iTunes just got a kick in the head when Spotify revealed their plans this morning realeasing the Spotify version 0.4.3 which includes the largest feature upgrade since Spotify’s launch in late 2008. Why? Because music just become very social. It’s on now and Apple can ignore it only at its peril.
The release is centered around a set of social features more than anything else. It lets you create an identity that is defined by the music you listen, or put other way you can create a personal playlist and share it with your friends. In the new release you see your friends profiles and by clicking them you also see all the music they listen to (given they allow it to be seen).
Not so surprisingly, in the light of the recent Facebook-Pandora partnership, Spotify profiles can also be linked to Facebook profiles, and more importantly, to all the Facebook Friends’ profiles. This feature pulls your Friends from Facebook into Spotify and lets you share your music with them. This is something I’ve been waiting for quite a while. I am slightly surprised I haven’t seen it earlier, but it’s here now and implications are not insignificant. This no less than changes completely how we listen and discover music!
The new release will also allow you to import your current music collection and mix it easily with the Spotify streaming service. This is also a big change in how we will consume music in the future, but, not nearly as big as the fact that the first time music will truly become social.
There’s much more great stuff in the latest release, which I didn’t touch at all. You can find all of it here. Let’s chew on this and report back after we all get a better taste of what music becoming social really means.
