Spotify-Facebook Partnership: New Subscriber Rules Anger Users
Music streaming service Spotify now requires brand new subscribers to have a Facebook account in order to use its services.
Spotify does not require its new users to have a Facebook ID to use the social network's features, but it does require one for users that solely want to use the music streaming services.
All new worldwide users will be affected by this integrated feature. For those already using Spotify before its new partnership with Facebook, these changes will not pertain to them.
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Members of the consumer advocacy website GetSatisfaction have already voiced their displeasure with the new rule.
"That's a bad move", GetSatisfaction user, Neil Benson, wrote.
Another user, spcomb, said "Not cool. My Spotify account isn't linked to Facebook, and it'll stay that way, thankyouverymuch. If I didn't have an account already, this would prevent me from signing up."
In a statement to MSNBC.com, Spotify stated this: "To us, this is all about creating an amazing new world of music discovery. To make this as good and simple as it possibly can be, we've integrated Spotify login with Facebook login. By adopting Facebook's login, we've created a simple and seamless social experience. Once a user is logged in they can control what they share with each of their networks from the preferences menu in Spotify."
Even with all the controversy surrounding the Facebook/Spotify relationship, Spotify has benefited greatly since the F8 conference. The site reported that they bring in 250,000 new users every day. Spotify confirmed that it currently has two million paid users and 10 million total listeners.
According to statistics from AppData, the deal with Facebook has increased Spotify’s number of monthly active users from 1 million to a new high of 4.4 million.
Spotify provides its users with a free, ad-supported version as well as two paid options. For $4.99 a month, users can listen to the same music found on the free version, excluding ads. For $10 a month, you can access all of Spotify’s content: their entire online library, the ability to listen to songs offline, and being able to stream tracks on Spotify’s iPhone and Android apps.
Two other music streaming services have also signed on with Facebook: Rdio and Slacker.
