Spotify Is Reportedly Cooking Up A Social Listening Feature For Users
Spotify is a big name in the streaming audio market and hit 100 million paid subscribers in April. Spotify is also the reason that the EU is set to launch a probe against Apple. Spotify is working on a new social listing feature that will allow users to listen to their favorite music with friends.
The feature is called Social Listening, and it allows multiple people to add songs to a queue that you can all listen to at the same time. For the friends to add songs to the queue, they do have to scan the QR-style Spotify Special Listening code. The music isn't synchronized meaning you won't be hearing the same part of the song at the exact same time; it's merely a shared playlist of songs.
Spotify is trying to make its platform more social and give friends a reason to recommend downloading the app. Subscribers being able to listen to music with friends or family that are far apart could create a more intimate listening experience and get people to listen for longer periods of time. Ideally, Spotify needs to sync the music, so the listeners are on the same note of the song at the same time.
Social Listening is different from the Collaborative Playlists that anyone can add music to. Spotify has offered no indication of when Social Listening might launch for users to try out or even if the feature would launch, simple adding that it is "always testing new products and experiences..."
The screenshots here are via TechCrunch and came from a person who found the code hidden inside the Android app. For now, only Spotify employees have access to the feature.
