Comments on: House Party: A Spotify Extension by Elon & Sankalp https://fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu/2020/05/08/house-party-a-spotify-extension-by-elon-sankalp/ MAS S.67 // Spring 2020 Tue, 19 May 2020 20:52:32 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 By: Anna Chung https://fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu/2020/05/08/house-party-a-spotify-extension-by-elon-sankalp/#comment-68 Thu, 14 May 2020 19:11:39 +0000 https://fixingsocialmedia.mit.edu/?p=847#comment-68 I love how timely this project is and the original inspiration from a spontaneous virtual dance party. I thought you did a really solid job of surveying existing social platforms and music platforms and presenting a strong argument for a tool like House Party. Even though you didn’t build the tool, you clearly researched the existing technical infrastructure and features of Spotify and provided some really compelling use cases for how the tool could be used. I also appreciated how you included potential metrics for success — something that often isn’t addressed in speculative design projects.

One thought I had was that the negative implications of echo chambers and bad actors aren’t as clear on platforms like Spotify (vs. platforms like Facebook). But I do wonder about other implications for the field of music curation — specifically for “expert” curators, like DJs. Would their jobs become obsolete as everyone becomes their own DJ? Or would this change what kinds of music become influential?

Overall a creative and well-researched project (and love the idea of the class Spotify playlist!).

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