Spotify is introducing a manner so that you can chat with your mates on the app in a bid to change into a extra social content material consumption app.
Customers have shared Spotify hyperlinks for music and podcasts with others outdoors the platform for years. With this function, Spotify needs customers to do extra of that inside the app whereas additionally protecting the historical past of shared content material, so customers don’t need to go seek for a music.
Messages are solely one-on-one, and you may solely begin a chat with somebody with whom you could have beforehand shared content material. Which means when you have a collaborative playlist with somebody, or have joined a jam or a mix, you can begin a dialog with them. This additionally applies to individuals on a Household or Duo plan with you. When you ship a request, they must approve it to begin a dialog.
Outdoors of Spotify, if somebody sends a Spotify hyperlink to you on platforms like Instagram, Fb, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or TikTok, you possibly can faucet on it and approve their request to speak. Alternatively, you possibly can ship an invitation hyperlink to somebody in your contacts.
The corporate mentioned that customers ought to proceed sharing content material outdoors Spotify, and the brand new message function is a “complement” to that.
Customers can entry messages by tapping on their profile footage and accessing conversations beneath the Messages part on the hover bar situated on the left. They’ll react to particular messages utilizing emoji as properly.
The corporate mentioned that messages are encrypted at relaxation and in transit; nevertheless, messages are usually not protected by end-to-end transcription. The corporate proactively seems to be at messages to verify if they’re breaking its guidelines. What’s extra, Spotify mentioned that customers can report messages, and the corporate will examine these messages towards its phrases of service and platform guidelines.
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Final month, Spotify Chief Product and Expertise Officer Gustav Söderström hinted in the course of the firm’s quarterly name that the buyer expertise can be rather more interactive on the app. The brand new messages function appears to be a transfer in that course.
Spotify is rolling out the messages function to each premium and free customers over 16 in choose markets in Latin and South America, solely on cellular variations. The corporate mentioned that the function will develop to the US, Canada, Brazil, the EU, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand within the coming weeks.
Over time, Spotify has had just a few social components, like having the ability to comply with somebody and take a look at what they take heed to. That has been altering with the introduction of options like feedback on podcasts final yr and a redesigned feed with a deal with video.
Final yr, in an interview with TechCrunch, Spotify VP of Podcast Product Maya Prohovnik didn’t deny the concept of feedback on music tracks as properly.
In current months, users on social media have complained about Spotify’s interface being too cluttered with options. My colleague Amanda Silberling, who left Spotify for Apple Music, had an analogous downside.
“There’s an amazing show of visible litter from the time it takes to navigate from Spotify’s residence web page to the music you’re searching for,” she mentioned.
Whereas messages would possibly nudge some to share extra content material with associates, it may additionally annoy some who’ve been feeling that the app is getting extra overwhelming. Fortunately, you possibly can go to Settings > Privateness and social and disable messages.