The new feature is called Top Tracks in Your Network, and just like it sounds, it's a new daily chart of the most popular songs across the people you follow.
Spotify has had top music charts for genres and locations for quite some time, but the Top Tracks in Your Network feature is something the company is launching because it wants to help fuel music discovery through the social graph happening within Spotify.
Since launching its partnership with Facebook in 2011, Spotify has really ramped up its efforts to become a social network in and of itself. Two years ago, Spotify announced Spotify Follow as a way for users to follow friends, other users and artists.
"We believe music is an inherently social experience,"
"We believe music is an inherently social experience," says Spotify product manager Miles Lennon. The idea with Top Tracks in Your Network, he adds was to "think about the most human aspects of social music."
For that, Spotify spent a lot of time looking at how music is shared. Music sharing typically takes place with mentions in offline conversations or sharing specific songs or moments over a text or online chat.
Within Spotify itself, users can share individual tracks or albums through the platform — and that happens a lot — but they can also frictionlessly share what they are listening to with the activity stream.
Moving forward, what Spotify really wants to do is pair those two aspects together. So that users have the frictionless aspect of sharing what they are listening to, with the added context of one-off link.
And that's the real idea behind the Top Tracks in Your Network feature.
How it works
Top Tracks in Your Network is a playlist that is updated every day based on the activity of people in your network. The algorithm that determines the top tracks depend on how many people in your network play a track as well as how many times an individual in your network plays a certain track.
The idea is to be able to surface trends and important musical moments around the people you follow. The idea is that listeners can gauge more easily what the people they care about are listening to. That in turn, can help aid music discovery.
If I see that everyone in my network is listening to the new TV on the Radio album, it might be a great reminder for me to actually give it a listen. (And you should, it's great.)
Likewise, if I notice my husband is really obsessed with Waxahatchee, maybe that's an indication that I should buy him tickets the next time they are in town.
Adding social data everywhere
In addition to the Top Tracks in Your Network feature, Spotify is also rolling out the ability to for users to see who in their network (of both Facebook friends and Spotify Follow users) are listening to specific artists and albums.
This adds a sense of what Spotify calls "social proof" to the music discovery process.
If I'm looking at Beyoncé for instance, I might be emboldened to learn that my friend Ed Zitron is a fan of "I Am...Sasha Fierce." Ed, now I know what I'm getting you for Christmas.
Lennon tells me that Spotify's goal is to add this kind of social information to all parts of its service. "We want you to not be able to imagine listening to music without this kind of information," he says.
It's a gold goal and one that could really help Spotify become a destination for music listening above and beyond its vast catalog.
The music streaming landscape continues to be competitive and contentious. Although Spotify is the biggest subscription service — it has 12.5 million paid subscribers and 50 million active users — it's facing competition not just from the other streaming services but from YouTube.
Moreover, the service continues to be at the center of the debate about the changing nature of how music is being consumed and as a result, artists are compensated. Spotify might not be able to win over artists like Taylor Swift with its monetary arguments but maybe it will have a better chance if the service can achieve pure ubiquity, the same way iTunes did last decade.
Uber is adding a new feature to its mobile app that could allow passengers to play DJ while they take a ride with one of its drivers. Thanks to an integration with Spotify, Uber will soon make music a central part of its ride-hailing service.
Some screenshots obtained by TechCrunch show how the service will likely work. In the first screenshot, which began showing up on its driver app over the last few days, Uber has begun asking drivers to update their car information and select whether or not it has an AUX audio input. By connecting their Uber-provided mobile phone to the car stereo, the service could soon allow users to control the music during the ride and possibly play from their own playlists.
Meanwhile the second screenshot, which a source tells us is hidden within the current version of Uber’s consumer app, shows a mockup of what it will look like for passengers as they select and listen to music while in transit. The user interface shows the song title and artist of the music being played, and enables users to pause, skip, rewind, and choose to shuffle tracks in a playlist.
What’s missing from those screens is the company that will provide the music being pumped into Uber stereos, but we’ve confirmed Spotify will be Uber’s partner for the service.
Today Uber invited press to participate in a global conference call with CEO Travis Kalanick and a “Special Partner Guest” to announce a “first-of-its-kind partnership.” The top of the invite is adorned with a music clef, suggesting that Uber will be announcing the music service Monday morning.
We’ve heard someone from Spotify, which has both the global footprint and user base to make such an integration successful, will be the special guest in question.
Uber will be announcing the new service next week, but it seems the companies could have been experimenting with the idea for some time now. Looking around online, we uncovered a French video posted on Vimeo 10 months ago that appears to describe this service.
Beginning with the logos for both companies, it takes us through a sequence featuring a young guy walking down the road and listening to Spotify on his headphones. He then gets alerted on his phone to meet a friend in a different part of town and orders an Uber (after failing to hail a taxi). Once in the car, he takes off his headphones. The then music seamlessly continues to play inside the car. Both passenger and driver rock out.
“Votre chauffeur Uber. Rythme votre vie au son de Spotify,” the video ends. “Your driver is Uber. Pace your life to the sound of Spotify.”
More generally, a service integration with Uber would fit with a wider strategic push at Spotify.
The company now has 50 million users of its streaming service, but to make its service more ubiquitous (and more useful) Spotify has been making an effort in the last several months to extend its app to more places outside of its own walled garden. At the same time, it has been curtailing its activity with music apps on its own platform, recently quietly closing down the App Finder in its desktop app.
In-car services have very much been a part of that roadmap: Spotify has made deals to embed its service in connected cars made by Ford and Volvo.
Neither Uber nor Spotify has returned a request for comment.
Spotify announced that it has expanded compatibility for its Spotify Connect feature to allow users to play and control their tunes via Amazon’s Fire TV set-top box. Available only for Spotify Premium members, listeners can now use the Spotify app for mobile phones or tablets to connect their Spotify libraries with Amazon’s new set-top box. There are several new applications available to users thanks to the expansion. Say you have some friends over in your living room, you’re streaming some music with the service via your smartphone on your hi-fi sound system, and you realize you need to step outside away from the noise to make an important phone call. Instead of inconveniently having to switch to some other music source (iTunes, CD, vinyl, etc.) or nixing the tunes altogether to make the call, you can now simply alternate sources with Spotify Connect and push the music to the Fire TV.
With music streaming via Spotify Connect from your smartphone to the Amazon set-top box (and, in turn, its respective audio output system), you’re free to walk off with smartphone in-hand, make calls, use other smartphone apps, or even stroll right out of Wi-Fi range, all without causing a single break in the jams.
While the new feature is only available to Spotify’s Premium subscribers, the company is currently offering a 30-day free trial for Spotify Premium, in case you’ve got a Fire TV and want to give the new feature a try first without committing to $10 per month.
