Spotify wants to help you discover music, just like everyone else

Spotify has announced new features designed to help people "discover" music, because that's apparently something people have difficulty doing. MusicAlly explains how it works:

The new discovery features include a Follow tab to help users follow individual artists, celebrities, music experts and other users, and also a Discover tab designed to significantly improve Spotify’s recommendation features, suggesting new music based on users’ habits. Users will also be able to build their own “collections” on the service, adding albums to an online collection rather than having to save them to individual playlists.

So it's not really a tool to discover new music, just yet another way of shovelling more of the same at people.

"Hey, Coldplay fan - have you heard Keane? Hey, Oasis fan, have you heard Ocean Colour Shitting Scene?"

God help us all.

Meanwhile, the company claim they've not got five million people paying them for their service, and that they've written cheques for $500million - 70% of revenues - since they started. These are big numbers when viewed from this end of the street; it's only when that money gets split between hundred and thousands of rights holders that it sounds a bit less impressive.

And, in the latest round of digital refuseniks capitulating, they're bringing Metallica to Spotify. Yes, that's Lars Ulrich and Napster demon Sean Parker reconciled. It's not clear what good Metallica's ten year battle against modernity did them.