The relationship between Spotify and Facebook goes back a long way. It’s been years since, for example, Facebook Messenger allows you to share Spotify links and listen to them directly from the messaging app. Now, this collaboration has gone a step further and they have launched a mini Spotify player within Facebook.
Facebook launches an integrated Spotify mini-player
This new feature, already previewed by Mark Zuckerberg last week in an interview, allows users of the social network to listen to songs and podcasts from the music platform without leaving the Facebook app, in the background.
A few days ago, in a virtual chat via the Discord app, Zuckerberg confirmed that his company was working with Spotify to allow its users to listen to music from the platform directly on Facebook and in the background. In return, the social network would offer the opportunity to discover more music on Spotify and share it on the social network.
Today, it was Spotify that announced its intention to improve the way users share and interact with songs and podcasts with the official launch of a mini player that will allow users to listen to Spotify audio directly within Facebook, without switching apps.
With the new mini-player, which will arrive from today to the Facebook app for iOS and Android, Spotify Premium users will be able to discover and listen to songs and episodes of a podcast with full playback without advertising, while users of the free version of Spotify will also enjoy that experience through Spotify’s ad-supported shuffle mode.
The new Spotify mini-player will arrive from today to the Facebook app for iOS and Android in some countries.
In addition, with this new feature, users will be able to play songs through the mini player from selected posts by verified artists or even from videos uploaded by other users on Facebook that contain licensed music.
How to activate the Spotify mini-player?
This new feature is being implemented as of today in the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay, and the United States.
From Spotify they hope to extend it “to more markets in the coming months”, but for the moment, in those where it is already available, the procedure to activate the mini player is as follows:
- Tap the “Play” button on the song that you or your friend, family member, favorite singer/group… shared from Spotify.
- The first time you use the mini-player, a consent dialog box will appear, tap “Connect” to continue.
- If you are logged in to Spotify, the applications will automatically switch and playback will start from within the Spotify application. If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to log in.
From there, Spotify will continue to play even if you continue to scroll through your News Feed, but you will have controls available over the playback options so you can pause or close the mini-player.
