Music is connective, and this is something that Spotify is trying to use to its advantage. Aware that people love to talk about their musical tastes, the company has come up with Listening Activity, a new way to share what you are listening to with the people you are connected to.
Spotify itself already lets you share your listening stream, and there are various apps that can plug into Spotify to share the data as well. The new Listening Activity, as well as the new Request to Jam, are the latest addition to Messages.
The popularity of Messages since it launched last year is Spotify’s reason for adorning it with new features and options. When the company says “users have sent nearly 340 million messages, showing that listeners are excited to share what they’re streaming”, it is hard to argue.
Spotify explains the Listening Activity feature by saying:
Listening activity is an opt-in feature that allows you to display what music you’re currently listening to within Messages in real time. If you’re not actively listening, your most recently played song will be displayed instead. It’s visible only to friends and family you have already connected with on Messages, and you can see others’ activity even if you haven’t turned your own activity on, as long as they’ve opted in.
Here is how it works:
- Users can turn on listening activity via Privacy and social settings, accessible through the side drawer next to the “View profile” button.
- Once enabled, activity appears in the chat row of the side drawer and at the top of Messages chats.
- If a user taps on their friend or family member’s listening activity, they’ll be able to add tracks to their library, start playback, open the track’s context menu, or react with one of six standard emojis.
The second feature – Request to Jam – is limited to Premium subscribers. Spotify says:
To complement listening activity, we’re making it easier to turn musical moments into shared experiences with Request to Jam, a new way for users to invite friends or family they’re connected with in Messages into a live listening session.
Our Jam feature has been growing in popularity, with daily active users more than doubling year over year. With Jam, users can listen from anywhere—but it can be hard to know when your friends are available to listen together when you’re apart. Now, users can see when someone is already listening, join them, and even message in sync while listening so they can talk about what’s playing and what’s up next.
When friends are in a Jam together, participants see each other’s display name, as well as suggested songs based on their combined taste profiles. Users can leave a Jam whenever they choose, and pending Jam invitations will time out if they aren’t accepted within a few minutes
Both features will be available wherever Messages has launched
