Listening to your best mate’s latest experimental jazz-rap track has never been harder to avoid, thanks to this Spotify and Facebook collab.
Facebook has proven to be an increasingly powerful tool when it comes to marketing over the last decade. A huge chunk of the content that people consume is now done through social media, and with over 30% of the population of the world being active on Facebook, it makes it the perfect tool for getting information out. This is no different in the music world — it’s hard to go a day without seeing a young band or artist promoting their latest track on your feed.
As much as you’d like to help them out and check out their hard work, the thought of being pulled away from your catatonic trance of scrolling is just too much to bear, their link disappears, never to meet your eyes again. However, thanks to Spotify, this is now an issue of the past, with their new Facebook mini-player.
Spotify says that this new partnership with Facebook is an experience driven by discovery, making it easier for artists to have their work heard. Spotify subscribers will be able to now discover new music through the Facebook app much more easily, and even free accounts will be able to access this new feature, but are limited to shuffle mode, and will have to listen to ads. The biggest advantage of this new player however is the ability for artists to have their content reach a much larger group of people effectively.
However, there is more to this new partnership than purely helping out artists (the company has a pretty patchy record in this regard). This joint venture with Facebook is likely a way for the two companies to team up against Apple Music.
Spotify is a direct competitor to Apple Music and is tired of having to pay the additional 30% Apple tax to allow them to operate on iOS devices, nor does it want to increase its artist pay rates. Meanwhile, Facebook is currently butting heads with Apple after they changed the iOS privacy terms and conditions, to allow their users to opt-out of data sharing, meaning that Facebook cannot as effectively target advertising to its users.
spotify https://t.co/QBMh8Bmq7S
— ellie (@GERMIClDE) July 22, 2017
While the new mini-player is not currently available worldwide, Australia is one of the handful of countries that can access it. All users have to do is click play on a shared song, agree to the consent prompt pop-up, login if they haven’t already, and then enjoy the new world of social media music available to them. Spotify hopes to bring this new feature to more markets in the next few months.
