason, someone wants to delete his FB account, his Spotify subscription will obvious deter him from doing so, but if he still chooses to delete it, either the user will leave Spotify or create a blank FB account – one made just to use Spotify. Users’ Spotify subscriptions need to be usable no matter what happens to the FB account. Signing up with FB is fine (even if you force it), but relying on the FB account is not.

• In regard to Spotify: I am not exactly sure whether anything can be done about this (although iTunes has it figured out), but when you move local tracks to another folder, it shows up as missing and you have to reimport it manually; this is obviously troublesome for someone who already has some music on his computer.