(Credit: Spotify)
Spotify is now one step closer to becoming a social network for music. Two new features for Spotify's Messages platform, which first launched in August last year, are designed so you can better share what you enjoy listening to.
Listening activity allows you to share songs you're playing with all of your followers. It will automatically share what you’re listening to in the moment if you’re live on Spotify, or it opts for your last song played if you’re away from the service.
It’s an opt-in feature, so you’ll need to turn it on for anyone to view your listening habits. If you do, it’ll appear for everyone you’ve previously messaged on Spotify.
The person you’re messaging will find the your song choices in the side drawer of their Spotify app on both Android and iOS. It will also appear at the top of their conversation with you. They’re then able to play the track, add it to their library, or open a menu to learn more about the artist.
They can also send you one of six emojis to react to a song, similar to how it works on Instagram Stories. Your options are heart, thumbs up, crying while laughing, fire, holding back tears, or a pair of over-ear headphones.
To turn this feature on, head to your Profile on Spotify, and if available you’ll find an option called Activity off in the top right corner. That button will take you to the Privacy and social menu where you'll find an option called Listening activity. Toggle this to be turned on.
If you want to avoid your friends knowing what you’re listening to for a short period, you can use the Private session feature in the same menu. However, it's unclear if Spotify's system will be smart enough to know not to include your last song listened to within a Private session once you turn the feature off.
As with standard messaging on Spotify, this feature isn't yet available on desktop and it's unclear if Spotify ever plans to introduce it to platforms outside of its mobile apps.
You can also ask your friends to listen together live. A new feature called Request to Jam is available for Premium users to send a request to join a shared listening playlist. You can also send these requests to those who use the free version of Spotify.
If the person you're messaging accepts, they can become the host of the jam, and you can both add tracks to a shared queue to listen together remotely.
Both these new features are rolling out to Spotify soon with plans to be available for all users by “early February.” Before launch, Spotify showed Listening activity within its settings on its latest Android app, but it remains grayed out for the time being. It's unclear when exactly the feature will become available.
The next step for Spotify Messages is confirmed to be the introduction of group chats. Spotify says group chats will allow you to share tracks with multiple people at the same time. However, this remains a teaser from the brand with no clear release date or news around how many members can join a group.