Social Media and Networking in Music Streaming Services (Bandcamp/Spotify): Introduction

With the growth in popularity in music streaming services like Spotify for example, social media and networking elements have been implemented overtime into these services.

But before I go into further details, I'd like to give you a brief introduction on what Spotify is.

What is Spotify?

Spotify is a music streaming service that was officially launched in 7th October, 2008 developed in Stockholm, Sweden.

Spotify's old logo (2008-2012)

Spotify was initially only available via invite only to  in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the UK, France and Spain when it went live in 2008.

But slowly, it expanded, being made available to the public. Launching in the UK in February 2009, Netherlands in May 2010, the US in July 2011 and as the years went by, Spotify slowly was made available throughout the rest of the world (April 2013 in Singapore)

As part of new media, I'm here to show you my understandings on how Spotify has merged music with social media over the years.

Want to share a song you're listening to? Spotify has given users the ability to share a song to other social media platforms to show the user's friends what he or she is listening to.

Okay, so how is this relevant to social media?

In my next post, I will be covering more on the topic on how Spotify has its relevance towards the topic of my assignment which is about the understanding of a social media platform.

Though not necessarily a social media platform, Spotify will eventually become one since it has features like a friend activity feed to see what your Facebook friends are listening to (if you're following them of course), user profiles that shows your most recently played artists, and people tab to see who else on your Facebook friends list is on Spotify.

Before I start blabbering more, it's time for me to sign off.

See you all at the next post!