Now You Need to Have Facebook to Sign Up For Spotify

But the increased cooperation also comes at what some call a heavy cost: Starting today, newcomers to Spotify need have to have a Facebook profile to sign up for the service.

As Digital Music News reports:

Here's what the registration prompt now says:

You need a Facebook account to register for Spotify. If you have an account, just log in below to register. If you don't have a Facebook account, get one by clicking the 'create an account' link below."

And we noticed that now, when you go to sign up for a new Spotify account, it automatically takes your Facebook info and starts the signup process for you. Which means before you've done anything to Spotify, it shows up knowing your name, email and date of birth.

Of course, as company reps have said, you could always start a blank, private Facebook page just to get Spotify. But the two services are clearly pushing users to link up -- something many have understandable privacy and other issues with.

Spotify released a statement today on the issue:

To us, this is all about creating an amazing new world of music discovery. As most of our users are already social and have already connected to Facebook, it seemed logical to integrate Spotify and Facebook logins. We already use Facebook as part of our backend to power our social features and by adopting Facebook's login, we've created a simple and seamless social experience.

From today, all new Spotify users will need to have a Facebook account to join Spotify. Think of it as like a virtual 'passport', designed to make the experience smoother and easier, with one less username and password to remember. You don't need to connect to Facebook and if you do decide to, you can always control what you share and don't share by changing your Spotify settings at any time.

We're constantly trying new things, always looking for feedback and we're always going to listen to our users, making changes based on this feedback wherever we can."

As the statement says, you can have Facebook and Spotify and not share anything or everything across the services. But some people are clearly upset at having to deal with Facebook at all.

What do you think? Should people be able to sign up for Spotify without having Facebook, or this not a big deal?

[Digital Music News]