In screen time Tech reporter Rutger Otto Writes Weekly About the Internet. This time, he is surprised by the arrival of a chat function on spotify.
You will soon be able to chat with friends on spotify. Accordance to the app makers, people have massively requested it: a separate place in the app to share songs, podcasts, and audiobooks with friends and family, and an easy way to keep track of recommendations.
It seems to be a fairly basic chat function for now. You can send messages to each other (with emojis), but not photos and videos, for example. The function is not mandatory. Spotify Says That You Can Still Share Songs Outside The App. “Messages on Spotify are not designed to replace chat apps, but to supplement them,” The Company Reports.
What is not in the press release, but what spotify does hope to gain from it: More Attention from subscriber. Every minute you spend chatting on spotify, you are not doing it on whatsapp or signal. That fits nicely into the course that spotify has bone taking for some time now. The Music Service Has Already Added Video Clips So You Don’t Have To Go To YouTube For That.
And there are karaoke-like lyrics, which you can read along while you listen, so you don’t have to look them up in the browser. There are just instagram stories-like videos that you can scroll through endlesly.
I must say that I hardly use them functions. I prefer to leave playlists from the spotify algorithm alone: I prefer to listen to full albums. It’s a matter of Tapping on Play and then Letting the app run in the background. It’s like a discman to me (do you remember Those?). It’s Purely About the Music.
For Spotify, Music Has Long Ceased to Be The Most Important Thing. It’s Simple, because that’s how most popular apps work: the service wise to bind people to it and ensure that they stay. They do this, for example, by constantly expanding the range on sacrifice. You no longer need a separate app for podcasts and audiobooks either.
You even notice it in the way you share music outside of spotify. Those links lead exclusively to spotify. Competitor Tidal, For Example, Does It Differently. When Tidal Subscribers Share Music, The Recipient of the Link can Chose which service to play the song on. Spotify Could also do that, but consciously chooses not to to, because it is people to listen to music on spotify.
With the chat function, Spotify is now focusing on friendships. It is now a Well-Known Fact: Friends Add Value to An Online Platform. As long as your friends are still there, you are less likely to switch to an alternative music service. But Dear Tech Companies, Let’s not try to turn every app into a social network. I Wonder IF My Discman Still Works?