Facebook Music: Why It Should Bug You
Because Spotify remains verboten to Canadians, this isn’t an issue for us yet. But it should raise some serious red flags about how creepy the people who run Facebook are coming.
According to what I’ve heard, new Spotify users couldn’t sign in unless they signed in through their Facebook account. Why? So Facebook and slurp up even more data about you. No Facebook account? Well, I guess you’ll need one if you want to use Spotify.
Read this post from radio consultant Sean Ross’ newsletter. If the way Facebook does business doesn’t creep you out yet, then give it a good long think.
“This weekend, when I opened Spotify, and tried to click on my list of Facebook friends who were also logged in, I was asked to log in through Facebook again and this time to give permission to have my listening posted in real time to Facebook.
“Spotify was, of course, one of nearly a dozen online music/radio entities, including iHeart Radio, Rhapsody, Slacker, RDIO, MOG, and Jelli, who are part of Facebook’s new music platform, announced last Thursday.
“The new venture offers Webcasters a more visible storefront in Facebook’s big mall, mostly in conjunction with FB’s new “Timeline” feed and its expanded “Open Graph” of user related metrics. (It also has the effect of further breaking down the “our programming”/“your music collection” distinction that some broadcasters still cling to.) And it gives Facebook a music play without having to create their own. But it also raises some concerns, including whether I want to share every Spotify song I listen to.
“This morning, I came across a tweet from British radio/new media guru James Cridland complaining that Spotify was now requiring a Facebook account to sign up—probably more an issue for U.S. users than in Europe where a greater percentage of the potential audience is already on-board. The tweet included a link to Spotify’s customer-service page.
“To leave my own comment, I had to either create an account or log-in through Facebook and Twitter. Once I did, I got e-mails with a dozen or so other comments on the topic, all negative, at least until I went back and changed my preferences.”
I have a Spotify premium account and I enjoy the service, but I would dump my account in a nanosecond if they told me I had to have a Facebook account to use the service. I don't trust those Facebook clowns at all with my personal information.