The leading music and podcast streamer explores more ways to engage users as reaction features dominate their social media competitors.
User-generated content has over the last two decades demonstrated itself to be the undisputed golden goose of social media. Its reasons for success are pretty self-evident in hindsight, and Spotify’s sluggishness on the matter has been surprising but very on-brand.
Spotify appears to be testing a new reaction feature with a limited selection of users, as is their normal testing process. They have previously previewed changes like a TikTok-style feed and NFT galleries.
Now, a Reddit user from Vietnam has posted screenshots of the Spotify app asking them to record an audio reaction to a playlist they had just listened to. Spotify refers to this recording as an “episode”, implying that it would be uploaded to your account as a mini-podcast.
This makes more sense for the platform than some kind of comment system. This feature test also showcases an in-app audio editor which lets you add background music and tags. A similar feature was spotted by some users earlier this year, and would go a long way to lowering the barrier to entry for users uploading their own content.
These kinds of social interactivity features have proven to be the core of all successful social media platforms. User-generated content means that platforms just need to cover the costs and concerns of a hosting platform, while letting users put in the effort of deciphering audience desires and creating content.
Alongside pure financial efficiency, this approach is great for keeping people coming back. If users can discuss their opinions in comments, react via videos, or interact with content in some public way, they become that much more invested.
Not only does this keep people personally interested, it creates communities for people to participate in. This public forum of users’ reactions is itself content ,that gets people to spend more time on an app – which is every social media platform’s goal.
MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and the contemporary cultural phenomenon of TikTok are all powered by the creativity and productivity of their user base, and have introduced new ways for people to interact with online content and communities.
As such, it’s hard not to feel that Spotify is lagging behind in this important game and that their dominant market share has left its app development unmotivated and less than innovative.
User-engagement has been noticeably lacking. There currently are no public opinion barometers such as likes / dislikes, text or video reactions and very limited community-building features aside from a basic friend’s list.
To be clear, there are obvious benefits to not having these features. It’s hard to envisage user-engagement on music streams as being anything but unproductive. Giving your music client be a reprieve from the information barrage of most platforms is probably welcome for most users.
Aside from finding a way to make user-engagement actually interesting or valuable on a music platform, user-generated content comes with significant overhead. Moderation is a chore for all social platforms, and never ceases to be a headache.
How do you scour over so many comments or video clips from millions of users to find hate speech, or bots, or scams? Spotify currently dodges this question. They out-source music moderation by making artists go through approved middlemen to get their songs uploaded and lack any kind of general user content.
Without an industry innovator to show the way forward, the next few years will be interesting to watch in the music streaming sector. Amazon, Apple and Spotify don’t seem to be taking any risks on new social features, nor giving users any new tools that have been enabled by the continuing AI boom.
It’s hard for newcomers to break into the music market when it requires near-universal licensing to be useful to users. With Apple permanently comfortable in its sheltered iOS monopoly, perhaps Amazon’s relentless ambition will see it adapt to compete with a largely apathetic but market-occupying Spotify.
IOL Tech
