While the world’s leading streaming service has taken great strides in empowering artists on its platform, it has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to users. One feature which would be tremendously valuable to listeners would be a ‘Followed Artists’ feed.
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Spotify is, by far, the world’s largest music streaming service. The company currently boasts 191 million monthly users and the music of over 2 million artists. They add nearly 20,000 songs per day.
Spotify also leads the industry from a development standpoint. Nearly every significant advance in music streaming technology over the last five years has started with the company, from offline access to direct upload distribution.
While the company is continuously taking steps to empower artists on their platform further, they have fallen short in doing the same for users. Listeners can choose to ‘Follow’ artists they love, but as of this moment, the tool has little use aside from automating the occasional push notification when relevant content becomes available on the platform. It’s not constant, however, as many fans never received notifications when the artists they follow release new music.
And if that’s true, which it is, then what is the purpose of the ‘Follow’ button?
It would benefit fans and artists alike if Spotify created a ‘Followed’ feed. This feature would operate much like a newsfeed on Facebook, except (ideally) in a more efficient manner. Users would use the feed to browse a timeline of updates regarding artists they have followed. This would include releases, as well as any supplementary information the platform allows (tour dates, new merch, playlists, etc.), listed in chronological order.
The advantages of adding this feature include:
- Higher likelihood of engagement with new releases for smaller artists
- Incentivizes more artists to promote their presence on Spotify
- The ability for the platform to ‘suggest’ other artists based on taste
- Would open the door to allowing additional supplemental content offerings in the future, such as news updates, video releases, etc.
The cons are…Well, the cons are nonexistent.
A ‘Followed Artists’ feed is a win-win for everyone involved. Spotify no doubt has a long list of developments in their production pipeline, but this one feels like its long overdue. Is there any chance we will ever see it, or something similar, brought to life? Only time will tell.