Discover and Define

Social Design

Social design is the application of design methodologies in order to tackle complex human issues, placing the social issues as the priority. Historically, social design has been mindful of the designer's role and responsibility in society, and of the use of the design process to bring about social change.

Social Media

Spotify, with its integration with Facebook and Twitter, has allowed listeners to leverage their following on those social networks, simultaneously creating a social platform of their own. In this respect, by offering us another way to connect and socialize with friends, Spotify has become the newest social network. Spotify now allows users to listen and find out what your friends have or are listening to currently and the latest feature not allows for two devices to be paired together to play the same music simultaneously.

Spotify is experimenting with the idea that we don't use other formats of social media to share music, but rather create the Spotify app into the social media account, allowing friends to see what others are doing and listening to. Doing this means sharing your listening experiences will be seamless with one another, as long as they are on Spotify and not another form of a music streaming service, like Apple Music. Spotify wants to allow users of Spotify to be able to share their experiences with everyone, whether they use Spotify or not, this is because it means users are creating Spotify's own advertising, sharing their music experiences WITH Spotify, showing on different social media platforms and allowing links to the Spotify app, creates a larger user appeal.

The issue with sharing via another social media platform is to get the correct licencing and permission for that to happen. It is a logistical nightmare to incorporate a social media / social listening feature in the app. Which is mainly why it hasn't happened as of yet. 

Apple Music - Competitors Approach

Before, a user would have to use a third-party tool to share music with Instagram and Facebook Stories. Now, Apple allows users to share with these social media sites directly. To share a song they're listening to, users can select the "share" option. Both the Facebook and Instagram icon will appear below the Contacts and AirDrop share bar. Sharing to Instagram and Facebook will automatically generate an image that shows the Album cover, name of the song being listened to, and a background of the appropriate size. If shared to Instagram, it will generate a link that allows other users to listen to the shared song on Apple Music.