Techdirt. Stories filed under "social"

How Not To Make Music Social: The Way Spotify And Facebook Did It

Mike Masnick — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 19:07:00 PDT

Last week there was a lot of talk about Facebook's new setup, which would allow for tighter integration and sharing of everything that people do, with music being a key example. Whether or not that's a good idea, I have no idea. To be honest, I think that it could make sense long term -- but the way that it's been implemented seems like a disaster to me, as I discovered when I logged into Spotify today. Apparently, Spotify is pissing off a ton of people by requiring a Facebook login to use the service now. I have less of an issue with that than I do with the fact that Spotify popped up a box telling me I had to connect to Facebook, but not making it at all clear what that meant. It notes that Spotify can share the details of what I'm listening to with others, but does not explain what that means. Will it share everything I play with everyone automatically? Will it give me the option of what to share? Will it give me the option of who I'm sharing it with? That's not clear at all. Even worse, nowhere is there any explanation of how or where I can find out more. Instead, Spotify just opens as normal.

It turns out that Spotify just starts sharing everything you play on Facebook, without even making it clear to the user that it's doing that. I couldn't find that info on my own profile. It was only after I asked a question and a Facebook friend told me what I was listening to that I knew the info was being shared. Even worse, how to turn it off is not clear at all either. Thankfully Lifehacker explains how to stop spamming everyone with what you're playing on Spotify. You can do so by unchecking the following box, which makes no sense at all: If you can't see it, it says: "Get personal recommendations by sending music you play to Facebook's Open Graph." But, what does "personal recommendations" have to do with anything? Why can't Spotify just be upfront and honest and say, "spam all your friends on Facebook with what you're playing"? Again, I recognize that some people want to do this, and I have no problem with people choosing to do it. My problem is with the way that Facebook and Spotify implemented this, where it's not even remotely clear what you're doing. Given Facebook's similar problems in the past (hello, Beacon) you would think that the company would recognize the importance of being clear and totally upfront about what info is being shared with whom and how to control it. Instead, it seems like the exact opposite.

Again, I'd have no problem sharing some of what I listen to if I have control over it. But, really, are any of my friends really going to want to know when I play the "lullaby playlist" I put together for my son? There are some friends with whom I have no problem sharing what I'm listening to, but plenty of others where it's just not something I'd share with them at all. And perhaps there are hidden controls buried in the preferences somewhere, but it's not at all clear, which leads me to now totally distrust Spotify and Facebook. Facebook I was already on the fence about, but I liked Spotify (and pay for a subscription). If these companies can't even get the basics right concerning how I can share my info, I'm going to have to look elsewhere. It's amazing how quickly a company can destroy a ton of goodwill.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The Advantage Of Copycat Startups: Will Rolling.fm Keep Turntable.fm Innovating?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 4 Aug 2011 07:34:37 PDT

We've written a few times about the wonders of Turntable.fm, one of the first new music services that really seems to get the fact that part of what makes music so enjoyable is the social experience. It's a wonderful service. However, as with anything that gets a lot of users and attention, it isn't long before copycats come along. And, as Eliot van Buskirk has reported, Turntable.fm has a copycat in the form of Rolling.fm, a service that almost certainly chose to copy an awful lot from Turntable.fm. Of course, as with many "copycats," it appears that Rolling.fm has tried to add some features that sound useful, "such as the ability to see who is in a room in one big list, and a private chat feature that lets you speak directly to Facebook friends even if they’re in a different room." But I tend to agree with Eliot in noting that this is not a bad thing:

Who cares? The world needs all the neat ways to listen to music it can get, from where we’re standing. It’s a case of “the more the merrier” — even if Rolling.fm is quite possibly the least original web app we’ve ever seen.
It’s also a case of “different strokes for different folks.”
The Rolling.fm group-listening web app differs from Turntable.fm in that many of the most popular rooms correlate to specific colleges and universities (although anyone can join those rooms). And so far, we’re hearing far clubbier and less indie music than we generally hear on Turntable.fm.
Who knows — we could be just about to witness an explosion of group listening services, each with its own twist on the Turntable.fm concept that will appeal to a different demographic. While Turntable.fm deserves ample credit for coming up with the concept, it can’t really be bad for music fans if that concept continues to be replicated as it has been here…

I'd go even further than that. Copycats like this actually help everyone, including Turntable.fm. Not only does it help spread the concept even further, but Turntable.fm can just as equally learn from the "improvements" a copycat makes. On top of that, this will help keep Turntable.fm on its toes. As much as I love the service, and as much as I understand that it's very much in beta and at times struggles with the amount of usage it gets, the service has been really buggy at times and having some direct competition in the rear view mirror can only act as an incentive to improve as quickly as possible.

