Via: PCMAG
Facebook is about to get a lot more music friendly.
The social network on Thursday debuted a new post format dubbed “music stories” for songs and albums shared from Apple Music and Spotify. Now, when you share music to the social network, your friends will be able to actually hear the jam, instead of just seeing what you’re listening to.
The new post format lets people listen to a 30-second preview of the shared song or album without leaving Facebook. Friends will be able to stream the clip right from Apple Music or Spotify, depending on where you shared the song, then purchase it or save it to their own account.
Facebook said it plans to expand music stories to support additional streaming services in the near future.
“We hope by making this experience better, artists will share more, friends will share and engage more, and music will become a better part of the Facebook experience overall,” the social network said in its announcement.
The new feature follows a rumor this summer that Facebook was planning to jump into the streaming market with its own service akin to Spotify or Apple Music. Facebook quickly denied that rumor, but subsequent reports indicated that Zuckerberg and Co. were indeed working on something “unique and new” related to music. It sounds like that new “unique and new” feature has now arrived.
Facebook has experimented with music integration since 2011, when it teamed with services like Spotify, Rdio, and Slacker to let users link their Facebook accounts to their music accounts. Then, music they listened to on Spotify, Rdio, or Slacker would automatically post to Facebook, alerting friends to their musical tastes. It caused a bit of a controversy, though (do you really want your Facebook friends to know you’ve been listening to Justin Bieber on repeat?), prompting services like Spotify to add a “private listening mode”that did not share activity to Facebook.
Meanwhile, word has it Facebook is planning to launch a standalone news appnext week. Dubbed Notify, the service is said to alert users to stories from professional media outlets, including early partners Vogue, Washington Post, and CBS.