FreshNetworks Blog

Lady Gaga - Monster Ball (Photo credit: Kimi Kagami)

It seems simple when you hear it, but one of the most interesting examples of social media data I have read about recently comes from Troy Carter, Lady Gaga’s manager, at last week’s Wired 2012 event. Using social data from Spotify to help to design the set-list for a gig. Simple, effective and the kind of personalisation that is only available with widespread social sharing.

As Carter puts it:

I can sit down with the guy from Spotify, and he shows me this spike on Fridays as people listen to Gaga before going to the clubs. When I go to South Africa I know to include this song in this set, because I know that’s a fan favourite, and also to take this song out. We’ve never had a direct relationship with an audience. When someone buys a CD we used to count them as a fan, but we never knew if they hated the CD and threw it out the window.

So simple it’s obvious – look at which tracks are popular and which are less popular in the area around a gig and then play back to the audience what they want to hear. You could then go a step further to introduce new tracks based on these data patterns – introduce new content into the set based on what people already enjoy listening to, and leave out new tracks they might be less keen on.

This kind of personalisation is clever and could be used much more. It is not based on an individual’s social data but on looking for trends and patterns among a group of the population.

Looking at the data people leave behind from the actions they do in social media (what they say, do, listen to, watch) presents a huge opportunity for many brands and products. And if you layer in data that only you have (eg purchase history) you can produce an even more powerful data set.

Brands need to start understanding the data they have, and the data they can learn about their customers through social media. Only then can we start to be more creative about how we are using this data. And only then will we see more examples of something as simple, and as sensible as how Lady Gaga personalises her gigs.

It’s been a while since I discovered a new web service that I immediately fell in love with. There are so many things to try, but so few hit me as a massive winner from the start. Spotify just did.

A friend sent me an invite to their Beta and I was sceptical at first. Anything that asks me to download an application makes me hesitate. Moreover, the information on their site was sparse. It wasn’t until I googled and read a Guardian article that I decide to have a go.

Within 60 seconds I’d signed up and downloaded and was ready to start listening. I clicked on one of their “new” singles – Royksopp, Happy to Hear, and immediately found myself with a smile on my face. A great process, free music and best of all I’d discovered a new song that I immediately loved. Although, to be fair, that was mostly because the sample was taken from an album I’d almost forgotten: The Clones of Dr.Funkenstein by Parliament.

So how does it work?

Spotify is just like iTunes. It has a vast database of music. Probably 90% of what most people might ever want to listen to (I checked and they had the original Parliament track) . After a quick download you have instant access to all this music. You can browse by track or listen to a play list.

What’s cool about Spotify is the business model. For years people have predicted a move by consumers away from owning music to paying a monthly fee for unlimited streaming. Whilst I’ve been happy to believe this might be destination, I’ve never understood how consumers would move from today’s habits to monthly fees. After all it took Sky years and very expensive sporting rights to entice people to pay for TV on a monthly basis. I have a large music collection – whenever I hear music I like, I buy it. So the idea of paying a monthly fee when it would take me over a year of listening all day every day to my own music before having to repeat a track, seemed unnecessary.

Spotify are offering the endpoint (all the music you want for a monthly fee) but more improtantly they are also offering two routes to help get you there. There’s a good old fashioned freemiumservice – you can listen to all the music you want for free, but you’ll be forced to hear a 30-second ad every 25 minutes (just like commercial radio, with less advertising). Alternatively you can pay for one day’s free music for 99c.

This is exactly the sort of kick that’s needed to change the way I listen to music. You can get an invite here

Could it be any better?

Yes. There is one problem. The developers have clearly focused their efforts on the listening experience and securing music rights. Clearly that’s the right place to start. But what they need next is a better way to find new music.

I’ve always been a fan of iLike (which got even better after the Facebook masses were introduced to it back in May 2007) and have also used Last.fm and iTunes to find new music. I find the online community aspects of these services are the best way to discover “songs you might like”. I remember listening to Pandora before the arrival of the Web2.0 music sites. Despite a sophisticated algorithms that attempted to judge what I liked in the music I listened to, it’s ability to correctly predict what I’d enjoy was poor.

Forget the clever maths, the best way to recommend me music is to find what people with similar tastes also listen to. And that’s what’s great about iLike and the others. Every couple of months I spend a few hours listening to the “music that I don’t own” which ”people like me” listen to on a regular basis. To date that’s been the best way for me to uncover new artists.

Spotify is crying out for a similar online community angle. Despite the service being less than a week old, the online community is already organising itself. There’s a user-created Facebook app for sharing Spotify playlists and around 10 websites that users have created for the same purpose.

Good luck with the development. This is an excellent idea, well executed.

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Some more reading

• Ten Social Music Sites that Let You Listen, Share and Enjoy Music
• Pandora vs Mufin: A Head to Head Music Melee
• Audio here, there, but not quite everywhere
• Music streaming service Spotify wins early fans
• Music recommendation, based on sound