Spotify 'community' feature to help see friends' real-time activity

SAN FRANCISCO: Music streaming platform Spotify has confirmed that it is developing a new feature called Community that would allow mobile users to see what sort of music their friends are streaming in real-time. The feature will also allow mobile users to see what playlists their friends have recently updated in a dedicated place in the app, reports TechCrunch.

While not publicly surfaceable in the app at this time, mobile users can access this new Community feature by typing in "spotify: community" in the Safari browser on their iOS device, the report said. The addition was first spotted by Chris Messina, who shared a video of the feature on Twitter earlier this month amid a longer list of Spotify app updates.

The company offers a similar "Friend Activity" feature on the desktop but had limited users' access to that same Friend Activity on mobile devices. Spotify said the feature was in the early testing phases but declined to share more details.

The company's roots as a social music streaming app had helped the company grow in earlier days by leveraging its Facebook integration to build out its friend graph. But, in later years, Spotify looked more towards personalisation features to give it an advantage over streaming rivals.