SPOTIFY TESTING “SOCIAL LISTENING” FEATURE TO ENABLE SHARED PLAYLISTS AND MUSIC CONTROLS.
Picture this scene. You are at a party at your close friend’s house with good music playing. How many times have you hounded the person-in-charge of the music to play a song of your liking? Well, to address this and many similar problems, Spotify seems to be working on a new “Social Listening” feature. The well-known reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong discovered the option and says that the it will enable friends to control music together from their own devices. However, the new feature is said to be under testing by Spotify employees and only those who have access to the option will be able to control someone else’s music.
Wong says one can scan a Spotify code or open a link to give others access to the “Social Listening” feature. Once connected, users can add their own songs to another person’s playlist and control playback from their device. Going by the images depicting the new feature, its UI seems well developed and there’s a chance that it could be rolled out for everyone soon. Those who are connected to Spotify’s Social Listening option will show up on a user’s “Already connected” list. The “Now Playing” UI will showcase how many people are listening to the playlist.
Songs added while using the new Social Listening option will be added to a shared queue. The new feature will also be made available for Spotify’s web player. While this new option is under testing and yet to be made available for the masses, the online music streaming service recently added a sleep timer function to its app. As the name suggests, the option enables users to select for how long music will keep on playing before stopping automatically. One can select between 5 minutes to one hour for the audio to pause or until the end of a track.
