Spotify is not a social network

gleech.org · 2,374 words · saved by 4 readers

Everything you do on Spotify is public by default. You can follow other users, and their playlists, and see what they’re listening to. But this isn’t emphasised (you don’t get any notifications about any of it), and I don’t know anyone who takes much advantage of it (besides stumbling on user playlists in the course of your own missions). So if it’s a social network it’s the most solipsistic one. This false privacy means there’s little incentive to lie, e.g. to pretend to like cool things you don’t actually like. Coupled to the fact that music is the centre of most(?) people’s emotional lives, we thus get a uniquely sincere, accessible, and far-reaching representation of us. Peoplewatching, but for feelings. I took a little walk around the user graph, looking for remarkable things. The following all impressed me with erudition or sheer determination (some of them have thousands of playlists; some have hundreds of times more playlists than followers). I am quite serious in calling them

Apple Music, Amazon, these aren't our competitors. Our only competitor is silence. – attributed to Daniel Ek Notes on Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist by Liz Pelly. This book’s topic (commoditisation of experience, near-invisible algorithmic degradation, cartel bullshit, mechanisation of the human soul) is very important to me; her background research is great (she actually reads all those unreadable cultural-studies theories for you, and interviewed dozens of insiders over 8 years of work); and her lens (real indie/DIY/punk) is rare and useful. And obvio

Spotify is not a social network

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