Last year, we wrote about Oded Shenkar's excellent book Copycats, which argues, persuasively, that our cultural distaste towards companies that copy one another is misplaced and not very sensible. There are tremendous benefits to be had when two or more companies copy each other, mainly in that it continues to push all players to innovate and to provide better overall offerings. While I haven't been able to test out Rolling.fm yet (it was down when I went to check it out), I think this development is really good news for Turntable.fm and hope that the company is willing to recognize that as well.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

How Long Until The RIAA Kills The Best Music Service Around?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:21:08 PDT

Over the past month or so, there has been tremendous buzz about a startup called Turntable.fm. It's been written up in a few places and lots of the usual crew of Silicon Valley folks have been using it. In general, I tend to be skeptical of the "buzzy" startups out there, but over the past couple weeks I've been playing with the service, and have found -- like so many others who use it -- that it's incredibly fun, addictive and amazing (and not great for productivity, at times). A bunch of folks associated with Techdirt have been using it and we've spent almost as much time discussing the legality of the whole thing.

If you haven't used it, it's a service that finally makes music social in a way that works. Basically, you and others go into a "room" which generally has a theme. Up to five people in the room can act as "DJs" and sit at a table in the front. Each of the DJs puts together a queue of songs and when their turn comes around, the next song in their queue plays (usually, it's still a little buggy on that front). Everyone else in the room can hear the song and can vote on whether it's "awesome" or "lame." If it's awesome, the DJ gets points, if it's lame, the song can be cut off and you can get booted from your chair (I believe, though have never seen that happen). Also, all the folks in the room have cute little avatars, and their heads bob to the music if they think it's awesome. When one song is done, it moves on to the next DJ in the row, and on you go: collaborative curated music playlists. It's difficult to explain what makes the whole thing quite so addictive and fun, but for those who get hooked, I keep hearing the same thing about how much fun the whole thing is. I have a few theories on why it's so addictive, though I'm sure different reasons are there for different people. For me, frankly, this actually reminds me of when I used to actually DJ music on the radio (kids: look it up) decades ago. I used to co-DJ a music program, and part of the fun was just sitting around with my fellow DJs talking about all sorts of stuff while figuring out "what should we play next" and listening to great music the whole time. Turntable.fm evinces a nearly identical feeling, which I'd long since forgotten about. So the nostalgia part definitely hits me.

But I think the reason that hits me so hard, and why so many people like Turntable.fm, is the core underlying social aspect of it that so many in the music industry seem to ignore. Music isn't an individual thing. It's always been a social thing. We want others to hear the music we like. We like to share the experience. It's a cultural thing. If only you hear a song, that's one thing, but sharing that great feeling with a friend or others is something else. It's part of the reason why people flock to concerts. But the recording industry has always focused on music as a solitary thing: as in, they want each individual to buy a song or an album and that's it. The social part is an afterthought. Maybe it helps more sales, maybe not. That's not important. It's why so many music services today are kind of boring, frankly. You can listen to music, but that's about it. There's not much social about most of them (with a few exceptions).

Turntable.fm, on purpose or not, brings back that cultural sharing element. It makes just listening to music a party, and that's incredibly addictive. And, as simplistic as the graphics are, something about them completely "works" in this environment. The little bobbing heads are really quite powerful. And, as Marcus Carab said after playing around with the service: if no heads in the audience are bobbing, "IT FEELS HORRIBLE." That's a part of that cultural sharing phenomenon. We all love music, and we love to introduce others to music we love... but many of us still fear that basic feeling of social awkwardness: what if we pass this along, and no one likes it? Turntable.fm does a brilliant job of meshing together all of these elements, and really has made it work.

But is it legal?

Then we come to the big question. If there's one thing we've seen over and over again, it's that the big record labels and the RIAA simply can't stand it when "someone else" figures out how to make music valuable. The standard operating procedure is to claim that whatever they're doing is infringing, and then sue first as a part of a negotiating strategy to get massive license fees or to drive them out of business. Sometimes, as with imeem, they do both (get massive license fees, which serves to drive them out of business).

