Like most Americans, I’ve not bought a CD in a long time. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve only bought one album on iTunes in the last six months. Why? Well, like most of my friends I’m getting my music through an online subscription service. My service of choice right now is Spotify. It has a wide selection of music and apps for all my devices. It’s interface is not too bad to look at and my wife and I like sharing new discoveries with each other.
However, the more I play with Spotify the more I see some hidden potential for churches. Underneath what appears to be an online music service lies some pretty cool social media features that churches should take advantage of.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that Spotify is another social media network, however it does have some social media elements that your church could use to collaborate, discover and share new music. Let me show you what I mean:
It’s All about Following
We all know that radio is on the decline. There once was a time that the only way to discover new music was to let the radio dj curate the hits and be the tastemaker. However, with radio’s decline we have entered into a new era of music discovery.
One of the reasons why I love Spotify is the ability to discover new music. With Spotify, you can follow different users and see what they are listening to. I love finding a few people who I know have great taste in music and then seeing what they discover. Try setting up a Spotify account and encourage church members follow the account. This will allow church member to see in real time what new music the church is discovering and they can add it to their own collection as well.
Spotify also has a built in discovery tool that suggests what you might like as well. I have found this tool to be surprisingly accurate and as a result I’ve found a lot of new music that that I love.
Collaborate and Listen
Spotify makes it very easy for your church members to build their own playlists and share them with you. This is really great for when you are building a pre-worship or event playlist. Imagine telling your members what next week’s sermon topic is and letting them send you songs on that topic. You might be surprised what you get back.
Social Is Built In
With Spotify, social media is built into the platform. You can sign in with Facebook, share tracks on Twitter, SMS, email or with other Spotify users. With this feature, you can tweet out Sunday morning’s pre-worship playlist as the service is about to start. (Trust me, I have worked the sound booth enough to know that there is at least one person in the pew who wants to know what the song is that is currently playing.)
Now there are other services like Rdio, Mog and Pandora which offer some of the same features with their own twist. However, I found Spotify to be the most robust choice out there. Right now, Spotify offers a free trial to first-time users which I think is worth your time. So head over to Spotify, sign up and discover some new music for you and your church.
Question: How does music play into your social media strategy? Click here to share below.