Spotify removed all social features from its app in 2017 and had since limited what played DJ for all its listeners. With social features becoming more and more important even in music streaming app the company has decided to ease off on playing music God and is testing a new feature tagged Tastebuds.
The implication of the previous status quo adopted by the music streaming giant is that it can decide who gets played and who doesn’t, which artist breaks out and which doesn’t. Financial wise it’s been lucrative to helping with the company’s IPO. In fact, the strategy has worked so well that Spotify’s shares now sits around $152, up from its direct listing price of $132, though down from the first-day pop that saw it rise to $165. While this works in the company’s favour, music labels are at unease about the situation with labels worried their artists might get left off playlists if they don’t play nice with Spotify in terms of sustainable royalty rates and access to exclusives.
Tastebuds by design will let you see what a friend’s users’ musical fancy is from there draw inspiration for your own playlist. Tastebuds currently lives at https://open.spotify.com/tastebuds which is basically an information landing page for the feature. A section of it reads; “What’s Tastebuds? Now you can discover music through friends whose taste you trust.”
The prototype feature was discovered by TechCrunch’s Jane Manchun Wong. Users can click or tap the pen icon to “search the people you follow.” From the screen that follows you can view what your friends are listening to, listening along or add the song to your own library.
Prior to Tastebuds the only kind of social interaction on Spotify was that you could message friends a piece of music through buttons for SMS, Facebook Messenger and more, or post songs to your Instagram or Snapchat Story.
Over the years the company had experimented with several social features including Friends Weekly playlist spotted last year by The Verge’s Dani Deahl. Wong back in May discovered a shared-queue Social Listening feature that let you and friends play songs simultaneously while apart.
Social interaction in music streaming app is growing but remains an under-tapped area for Spotify. Hopefully, the company will move the feature from just a prototype and actually use it. But for Spotify to completely ignore social interaction on its app may leave them chasing the pack should something unprecedented make a feature like that all-important.