Today, Spotify announces a major evolution of its service. We caught up with our friend and head of Spotify Legal, James Duffet-Smith, who gave us the exclusive:

“In what marks our most significant upgrade since Spotify’s launch in late 2008, we’re introducing a wide range of exclusive new features that will not only allow our users to discover, share and manage music more effectively, but make the overall Spotify experience more enjoyable and expansive.

We’ve all been working very hard on this. It’s a major release for us and integrating social features into Spotify is a big step forward. We hope that our users love it as much as we do”

The major innovation is that of the fully-customisable ‘Spotify Music Profile’. Allowing users to better share music with friends, it works in three distinct ways:

BUILD

Build your Spotify Music Profile by adding friends and other Spotify users to your ‘People’ sidebar, to the right of the screen.

Connect to Facebook: You can now connect to Facebook through Spotify, allowing you to add friends (who have done the same) into your Spotify profile.

Add Spotify users: You can also add other Spotify users by simply searching for them by username. For example, searching under ‘spotify:user:username’ will bring up their profile (if published).

PUBLISH

Publish a link to your Spotify Music Profile anywhere on the web.

Publish your Profile: This allows your friends to follow your musical tastes, top artists and favourite tracks and albums by publishing your profile to your Facebook page, blog, personal website or indeed, anywhere on the web you choose. Your weekly top six tracks and artists can also be published.

DISCOVER & SHARE

A number of new and exciting social functions will allow you to discover and share music like never before.

Inbox: A great way to share. Simply drag and drop a track or album over a friend’s name and it will appear in their ‘Inbox’.

Facebook ‘Feed’: Music your friends have posted on Facebook will be visible in the unique ‘Feed’ section.

Popularity Count: Playlists you’ve posted will display how many times they’ve been added by your friends. Clicking on the number brings up their names. In another significant innovation, the ‘Library’ function will transform Spotify into a total music management platform, enabling you to combine your personal music library with ours and browse it with ease via the ‘Filter’ bar. The three key features of the ‘Library’ are:

LOCAL FILES

Missing any music in Spotify? Now you can import a link to all the music files stored on your computer with a simple click of a button. Local files shared as part of a playlist will also be playable if matched with tracks in the Spotify catalogue.

WIRELESS SYNC

Tracks that you add to Spotify locally can be saved to playlists and transferred to your mobile phone without connecting a USB cable.

STARRED

Every track or album on Spotify can now be ‘starred’, allowing you to tag/bookmark your favourites into a special sub-folder.

Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify, comments:

“Today Spotify has moved a step closer to making music more connected, and realizing our dream of becoming THE music platform. We want to empower users to share and discover music in a way that hasn’t been possible up until now. It’s never been easier to enjoy music together.” The update will start to be rolled out to both our Free and Premium users from today.

The News of the Week

1

New indie music TV station ‘LAVA’ is set to launch on SKY channel 378 from March 29th Music News

2

New figures show that the impact of piracy on the British music business is uncovered in new figures that show nearly 10,000 jobs could be lost in the industry by 2015 iStockAnalyst

3

A newly created “trust mark” is going to be utilised for Music services such as iTunes, MySpace Music, Tesco, Spotify, HMV and Rough Trade which will highlight licensed music download and streaming sites Arstechnica

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The top news stories of the week

1

It is estimated that Net Piracy has caused the media industries to lose £10 billion pounds in 2008. Not only money will be a losing factor, as in the future a quarter of a million British jobs could be at risk. Guardian

2

The music labels love the idea of bringing people’s music collections into the cloud, meaning in web spaced storage, particularly because it might make consumers excited about buying music again NY Times

3

Apple is estimated to have sold 120,000 iPads when it opened pre-orders on Friday Music Week

4

It’s being reported that service-based companies, as opposed to streaming or download music services, are rapidly becoming the hottest music start-ups. Billboard

The Top News of the Week:

1

BBC digital chief Erik Huggers announces plans, in an interview, to scrap 200 of the BBC’s websites, with the promise of more quality and less quantity. Guardian

And you can find the Original Guardian announcement here Huggers promises BBC cuts will leave ‘greater space for others’

2

Pink Floyd have won a legal battle against EMI, meaning that their album tracks will no longer be sold individually online. BBC

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The Top News of the Week

1

BBC Radio 6 was recently doomed to closure, a decision which has caused huge outcry from the public. Rumours have spread that the BBC are reconsidering, but BBC director of audio and music Tim Davie suggests otherwise. BBC’s Tim Davie: I’m passionate about 6 Music, too – but it has to go

2

iTunes representatives are asking artists to reconsider putting offering their songs on Amazon’s Daily Deal MP3 offers. Media memo

3

According to research, music videos account for 30.7% of all content on YouTube. Major Music groups even account for over 60% of the Top 50 videos of all time. Billboard