There were some questions as to whether or not Turntable.fm already had deals with the labels. The way the music works is you can do a search, and if Turntable.fm already has the track you can add it to your queue. If it doesn't, you can also upload it from your personal collection. Various reports note that Turntable.fm has a deal with MediaNet, which allows them to stream a ton of tracks at $0.002 per listener (and 10 cents per DJ, since that's an "on demand" play). It's not clear how it works with uploaded tracks. There are also some limits, as a friend of mine discovered when a bunch of DJs in a room all tried to play songs by a single artist. After a few tracks, you get a message saying you can't for licensing reasons.

That sounded similar to what the (also quite cool) startup 8tracks does, in that people can upload songs and create playlists... but with a few limitations to avoid violating copyright law. There are a few basic rules that have been put in place at the behest of the recording industry to make sure such services aren't really fully interactive (for which they want much higher priced licenses), so limiting tracks by a single artist, limiting tracks from a single album and not letting people see what's upcoming are there.

What is now official is that the company does not have any licensing deals with the labels, relying on the belief that following those streaming rules and the basics of the DMCA make it legal. The issue is whether or not the labels buy that and decide not to sue. That would be the smart move, but think about who we're discussing here. There's a pretty good likelihood that someone will get upset (or, really, jealous of the massive popularity) and decide that they're "not getting the proper cut," and initiate legal action.

That would be a shame. The service really is the sort of thing that the labels should be encouraging. It's an amazing tool for social music discovery. It clearly makes music more valuable. I've been introduced to all sorts of new music via the service, and have since purchased a bunch of CDs (yeah, make fun of me, I'm old fashioned that way) because of it. There's also tremendous user engagement here, not just in picking the songs, but in voting on them and talking in the associated chat room. Still, almost everyone seems to think that the labels will do what they always do and sue. Again, quoting Marcus, "it must be illegal, because it's awesome, and there's simply no way something this awesome would be okay with the RIAA."

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Is The Kindle's Antisocial Nature Holding It Back?

Mike Masnick — Wed, 2 Sep 2009 12:33:52 PDT

We've discussed in the past how idea sharing and content sharing is "the new normal" for many people, thanks to the internet these days. The "old" view of things -- the broadcast view -- was that big professional creators of content or journalism put a stamp of approval on some content and shipped it along to a waiting audience. But, the rise of the internet has muddied this picture greatly, showing that people actually prefer to be a part of the process. They want to share content. They want to comment on it. They want to modify it. They want to link to it. They want to promote it. They want to respond to it.

Content, itself, has become part of the social process.

Now, we spend lots of time discussing how that's mucking around with business models based on the old view, but it may be causing some troubles for technology as well. In a brief message on Twitter, Mediashift author Mark Glaser, highlighted a fantastic point by Dan Pacheco about why he preferred an iPhone to a Kindle for reading content:

Most content I share starts from the iPhone. Kindle's antisocial nature is what bugs me most.

This point made me realize why I have so little interest in a Kindle. You can't do much with the content on it. It's delivered to you in that old "we're the content creators, you're the content recipient" method. You can annotate it for yourself, but it's not social at all. And these days, so many of us have learned to interact with content socially. For something like eBooks to really take off, my guess is that it will take a much more social approach, where people can do more to interact over the content that they're reading.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Yet Another Study Points Out That Video Games Aren't Evil

Mike Masnick — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 03:39:22 PDT

We've seen a bunch of similar studies over the years, but the folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project are out with their latest study noting that video games don't turn kids into isolated angry loners unfit to deal with the real world. Yeah, that seems obvious, but you wouldn't know it listening to some of the rhetoric from politicians and anti-video game activists. What the study found, instead, was that nearly every child (both boys and girls) now plays some form of video game, and many of them use video games as a social activity to interact with their friends. Also, video gaming doesn't take away from other social activity. And, finally, video games are often useful tools for teaching kids decision making and how to approach moral dilemmas. Most of this shouldn't be all that surprising, but it's nice to see it confirmed by yet another study. Hopefully this means we're on the tail end of Congress blaming video games for things, and we can move on to the next technopanic.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story