Spotify Introduces Community Feature: See What Your Friends Are Playing

The music streaming app Spotify has acknowledged that it is creating a new feature that will be called Community. The new function will allow users to view the real-time music that their friends are streaming.

Mr. Chris Messina, a product lead at the private investing platform Republic, made the initial discovery of the new function earlier this month. Later, Spotify revealed that Community is in early testing, but it didn’t offer any other details.

However, as you can see in the screenshot above, the functionality shows a top carousel of the playlists you’re following, emphasizing when they were most recently updated. You may monitor your friends’ music sessions in real-time beneath the carousel.

Like on a PC, Spotify’s social integration on mobile presumably retrieves data from your Facebook friends list. Community is currently not accessible to everyone, let alone Android users. However, some iOS Safari users are in for an early treat because they can access the functionality by putting “Spotify: community” into the address bar.

How Did Spotify Discover People’s Interest?

By utilizing its Facebook integration to expand its friend network, the company’s beginnings as social music streaming app aided in its early development. Later on, though, Spotify focused more on personalization tools to set itself apart from streaming competitors. More so than watching what friends stream, playlists made specifically for each listener, like Spotify’s flagship Discover Weekly, had been assisting in attracting and retaining customers. As a result, the product de-emphasis of the company’s emphasis on consumers’ individual friend networks.

Despite the fact that some users continued to demand access to their friends’ mobile activity, the firm decided not to add this option in 2019 after a user request garnered 7,451 votes on its community boards. So Spotify decided to introduce this feature. 

What Is Their Main Focus?

To compete with some of the top music streaming services, like YouTube Music, the service only recently changed its emphasis to personalization options.

Does Community Feature Work in Spotify Now?

Nevertheless, the interface doesn’t seem to be usable at the moment, so you might want to hold off till it is formally released. The most recent development demonstrates Spotify’s efforts to offer its social face, which served as the cornerstone of its formative years, equal priority. Blend, a tailored experience that lets two pals combine their musical preferences, was introduced by Spotify last year.