Introducing Listening Activity and Request to Jam in Messages on Spotify
We know people use Spotify not just to listen, but to share the songs, podcasts, and audiobooks they love with their friends and family. When we launched Messages last year, we gave users a place to do that right in the app. Since then, almost 40 million users have sent nearly 340 million messages, showing that listeners are excited to share what they’re streaming.
Today, we’re building on that experience with two new Messages features: Listening activity and Request to Jam. Listening activity gives users a real-time look at what music their friends and family are listening to, while Request to Jam makes it easy to quickly turn those moments into shared listening sessions.
Take a look…
Listening activity
Listening activity is an opt-in feature that allows you to display what music you’re currently listening to within Messages in real time. If you’re not actively listening, your most recently played song will be displayed instead. It’s visible only to friends and family you have already connected with on Messages, and you can see others’ activity even if you haven’t turned your own activity on, as long as they’ve opted in.
Here’s how it works:
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- Users can turn on listening activity via Privacy and social settings, accessible through the side drawer next to the “View profile” button.
- Once enabled, activity appears in the chat row of the side drawer and at the top of Messages chats.
- If a user taps on their friend or family member’s listening activity, they’ll be able to add tracks to their library, start playback, open the track’s context menu, or react with one of six standard emojis.
Listening activity is only shared with people you’ve already messaged on Spotify, and you’re always in control—only the contacts you choose can see your activity, and you can turn it off at any time.
Request to Jam
To complement listening activity, we’re making it easier to turn musical moments into shared experiences with Request to Jam, a new way for users to invite friends or family they’re connected with in Messages into a live listening session.
Our Jam feature has been growing in popularity, with daily active users more than doubling year over year. With Jam, users can listen from anywhere—but it can be hard to know when your friends are available to listen together when you’re apart. Now, users can see when someone is already listening, join them, and even message in sync while listening so they can talk about what’s playing and what’s up next.
Here’s how it works:
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- From a Messages chat, Premium users can tap Jam in the top right corner to send a request for a remote Jam.
- Your friend will receive the request and can either accept or decline.
- If accepted, the recipient becomes the host of the Jam session. From there, both participants in the Jam can add tracks to a shared queue and listen together.
When friends are in a Jam together, participants see each other’s display name, as well as suggested songs based on their combined taste profiles. Users can leave a Jam whenever they choose, and pending Jam invitations will time out if they aren’t accepted within a few minutes
Listening activity and Request to Jam are now rolling out to users in Messages-enabled markets on iOS and Android devices, and will be broadly available in these markets by early February. Listening activity is available to all users with Messages access, and Free users can join a Jam hosted by a Premium user in person. Because both features are part of Messages, they’re available to users 16 and up.
These new updates make it easier for users to enjoy music together while making discovery and expression even more seamless.