4

A US anti-piracy treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, may come into effect in the UK, which would allow users actions to be monitored online and secretly reported back to a copyright contact point. This would mean that people living in the UK caught downloading illegally could be faced prison sentences and substantial fines in the near future. Independent

5

Apple have filed a suit against rival mobile phone manufacturer HTC for Patent infringement. Many of the multi-touch features on the Android phones are apparently too similar to Apple products, which is the main reason for the lawsuit. Tech crunch

The Top News of the Week

1

Three companies have complained that Google uses unfair tactics in the war of the search engines. Google are suspected of keeping advertising prices “artificially high” and manipulating the market search engine to favour their own products, amongst other things, the search engine has come under the scrutiny of it’s main competitors. If found guilty of malpractice, Google could face a fine of up to $2.3 billion: Times

2

Wired have taken a look at Google’s influence of Music in the past and present, and make predictions for the future, see the article here: Wired

3

Sellaband, who for years have been giving funds to up and coming musicians, are filing for bankruptcy. Not all hope is lost as they are hoping to find a buyer very soon: Billboard

4

Rumours are abound that Sean Parker, one of the co-founders of Napster, has become the first major US investor of Spotify. This could suggest that Spotify will make its appearance outside of the European continent for the first time: Tech crunch

5

Simon Cowell has declared his stance on piracy on the net by putting his name on a “strongly-worded letter”, alongside some other big names in the industry, in hopes of getting anti-piracy laws pushed through which would ensure that repeat offenders be cut off from using the net, read about it here: Telegraph

If you have been living under a rock this Christmas or don’t live in the UK, then you must have been aware of the Xmas battle for Number 1 in the charts: X Factor’s Joe McElderry Vs Rage Against The Machine (RATM). It’s no secret that the power of Facebook made RATM victory, so here at The Worst Kept Secret we took it upon ourselves to have a bit of fun and see what TV reality music stars have the largest presence on Social Media.

We used the big 4: Facebook & MySpace (Social Networks), Twitter (Micro-blogging) & YouTube (Content Community) to do our research and looked at how many fans, friends, followers and subscribers they have.

Enjoy and please feel free to discuss & let people know the results.

10: Susan Boyle
Facebook (1) Twitter (n/a) Myspace (n/a) YouTube (4)

Britain’s Got Talent’s Queen and cat lover Susan Boyle drops in at number 10 on our list of Talent Based Reality TV Stars and their Social Media platforms. The crazy haired phenomenon tops the Facebook Fan Page with a whopping 1.77 million fans, and the video of her first BGT audition on YouTube has amassed well over 80million views, putting her fourth in our YouTube rankings! That’s enough to make anyone’s hair go wild!

9: Cheryl Cole
Facebook (2) Twitter (11) Myspace (n/a) Youtube (11)

Reality contestant, turned reality Princess with the world at her feet, Cheryl Cole leaps into ninth position on our chart. The rags to riches beauty has 1.5million Facebook fans, and without much of a social media presence or interaction with her community, she still has the power to overthrow governments. Cheryl for Prime Minister!

8. JLS
Facebook (8) Twitter (10) Myspace (18) Youtube (7)

X-Factor runner up’s to Alexander Burke (who doesn’t appear on our ladder), JLS fly into a healthy eighth in the world position, with a strong social media following. Their Facebook Fan Page boosts almost 400,000 followers, but it’s their Twitter page that we are most interested in.
The hunky chaps have almost 80,000 followers and interact nicely with them.

7. Adam Lambert
Facebook (7) Twitter (3) Myspace (11) Youtube (n/a)

American Idol 2009 Runner Up, Adam Lambert climbs into seventh in our chart. The 27-year-old Pop/Rock sensation has almost 300,000 Twitter followers and 400,000 Facebook Fans! At The Worst Kept Secret were not too familiar with his music, but we do think he looks the part for a Twilight movie cameo.

6. David Cook
Facebook (13) Twitter (8) Myspace (10) Youtube (7)

Multi-Talented Musician and winner of American Idol 2008, David Cook is our sixth place social media prince. He is floating about in the digital world on all four of the major networks, with his Myspace game boosting a healthy 187,000 friends and his Twitter with over 85,000.

5. Jordin Sparks
Facebook (22) Twitter (1) Myspace (2) Youtube (8)

In at Number 5 on our Social Media chart is American Idol 2007 winner, Jordin Sparks. Now Sparks’ Facebook page may be slightly below the Susan Boyle’s and Cheryl Cole’s, but it’s her Twitter and YouTube that shows the most life. The 20 year old tops our Twitter list with a mind blowing 435,000 followers, and not only does she have the largest herd of sheep, she also interacts with them well, and has tweeted over 6,300 times!
Jordin Sparks also is up there in our YouTube chart with over 120million views, placing her second to the video queen Leona Lewis!

