Everyday I'm Creepin' (On My Friends' Tastes in Music)

A while back we discussed social media outlets that provide information about the habits of the user and their peers, and about how the user's response to this information may vary depending on the outlet from which they received it, I got to thinking about social media that I regularly use that exemplify these phenomena. One that I thought of afterwards was a music streaming program called Spotify, which allows you to listen to music of your choice for free.*
*Naturally, in order to compensate for this they bombard you with ads of the most annoying variety, but such is life.
Not too long ago my iTunes library was stored on only an external hard drive for three terrible weeks, but I managed to stave off withdrawal by replicating most of my music library (with the extremely unfortunate exceptions of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles) in playlists on Spotify. Whilst doing this, I noticed one of Spotify's more peculiar features. Along the right side of the page there's a live feed of what your Facebook friends are listening to at the time, which first made my feel alternately creepy and terrible (being the music prude that I am I found myself judging people based on what they were listening to). However, after a week or so I noticed that one of my closest friends kept listening to the same song over and over again by I band that I had heard of but hadn't gotten around to listening to yet. So, I added the song to my playlist. And then the album. And then all of the artist's albums. And soon enough I was musically smitten.
It was then that I thought about what we had discussed in class, about how people are more likely to look favorably upon things that their friends have also looked favorably upon. It was interesting to notice how Spotify uses this as a tool to introduce their users to new music and to realize that I experienced this exact phenomenon myself. Admittedly, had it not been a close friend with similar tastes as I who was listening to the song, I probably wouldn't have sought it out. Basically, I'm glad that the social influences the we discussed worked on me and that I unknowingly demonstrated their effectiveness. Now if only Spotify would just get rid of those pesky ads...