Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to improve social music exploration
Prerna Mahtani,
4 years ago
2 min read
Spotify is prototyping a fresh way to view what companions have been hearing to, called “Tastebuds.”
Despite how discovering music is essentially social, Spotify has no specialties for instantly interacting with friends in its mobile app following axing its inbox in 2017 and having its Friend Activity ticker limited to the desktop.
The Story of Tastebud’s Creation
It appeared like Spotify was purposefully limiting social features to make users rely on the company’s playlists and learning surfaces.
This provided Spotify the ability to play king-maker, massively inspiring, which artists got highlighted and grew to stardom.
This, in turn, gave it an advantage in its combative agreements with record labels, which bothered their artists may get left off playlists if they don’t play right with Spotify in terms of sustainable royalty charges and the path to exclusives.
That approach appears to have paid off with Spotify developing its licensing deals and growing a critical promotional partner for the labels, flooring the way to its IPO.
Spotify’s parts sit about $152, up from its direct listing cost of $132, though down from the first-day report that noticed it rise to $165.
More relaxed in its position, now Spotify looks ready to waive more power of discovery and allow users to be fully inspired by what companions are playing.
Tastebuds are created to allow users to explore the music taste profiles of their friends.
Tastebuds exists as a navigation option beside your Library and Home/Browse sections.
How To Operate Tastebuds
Anyone can enter a non-functioning landing page for the feature at https://open.spotify.com/tastebuds.
The specialty explains itself, with text seeing “What’s Tastebuds? Now you can hear music through friends whose taste you believe.”
The prototype feature was found in the web version of Spotify by opposite engineering sorceress, who gave some more data on how it works.
Users hit the pen symbol to “search the people you follow.”
From there, they can see information on what users have been playing most and listen along or combine songs to their library.
The outcome is that you can only view a shortsighted snapshot of friends’ latest songs, the less and usually outdated playlists they manually created public, or you message them songs outside.
There was no unusual way to get a holistic picture of what a friend has been listening to lately, or their music choices overall.
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