And yet, my heart still belongs to Lala

I didn’t open Spotify a few days and when I turned it back on I got a notification new to me: “you have a new follower“.

Please tell me if you ever got that from Spotify. I’ve never.

I recognized the follower’s name and a upon seeing mutual follows, saw old friends. A track on their playlist moved me and I had no way to thank them.

The primordial on-line music platform Lala got it right from the start when they transformed from physical media exchange to digital/cloud music : iTunes and more – a limited social network for ephemeral interest in musical audio content.

It was gorgeous. You could buy or rent tracks for download. Stream for monthly subscription.

Lala Social Feature: Forecast (4 Cast)

I’ve studied on-line communities since e-mail groups in the 90’s – Lala was exemplary in demanding equanimity among its subject matter: everybody gets the same real estate.

With even a small number of users, that signal was enough to care about another user even though we have diverse affinities.