Platforms like Facebook and Instagram, which use advertisements to generate income, want you to spend as much time on their apps as possible. To achieve this goal, companies have been experimenting with ideas like ‘Stories’ and TikTok like vertical feeds, and no one does it better than Facebook. Today, the platform announced a joint venture with the music-streaming platform Spotify, wherein the two companies have launched a miniplayer for Spotify, which will be capable of running on the News Feed section of Facebook.
This new feature, dubbed as Project Boombox by the company, will allow users to listen to their favorite music, playlists, and podcasts while they scroll through their Facebook Feed, by enabling the transfer of audio content between the two apps.
While CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that this feature is basically designed for music, he added that podcasts will also be supported.
Another unique feature will be that the miniplayer will be visible below any shared videos that contain music files in them, along with a play button which will allow users to listen to the song once the video is over. By clicking on the button, users will get to listen to the song through Spotify, and will get to know about the song title and the artist. Once it ends, Spotify’s shuffle play will resume.
In fact, users will also have the option of sharing music that they’re listening to, by tapping on the “Facebook” or “Facebook News Feed” options in the Share Menu. Even the Spotify ads will continue to be heard by users on the app’s Free Plan, that is.
These ads will be directly from Spotify as they usually are, but “limited data” will apparently be made available to Facebook, so that it can assess the miniplayer’s functioning. This data will include the users’ subscription type and metrics. However, Facebook will not be allowed to make use of this information to direct what type of ads the users hear, and the data sharing will occur only after the users consent to it while using the integration for the first time.
The system will be launched in both the Android and iOS versions, and will be made available in 27 countries, including the United States. The market will gradually be expanded over the coming months, after gauging the reaction in the 27 countries.
Prior to the announcement today, a spokesperson for Spotify had said, “Our ambition has always been to make Spotify ubiquitous across platforms and devices — bringing music and podcasts to more people — and our new integration with Facebook is another step in these efforts. We look forward to a continued partnership with Facebook, fueling audio discovery around the world.”
This move comes as the latest addition to Facebook’s array of new audio features, which it had announced last week. Apart from CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself showing an interest in podcasts (and the firm announcing plans to start recommending podcasts and shows to users based on their interests), the company has revealed that it will be launching Live Audio Rooms, a feature which is designed to compete with Clubhouse, the social audio-based chatting app that has caused quite a storm in the iOS world. This app will first be tested on select groups and public figures over the course of this summer, and will gradually make its way to Messenger. Another feature to be introduced was Soundbites, which will come as short, shareable sound clips. This will be supported by an algorithmic feed to support the audio files. Kind of like TikTok, minus the videos.
