Musicbusinessworldwide.com
Snapchat has introduced a new feature that allows users to share the music they’re listening to through Snap Map, deepening its integration with Spotify and expanding music discovery across its social platform.
Called Now Playing, the feature enables Snapchat users who link their Spotify accounts to display their current listening activity on Snap Map, which Snap says reaches more than 450 million monthly users.
Users can control who can view their listening status, choosing to share with all friends, only friends who can see their location, a custom group, or no one at all.
The feature also allows users to discover music through friends’ activity. Tapping a song on Snap Map opens options to explore Spotlight videos featuring the same track, play the song on Spotify, or save it directly to their Spotify Liked Songs playlist. Songs can also be saved to Spotify from Spotlight videos and Sound Pages within Snapchat.
The update builds on Snapchat’s ongoing partnership with Spotify. Since launching its Sounds feature in 2020, Snapchat has allowed users to open tracks in streaming services, but Now Playing marks the first time users can link their Spotify accounts directly and synchronize their listening activity with the app.
The launch also reflects Spotify’s broader push toward social listening. Over the past year, the streaming platform has expanded its in-app social features, including direct messaging, real-time listening activity, live Jam session invitations and collaborative playlist tools designed to encourage music sharing between friends.
Spotify’s Jam feature, introduced in 2023, now supports collaborative listening sessions with up to 32 participants, while the company’s messaging tools have attracted millions of users since their rollout. Earlier this year, Spotify reported nearly 40 million users had exchanged roughly 340 million messages through the platform.
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