4. Leona Lewis
Facebook (5) Twitter (n/a) Myspace (4) Youtube (1)

The UK’s most heart-felt voice and X Factor Queen, Leona Lewis is the highest UK artist in our chart. The 2006 X Factor winner is by far and away the Queen of YouTube with an eye watering 230million video views! That’s over 100million more than second place Jordin Sparks. Now while we all love to hear and watch Miss Lewis, her social media statistics elsewhere are extremely impressive also.
Her Facebook Fan Page has over 670,000 and her Myspace page has almost 300,000 friends. Gwan Miss Lewis! Moreover, Leona’s ground breaking first single “Bleeding Love” came in at Number 11 in the best selling singles of the decade!
That’s some ‘bleeding’ pennies for mogul Simon Cowell!

3. David Archuleta
Facebook (10) Twitter (2) Myspace (6) Youtube (6)

As we reach the Top 3, you have to be ready for some seriously alarming statistics. 2008 American Idol Runner-Up, David Archuleta is our highest ranking male artist. The 19 year old Musician rose to fame as a teen sensation on the US Talent show and since then has gone on to sell over a million albums worldwide and build up a strong online fan base. Archuleta’s community features highly across all four networks, with his Twitter showing almost 300,000, his Facebook Fan Page has over 250,000 and his Myspace has over 230,00 friends.
That’s some serious marketing power!

2. Kelly Clarkson
Facebook (6) Twitter (7) Myspace (3) Youtube (3)

The original reality TV Music Queen, an American Idol 2002 winner, in at number two on our chart, is the super talented, Pop/Rock sensation Kelly Clarkson. Although Clarkson doesn’t top any of our individual charts, it’s her consistency across the four major networks that suggest how strong her community fan base is. The Multi Grammy Award Winning artist has a YouTube channel with over 100million views, a Facebook Fan Page with over 530,000, a Twitter page with over 100,000 and a Myspace page with wait for it… over 460,000 friends!
Did someone say Social Media was a fad?

1. Carrie Underwood
Facebook (3) Twitter (6) Myspace (2) Youtube (5)

Top of the pops, Queen of the night, leader of the crusade and lion in the jungle, is an unexpected artist. The winner of our Reality TV within Social Media chart is the 2005 American Idol winner, Carrie Underwood.
Like Kelly Clarkson, Underwood doesn’t feature as a leader of any of our individual Social networking charts, but her concrete Social Media game is of vast proportion. The multi-talented blonde beauty climbs to the top of our chart with an impressive array of statistics.
A Facebook Fan Page with over 800,000 fans, her Twitter has over 130,000 followers, a YouTube channel with over 66million views and a Myspace page with over 630,000 friends.

Well there you have it, the Top 10 Talent Based Reality TV Stars and their Social Media presence. If this proves anything, it is that having a wide variety of fans across your free social networking sites is as important as anything. Imagine how much revenue is generated by having those statistics turned into single and album sales, and you can see the power between Reality TV and Social Media.

As we begin a new year and a new decade, and as Reality TV paints the daily news and with Social Media sharing it, we can only wait in anticipation for the next X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, American Idol, Pop Stars, Pop Idol, Making The Band and Fame Academy style show to dumb down our minds into Simon Cowell and Simon Fullers pockets and bring to the masses the next array of speculative break through talent.

Also if you want to know how you can up your Social Media level and get networks as strong as these guys WITHOUT going on a talent show, then download our free ebook and ecourse: The 10 Commandments of Music and Social Media.

Article by Luca Massaro
Images by Google

Here are our top 5 news pieces this week:

1: Here’s a list of the most watched videos on YouTube, including music specific videos. Susan Boyle is naturally out in front, with Pitbull, Miley Cyrus and Evian’s Roller Babies advert all making an appearance: Top Youtube vids

2: Last.fm has revealed that Lady Gaga is the year’s most listened to artist. Tracks from her debut album ‘The Fame’ have been played in excess of 18.5 M times by the site’s 35M-strong community: Lady Gaga & Last FM

3: Digital distributor TuneCore has added MySpace Music to its roster of outlets – the first time it’s worked with an ad-supported streaming service and shared the revenues with its artists. As with its other deals, artists will pay a flat fee for distribution to MySpace Music. So if you are a musician, check this out.

4: The 2009 in digital music and some predictions for the year ahead from Media Shift’s author, Jason Feinberg: Read Here

5: EMI’s Capitol Records has filed a copyright infringement suit against video-sharing site Vimeo due to the site allowing the uploading of UGC lip sync music videos. The suit claims that Vimeo “induces and encourages its users to upload audiovisual works”. Interesting read