Meta, Instagram Develop New Social Music-sharing Feature

Meta and Spotify are investigating enhanced music integration within Instagram, with recent reports suggesting they are testing a feature enabling users to share their music choices through Instagram’s Notes

Alessandro Paluzzi, a reverse engineer who frequently discovers unreleased features while still in the development phase, was the first to identify the new functionality.

Nevertheless, the discovery does not necessarily imply that the feature will be released to the public shortly, as companies like Meta and Spotify frequently experiment with new concepts.

In a screenshot Paluzzi posted on Meta’s Threads, he illustrates a new feature enabling an individual to “continuously share” their music from Spotify instead of selecting a song from Instagram’s catalog.

The message also states, ” You can cease sharing at any time.”

If implemented, the feature would expand upon a development initiated slightly more than a year ago when Instagram enabled sharing 30-second song excerpts in Notes.

Notes, introduced in 2022, enable Instagram users to share their status or other brief updates in a message displayed immediately above their Instagram inbox.

The company stated that the song snippet feature in Notes has been supported in all markets worldwide, where Instagram had music licensing rights at its introduction.

These song postings could be automated through a partnership with Spotify, ensuring that Instagram users can access content even when actively engaging with another application.

The feature is reminiscent of the social networking activity in Spotify’s application. Currently, Spotify enables users to “connect with Facebook” to view their peers’ playlists in a separate tab on its desktop application.

Spotify has also experimented with a community feature enabling users to monitor others’ mobile streaming activity in real-time. However, this feature has not yet been released.

Even though Spotify has expanded its social features over time, most recently with the addition of podcast commenting and more detailed user profiles, the company recognizes that music discovery is still frequently conducted on dedicated social networking applications, where users have established networks of friends and conduct more frequent check-ins.

Additionally, there have been additional indications of a partnership between Meta and Spotify.

Technologist Chris Messina informed TechCrunch that Instagram had incorporated a “SpotifyiOS.framework” component into its application at some point in the past few weeks. He estimated that this occurred approximately one month before the release of Instagram version v.338.0.

Messina had previously mentioned an additional feature that would enable Instagram users to incorporate music into their profiles before the official launch of the feature last week, which was developed in partnership with singer Sabrina Carpenter.

Messina proposed that Instagram could eventually integrate the offering with Spotify to compete more effectively with TikTok in the music discovery space.

Meta and Spotify have a history of collaborating on music features. In 2021, they collaborated on music initiatives, including a mini player on Facebook that streamed Spotify directly from the app.

Additionally, Apple serves as a shared adversary between the two organizations.

Spotify and Meta contend that Apple’s App Store monopoly obstructs their ability to manage their own in-app payments and app distribution, necessitating that they share their app revenue with Apple through commissions on in-app purchases.

In addition, Meta’s advertising business was adversely affected by Apple’s implementation of ATT, or app tracking transparency, a privacy feature. Additionally, Apple Music is a direct competitor of Spotify.

Meta and Spotify declined to respond to inquiries for comment.