Spotify and Facebook have joined hand together to make sure you don’t miss out on listening to your favourite tracks while browsing while browning through the latter’s apps.
On Monday, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook, announced the new initiative dubbed ‘Project Boombox’, which will further deepen the social media giant’s relationship with the popular music app.
To make sure users can listen to tracks without being on the Spotify app or website externally, Facebook is currently developing an inline audio player that will be embedded in its social media platform.
Zuckerberg mentioned that this feature is being introduced to further enhance the experience of creators on its platforms, specifically music artists who can now share their work with their fans seamlessly.
The Facebook CEO said that the company wants to help audio go mainstream and take the front stage by making sure it becomes a ‘first-class type of media’.
Sources familiar with the ongoing development of the Spotify integration have mentioned that it will support both music and podcasts hosted on the popular music app. The feature has already been tested in non-core or non-U.S markets such as Mexico and Thailand. And now, it is being expected to be made available to U.S users within a week.
Zuckerberg revealed Facebook’s plans to join hands with Spotify in an interview with Casey Newton wherein he discussed the company’s future pursuits in an audio-first world. The announcement of this new feature comes when people worldwide have increased their consumption of audio podcasts, and apps such as Clubhouse are all the rage.
A week ago, Facebook also launched a Clubhouse-like app called ‘Hotline’ but with a bit of a twist. Thus, confirming that the social media behemoth is going all-in when to cash out from the growing attention ‘audio’ has been getting as of late.
In the interview with Newton, Zuckerberg mentioned that there will be many different products will be built in the audio space in the near future.
Furthermore, he added that while they will definitely include areas that have become recently popular, such as live audio rooms and podcasting, there still exist many exciting avenues that have not yet been explored.
Lastly, take note that this is not the first time Spotify is integrating with Facebook’s platforms. In recent years, the popular music app has been very deeply integrated into Instagram Stories, wherein users can share Spotify’s tracks with their followers. This feature is also available in Facebook stories. But with the announcement of the inline audio player, the integration is stepping up to a whole another level.
All in all, it will be interesting to observe if the feature would be a ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ for users of Facebook platforms. We will keep you updated. Until then, stay tuned.
