Spotify and Facebook: invasive or innovative?

If you don’t have it already, you’ve sure seen others using it on your Facebook feed. Spotify has officially burst onto the scene in the United States thanks to a little help from the biggest social networking site on the planet.

Just a few weeks ago, you had to be somebody special to use Spotify, the European based internet music-streaming service. And for some reason, people were all over it. Despite similarities to last.fm and other basic streaming sites, Spotify had that extra dash of exclusivity and European flair.

But now that’s all over. Spotify no longer requires an invitation to join the massively popular website. Facebook, in its drive to have social networking be the focal point of everyone’s lives, has teamed up with Spotify to highlight the importance of music in human relations.

In order to create a Spotify account so that you can listen to basically any music you want via the Internet, all you have to do is press a “join” button — Facebook does the rest for you. Spotify takes all of your information — demographics, biographics, interests, even “likes”  — from your profile and uses this data to build your account.

There’s no denying this is a bit invasive. After a lot of press, questioning and social networking turmoil, it seems as though people are finally warming up to the idea of Facebook supplying Spotify with personal information — or at least accepting it.

Think what you will of this business partnership, but there’s no foreseeable end in sight. As Facebook prepares to integrate more and more of the Internet into its all-encompassing social services, more collaborations like this are sure to surface.

For now, take advantage of what you can. Spotify is only sharing its services with Facebook users without charge for six months. After the fact, users will have to pay $4.99 to access the service’s digitally transmitted music catalog.