Spotify Takes A Crack At Music Sharing With New Messaging App
To make sharing easier for both paid and freemium users, Spotify has launched its own Facebook iMessage app which allows users to search for, share and send tracks and playlists from Spotify's library of 40 million songs.
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In an effort to make sharing music on Spotify easier, the platform has launched its own version of Apple’s Messages that lets users listen to previews of suggested songs directly in the app. The new iMessage app allows you to search the music streaming service’s entire library for a specific song, then send it to a friend. When the friend receives the message, they’ll be able to listen to a 30-second clip of the song, then tap a button to go directly to Spotify to check out the whole track.
Apple’s app currently doesn’t have a similar search function, and sharing a song is much more difficult (and it’s from the Apple Music library, not Spotify’s) and there are limitations. For instance, if you want to share a specific Apple Music song with a friend, it has to be one that you recently listened to. The sharing process is pretty clunky in that if there’s a song that you want to share but you haven’t listened to lately, you have to first go to the Apple Music app, do a search for the song, play it, then go back to Messages to find it in the app drawer. The only advantage is that you can listen to the full track right in Messages. Spotify’s iMessage also has a different design that display’s a larger image of the song’s album artwork.
This is good news for record labels, who value music discovery over just about anything else other than generating actual cash. It’s another way for artists to gain exposure that they might not have otherwise. Also, since user word-of-mouth always has been, and still is, the strongest advertising bar none, iMessage may be a boon to music that, for the most part, is slipping under the radar for now.
Of course, people have to adopt and use it first for it to be successful, and Spotify hasn’t been too good at getting the word out so far, but iMessage looks like it will only be a positive for all concerned going forward. The iMessage app can be found in Apple’s App Store.
