The Social Music Tech Revolution
By: Jack Diserens
Tags: Music Technology, Tech, Music, Social, Spotify

So now that we’ve cleared up what social music tech is, the ways that it is broken today, and outlined why exactly a “success story” can’t be found, let’s dive into what the “winner” might look like in the future:

1. Leverage My Data — One of the most discussed trends of the last five years has been that of “big data”. The most innovative products have found a way to utilize data that we already create in order to deliver actionable value back to us. Listener data is something that we create by the truckload today, yet it is largely left untouched. You may be asking the question: “Hold up — companies like Spotify and Pandora are already leveraging my data really well — through creating personalized playlists and radio stations that I love”. Yes — this is true — but this is leveraging listener data for discovery rather than social. Think about it — when was the last time that your listener data uniquely sparked a social interaction for you? The most successful example that we have seen is the “Spotify Wrapped Campaign” which happened at year end. We finally got a glimpse under the hood of our listener data, and people showed up on social media in record numbers to discuss the data. The social music tech solution will not just leverage data for social purposes annually…instead it will constantly leverage this data every second in order to visually show where my music taste overlaps with friends, where the opportunities for recommendations and discovery are, as well as areas where brands/labels/artists might be able to join in the conversation and monetize users. The latter of which might be most important for a start-up to enter the space and remain afloat. After speaking with Conor Healy, Director at Music Tech Investment Group Raised in Space Enterprises, he mentioned that “Turntable.FM is a prime example of the challenges surrounding these companies. Despite scaling to millions of users, Turntable never found effective ways to monetize these users. That, along with licensing challenges/label relations ultimately stifled growth and led to the platform’s swift demise”.

Photo by Daniel Fontenele on Unsplash

2. The Gamification of Gratification — Who doesn’t love the feeling of a successful music recommendation? We tell a friend about a song we think they’ll love, then the next day they tell us how we hit the nail on the head. This feels good as hell! It is a rush of serotonin, and to be honest, it’s downright addicting. It’s the reason that John Cusack is making mixtapes in High Fidelity, and my friends and I constantly fight over the aux chord when we’re in the same car. What if we could both bottle the social gratification from a successful song recommendation, and increase the frequency that these “lightning bolts” occur? The successful social music tech of the future will leverage data and gamification in order to tap into the serotonin release of a recommendation gone well. As a song is recommended to a friend, the life of that song will then be tracked moving forward. Was it listened to 35 times by the recipient? Forwarded to 6 friends? Added to their “Sweat It Out” playlist? All of these insights are incredibly valuable. If they are successfully delivered back to the recommender, we now have a very sticky product. Now what if this were boiled down to an “influencer score” that could be competed and boasted amongst friends? John Cusack might own a tech company rather than a record store.

3. Let Me Consume — As of 2019, 40,000 new songs were added to Spotify every day. That’s insane. For many of us, this is entirely too much. The content overload has left many people huddled in a corner in the fetal position, listening only to the music they’ve always known and loved. When we think about it, however, music isn’t the only medium which has experienced a boom in content. We have seen similar trends within news, video, sports, health, and countless other areas. The only difference between music and the rest is the fact that music has not drastically evolved in how we consume. We need to look no further than Instagram to see how content delivery has evolved for Millenials and Gen Z. In 2018, the content format of the “story” surpassed the “feed”, growing at a rate 15x that of feeds. Lengthy, permanent content feed posts have taken the backseat to quick, temporary story posts that are a maximum of 15 seconds. Consumers have short attention spans and they want to find the newest and best content with minimal effort. I am not arguing that artists need to reduce the length of their songs. I am arguing that the social music tech of the future will find a way to deliver moments of discovery within short and powerful song clips, no longer than 15 seconds, in a convenient place where users are already consuming.