Spotify announced the feature in a news post today. It adds an additional social element to the music streaming platform that’s designed to get groups of friends involved with the company’s app. By opening the doors to collaborative in-the-moment playlist creation, Spotify intends to increase overall engagement.
Using the Spotify Chat Extension for Facebook Messenger, you can now create a new Group Playlist on Spotify and immediately share it with your friends. They can then add their own songs, provided they’re in the Facebook group where the bot is active. To add a song, you click Messenger’s blue “+” icon next to the message composer and choose the Spotify extension.
In an effort to make sure the feature is accessible to everyone, you won’t even need a Spotify account to use the extension. Everyone in the group can add songs to the playlist, involving all the members of the party whether they’re a Spotify member or not.
The company said it sees people using Group Playlists to collectively define the soundtrack for social events. It will prevent one person from dominating the playlist, allowing everyone involved to get their favourite songs playing through the speakers.
“With Group Playlists for Messenger, users can create new Spotify playlists with friends and immediately begin collaborating to build out their perfect mix,” said Spotify. “Ideal for parties, road trips, or simply collecting new favorites, Group Playlists provide a seamless way for users to collaborate and share music more easily than ever before.”
The announcement comes at a difficult time for Spotify. Having passed the 140 million active users mark earlier this month, the company is continuing to grow at a steady rate. However, it’s also failing to narrow its significant losses. In its earnings report, it reported a net loss of €539.2m – double the figure in 2015 – despite seeing revenue increase 50 percent to €2.9bn.
As it prepares to go public, Spotify is locking itself into costly contracts with music publishers that it hopes will eventually lead to more revenue going forward. The company believes it will generate more money as its scale expands. Adding new socially-oriented features like Group Playlists will help to prolong the firm’s growth, giving it a greater chance of following through on its comments to investors.
You can get access to Group Playlists in Messenger today via the link to the Facebook extension. You can also add it directly from within Messenger by searching for the Spotify Chat Extension. Once you’ve got it installed, invite your friends and start building your collective summer mix. It’s a new take on shared playlists that lets everyone participate, including your acquaintances who don’t actively use Spotify.
