Spotify appears to be testing a "Social Listening" feature that lets friends control the music together. This is similar-ish to its collaborative playlist feature, but it contains a real-time component. The idea is that collaborators are listening to the same songs, together — whether physically in the same room, or apart.
Software engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who is known for discovering unreleased app features by digging through code, recently spotted the feature and posted about it on Twitter. Manchun Wong found the feature buried in Spotify's Android app code, which she combs through for "clues" of what the company is working on.
While Manchun Wong has found her way in, Social Listening is currently only available to Spotify employees. You can see screenshots of the feature in her tweets below.
A help screen describes Social Listening as “Listen to music together. 1. On your phone, play a song and select (Connected Devices). You’ll see a code at the bottom of the screen. 2. On your friend’s phone, select the same (Connected Devices) icon, tap SCAN CODE, and point the camera at your code. 3. Now you can control the music together.” You’ll then see friends who are part of your Social Listening session listed in the Connected Devices menu. Users can also copy and share a link to join their Social Listening session that starts with the URL prefix
https://open.spotify.com/socialsession/. Note that Spotify never explicitly says that playback will be synchronized.
With streaming apps largely having the same music catalog and similar $9.99 per month premium pricing, they have to compete on discovery and user experience. Spotify has long been in the lead here with its algorithmically personalized Discover Weekly playlists, which were promptly copied by Apple and SoundCloud.
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