We don't need "help." This is simply feedback. Yes the new activity feed sucks and it is an insult to our intelligence. Spotify's decision to have us automatically unfollow our friends, stick us with zero followers, empty out our activity feed, and automatically force us to follow artists is an abomination.
But I finally figured out why they did it. It is part of a broader strategy to hold the entire music industry hostage. Spotify does not want us to follow our facebook friends. They made that abundantly clear when they took the liberty of forcing everbody to unfollow everybody. They do however want us to follow artists. Why? So they can justify paying nonexistent royalties to the record labels. They justify these nonexistent royalties by saying to the artist and labels, "hey you have 500,000 followers. Don't complain about the royalties. Spotify is now an essential tool for you to connect with your fans."
Well played, Spotify. You found an ingenious way to trick the record labels into thinking they must put all their music on Spotify, or else forgo all of these tens of thousands of potential followers. But how did these artists obtain so many thousands of followers practically overnight? Simple. Spotify tricked their users into following these artists with the new updates. So why didn't Spotify automatically have us follow our facebook friends, since Spotify is obviously now deciding who we do and do not follow? The answer is simple. Spotify does not want us to follow little people, because the little people will clog up our activity feed and prevent us from seeing what the artists want us to see.
So why the sudden emphasis on following artists instead of friends? It all goes back to royalties, or lack thereof. Instead of paying royalties, Spotify can offer the artists this monopoly money in the form of followers. I wonder how many followers these artists gained overnight when these updates went through. I'll bet some of them went from 10,000 to 100,000 overnight. Nice trick having us automatically follow artists. Now Spotify can just pay artists with these wooden nickels, and tell them, "you can'e even be a successful artist if you don't have your music on spotify, because you would be leaving a potential 100,000 followers on the table." But of course they are bulls___ followers, since Spotify tricked us into following them in the first place.
And here is the kicker: Any new suggestions on who to follow are the most ubiquitous, overexposed celebrities you can imagine. People like Rhianna and Britney Spears and Michelle Obama. We already live in a society where the cult of celebrity is far too dominant, while normal people are given no voice. Spotify has done their best to perpetuate this trend. God forbid you should follow a facebook friend, because they are little people and they don't matter. Spotify prefers to further inflate the already overinflated egos of overexposed celebrities by tricking their users into following these celebrities. Once again, all part of their plan to simultaneously avoid paying royalties and hold the entire music industry hostage with their promise of "followers" - followers who were decieved and tricked into following in the first place.
So no, I don't want to follow Rolling Stone Magazine, the Billboard top 100, Rhianna, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Michelle Obama. I want to follow my facebook friends. But Spotify decided on behalf of all of us little people that we should not follow other little people.
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random