Facebook and Spotify Plan To Help Friends Listen Together: Report

Don?t get too excited. Spotify is not launching in the United States today, nor are Facebook and Spotify planning to launch a new music service together.

However,?according to Forbes, the two companies do plan to formalize their already-mutually-beneficial relationship with a neat group-listening feature for Facebook users in countries where Spotify is already available. Here?s what Forbes reports:

1. Facebook will install an icon for Spotify to the left of the news feed. We assume this would appear as a regular app would, because those also show up there, but it?s possible that, as Forbes? unnamed sources claim, this icon would appear as a default app to all Facebook users in qualifying territories. Apparently, clicking on this icon will install Spotify ? the same way?the Spotify link that?s been on Facebook since last April already does.

2. More interestingly, Spotify and Facebook will apparently make it possible for users to set up listening rooms?where Facebook users can listen to the same music together at the same time and chat about it ? much like the feature already offered by?Turntable.fm and?Listening Room, but with many billions of users and countless friend networks ready to take advantage of it.

Of course, Spotify already is ?Facebook Music? in the countries where the music service is available, as Facebook director of platform Ethan Beard?noted last December, and as?YouTube executives implied to Evolver.fm in February.

Spotify?s ability to allow?even non-paying users hear the songs their friends post in full and its ability to serve up direct links to songs, albums, and playlists makes it as natural a fit for Facebook in those countries as?YouTube is in the United States. In addition, Spotify already integrates tightly with Facebook (and Twitter and Windows Messenger) by allowing users to share tracks on those networks from within the desktop app, so that wouldn?t be anything new.

When reached by Forbes, a Spotify spokesman responded, ?We have a Facebook integration. We?re continuously working with them to make that as good as it can be. But that?s the extent of our relationship.?

The long of the short of it: Spotify apparently plans to extend its already-impressive Facebook integration with a new group listening feature similar to the one that?s?picking up steam in other quarters. That?s newsworthy to be sure, but some might question whether it warrants the gotta-read-it headline??Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify.?

Eliot Van Buskirk has covered digital music since 1998, after seeing the world's first MP3 player sitting on a colleague's desk. He plays the bass and rides a bicycle.
Follow @listeningpost on Twitter.

Source: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/facebook-spotify-together/

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