With Spotify reporting an increase of one million users of the service and MOG joyfully stating that interactions with their platform are up 246%, it’s easy to see why Facebook’s integration with streaming sites is being hailed by many as a successful merger. In fact, the synergy is so positive from this strategic move, Facebook is phasing out the site’s official music player; arguably to focus on existing or potential partnerships with other media and entertainment platforms.
However, is Facebook’s decision to effectively outsource music content to partner organisations the right move for the hundreds of millions of users using the service?
The debatable reasoning for Zuckerburg’s relationship with streaming sites such as Spotify can be seen to based almost entirely on the notion that music is social. In Spotify’s press release announcing the integration, the organisation reasons that “music is one of the most social things there is” and that in order to achieve the aim of drawing people away from the ‘deviant’ world of piracy, it was known that “the service would have to be inherently social”.
The nature of social media means that it is ridiculously simplistic for users to share every iota of detail feasible with their virtual friends and connections. Sites like Lamebook often showcase the best and worst of this encouraged culture of sharing our lives – I needed to know that people drink beer through sanitary products.
Spotify’s seamless integration with Facebook meant that users initially had no choice in deciding what to share and when. If you listened to your favourite Kylie and Jason playlist four times in a row, everyone knew about it. Alarmed users campaigned against this with immediacy, leading Spotify CEO Daniel Ek to introduce a private listening feature – but does it make enough of a difference?
This emphasis and assumption that music is social is a concept that for me, personally, doesn’t sit well. Since the marriage of social media giant to the next generation of music consumption, I’ve decided to wait for a future innovation. Since September, my Spotify account has remained dormant.
Maybe I’m just a grumpy cynic, but my opinion is that music is, in essence, a very personal thing. Music may be a medium that is shared throughout the world, but as a commodity. The way in which people listen to, analyse, interpret and ultimately judge music is subjective. Music in its very nature is ambiguous. It’s not uncommon for a group to go to a show together, but each person’s reaction to the performance is often very different, even if sharing the same values, ethics or tastes.
Aside from this, Spotify has also been the subject of frequent negative press about the financial return the artist receives from consumers streaming their music. Billboard reported in July 2011 that a song had to be streamed 64 times in order to accrue the same royalty rate it would see from one download.
Independent record labels have been arguably pivotal in bringing this imbalance in payments to public attention by withdrawing their catalogue from the streaming service; in fact, from all ‘all-you-can-eat’ streaming services. Projekt Records stated that the royalty payable for each stream was $0.00029 and a key point when taking the decision to withdraw from Spotify into consideration.
Most recently, and perhaps, most importantly, Coldplay took the decision not to offer their recent LP, Mylo Xyloto on any streaming site. Publicly, it has been stated that this is to steer consumers towards legal download sites and to own the album, rather than borrow it. Now, this reasoning is feasible, but potentially not to reiterate to fans that they should buy music, but to attempt to increase the royalties from the record they would receive. If just one fan downloads the album from a licensed online retailer instead of streaming it on Spotify, the band would receive 64 times the amount they would have from that fan. It’s not just a pro-legal download move, it’s shrewd business sense; so should Spotify’s customers reconsider their use of the service in order to support the musicians who create the songs they’re so fond of?
So herein lies the debate – are you a social advocate of your playlists? Do you care if your 463 Facebook friends know you play T’Pau every half hour to keep your spirits up? Do you subscribe to the camp of intimacy and enjoy your guilty pleasures alone? Or should we just abandon streaming altogether?
