Spotify and Facebook are two of the biggest players in the mobile software market. But being a streaming music platform and a tool for the slow, screaming destruction of civil society (respectively), they don’t have a lot of crossover. That’s about to end. This morning Spotify announced that it’s going to allow its users to listen to Spotify music and podcasts via a mini-player directly in the Facebook app on Android and iOS.
Why? Um… discovery, I guess. That’s how the press release phrases it, anyway. It will be a little easier to listen to tracks that your Facebook friends share directly on their feed, but all that it’s really saving you is a pop-out to the Spotify app. Spotify Premium members can access any part of the Spotify library; non-paying members only get a shuffle feature.
When the mini-player is activated, Spotify will actually be running in the standard music app in the background, so your music or podcast will continue no matter what you do in Facebook or outside of it. So, yeah, this is just saving you a second or two, which I suppose could add up quite a bit if you constantly sample Spotify tracks posted by your friends.
The feature is going to be accessible in all of North America, plus Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, South Africa, Thailand, and Uruguay. Spotify says it’ll come to other markets soon.
