I hate tabloidy headlines with question marks. As in "Queen Elizabeth: Is She a Transvestite?", "The Moon: Is It Made of Cheese?" or "Linkbait: Will It Ever End?".
I forget where I first heard this (the idea isn't mine) but I believe that in almost every case, the answer is "No." Then, the article usually goes on to explain why not.
pretty sure the rule is not that you have to use your real name, but rather the name you're commonly known as in 'real' life. Madonna, in this case, is fine
Except that only works if you're famous, there have already been dozens of examples of people whose online identity (and even offline) is mostly accessed through their pseudonym and who got restricted or banned from G+ for using that pseudonym. Violet Blue (from TFA) is one (and, you know, not only is it her "official real name" she's given two techtalks at Mountain View), Doctor Popular an other one[2], Skud[0] yet an other one, and he listed a bunch of other accounts suspended for a number of name-related reasons including pen names, adding pseudonyms to your real name or somebody at google not liking your real name[1] (the latter being VB's issue but she was far from the only one).
And of course, being banned from G+ for using your real name is one thing, but it also partially or completely lock you out of other, unrelated Google services (Reader, Picasa, Data Liberation, your Google profile, potentially GMail and Google Chat). G+ is a death trap.
As lots of people have proven already, this doesn't work. There were suspensions of people that went by their 'commonly used name'. Lots of people still cannot use their 'commonly used name' because Google likes to play the 'I don't believe that you provide a common name for you. Prove it!' card.
'Commonly known' is totally undefined and the process to 'verify' this fact (why? why?) is undefined as well. So the whole rule is - bull..
As someone else said it: It's really just a 'give us the name on your passport' rule, with exceptions for celebrities and some very vocal/prominent/supported few.
The de-facto rule is 'your real name' since they ask for government ID in case your profile gets flagged: "Please select a clear, readable copy of your valid driver's license, national ID card, or other photo ID. Our team will not take action if you send a photo of anything other than your ID card." (from https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?conta... ).
"we need to verify that your identity matches the one on the profile"
That doesn't necessarily mean that the profile has your [full] legal name attached to it just that it is properly associated with you. YMMV and probably will.
The rules say that, but that's not how it's been enforced. Dr. Popular was removed for weeks even after sending proof that that's what everyone calls him, and Dr. Kiki was not reinstated for weeks even after fixing her profile.
I'm a heavy Spotify user because it is so much more convenient than the alternatives. I love not having to care about buying, downloading, uploading, sorting, tagging and generally messing about with files.
Most of the time, I don't even have to make my own playlists: I just find someone else's that looks interesting, mark it for "Available offline", and listen to that for a while.
I'm not interested in "owning" music (whatever that means these days). I am interested in listening to it, and Spotify makes this very easy.
In comparison, the whole "locker" business seems very messy, and rather unnecessary. I can't for the life of me see what the advantage would be.
