From today, to sign up to Spotify, you’ll need to have a Facebook account. This is one of the most idiotic decisions ever made by a company. And that’s not just my opinion, that’s an actual fact.
When Spotify launched, the press lauded it as a game changer. I know, because I was one of the members of the press who so lauded it. At the time, Spotify offered something incredible. A free music service, which was both legal, and a pleasure to use.
Now though, the Swedish streaming outfit seems to have, in TV parlance, jumped the fucking shark.
And Facebook, well, I’m barely even surprised by the shit those idiots pull these days. It’s just one attempt to defile your privacy after the next with them. Most impressive, though, is there seeming brilliance at selling it as a positive thing. They’re the new Apple with comments like “we want this process to be seamless” which in reality translate to “we don’t want you to know about the shady crap we’re getting up to”.
Facebook’s new Timeline is awe-inspiring in its audacity. Never before has a tech company so comprehensively harvested every detail about who you are now, but also attempted to get you to volunteer data about every year you’ve been swanning about the planet. For the love of humanity, the timeline EVEN asks you to upload a baby photo.
But, whatever your feelings about Facebook, being forced to use it as a mechanism to sign up for an unrelated service like Spotify really takes the biscuit. Why on earth does one of those things need the other of those things. I’d almost buy in to it if Spotify shrugged and said “we can’t be arsed running the user database anymore”. But this isn’t for easy account management, it’s to allow Spotify access to your Facebook data and, more crucially, Facebook access to every track you play.
What that means, is that Facebook can happily use the data about your music tastes to flog you tickets to bands you like, or vaguely like, or listened to at the insistence of a friend. It can, of course, pair that with other data its picked from the rotting carcass that used to be your privacy and create some sort of horrific profile of you detailing every sordid mistake and cheesey music playlist.
Of course, I’m shitting myself, because I only listen to Katy Perry and Girls Aloud on Spotify, which is going to paint a very poor picture of me, when the Government finally turns over control of the country to Facebook.
Well done Spotify, you’ve gone from lovable upstart to despicable bastards in one day. Even Facebook didn’t manage it that quickly.
I’m afraid that Spotify jumped the shark for me when they upped their prices and reduced their listening limits. I appreciate they need to make money to sustain their business. However, Spotify was important because it successfully competed with free. I.e. it was easier for people to fire up Spotify than it was for them to go to some file sharing service, in the process encouraging them to start paying. Either by subscribing to Spotify, or by having an opportunity to try before they bought.
This is no longer the case, and I would wager many people have gone back to file sharing to sample music they’re interesting. Spotify thus becomes irrelevant.
I no longer use Facebook or Spotify (deleted my FB account a while back, haven’t accessed Spotify since it reduced listening times on free users) – as someone without a Facebook account (and as someone who doesn’t want one) why is it required to sign up? My reaction is just going to be “Well fuck that then, I can’t be arsed” and Spotify squanders any chance of getting any ad revenue/money from me.
This isn’t the only illogical decision that Spotify has made. The aforementioned limits on free users just came across as Spotify saying “Oh hai YouTube, have our ad revenue”
-Double post
I’m a little confused here Ian. I logged into spotify this evening and it popped up with a facebook login request, but I just closed it and happily carried on using spotify.
Do the “free” spotify accounts require a facebook login to use the service or is this just nothing more than an irritating popup?
Yup, echo that. Ditto re letting the world know what I listen to. Daresay even Alexis Jordan would be embarrassed to know I spent most of the day flouncing around to get ditties.
HER ditties, not get ditties. Or her titties. Er, better stop correcting myself now…
Hi Simon,
No, existing accounts don’t need to either tie their details to Facebook, or use Facebook to sign in.
New accounts MUST be done through Facebook.
You don’t have to share what you’re listening to.
There’s also a world of difference between what’s wrong and what’s stupid. Spotify took Sean Parker’s millions and this is the price – it’s married to Facebook. That means annoying the few people who aren’t on Facebook or care about privacy, and it also means millions more users. The bad publicity from this will blow over, just as it did when it limited free use, a move that doubled its paying subscribers. They might be wrong, but they’re not stupid.