Spotify has come up with a debatable change for its users to sign-up. Recently, the company reported that as part of it’s big integration with Facebook, they have incorporated the use of Facebook Connect. Where it is an option on other websites to sign up and login to their service, Spotify has made it mandatory. This means that till one does not have a Facebook account, they cannot sign-up to Spotify. Facebook credentials would be required in this case. Talking about Spotify, its music app on Facebook would tell a user, which song his/her friends are listening to. The connection between the two has been deep and Spotify seems to work hard on making it better.
Spotify has made this change for the new members who are willing to sign-up for Spotify. Existing users of Spotify would not be affected by this change, as one might note the following message on the Spotify sign-up page:
You need a Facebook account to register for Spotify. If you have an account, just log in below to register. If you don’t have a Facebook account, get one by clicking the ‘create an account’ link below.
Darren, a Spotify employee even had answers to a Get Satisfaction question, which was ”Can you sign up for Spotify without Facebook?” Darren said the following to defend his post:
Hey Guys thanks for your question, Unfortunately you will need a Facebook account to access Spotify from now on, unless you already have an account set up.
This does not stop you creating the Facebook account adding nothing to it and making it totally private as the Facebook account does not have to be actively used.
A few potential users were quite frustrated noting the change. To defend the company’s decision, there was yet another justification posted by a Spotify employee by the name of Andres. His note however was a much bigger and detailed one. He said that they consider this integration as a step to create an amazing new world of music discovery. Another point to justify was that, most of the users are on Facebook and it seems logical to integrate logins for the two. As it is, Spotify makes use of Facebook as part of their backend to power their social features. He asks users to assume this indirect sign-up as a virtual ‘passport’, which has been specifically designed to make the experience smoother and easier.
The explanation seems to have further fueled the fire as people who do not have Facebook accounts would have to make one. But in case of those users who prefer keeping these two services separate might have a conflict of thoughts. However, remembering just one username and password would definitely go in Spotify’s favor as many prefer using this option.
For the count, since fr conference last week, Spotify has had an addition of more than 1.3 million new monthly active users and 380,000 new daily active users as per App Data. As this data is unofficial, Spotify is believed to release new numbers soon.
The duo even have another connection as Spotify is one of Facebook’s 17 Open Graph launch partners that were announced at Facebook’s f8 conference last week.