Spotify and Facebook have recently rolled out a new miniplayer feature on the latter’s social media app. This enables users to sample and even listen in to podcasts or music shared on their news feed without having to launch the streaming service’s application.
This newly introduced feature enables its users on Facebook to seamlessly discover and enjoy new audio content shared by friends and family. To experience this, all you have to do is tap the Play button on the post containing the song or podcast, and the miniplayer will load up at the bottom of your news feed.
Spotify noted that you will receive a prompt requesting for access upon loading up the player for the first time. Clicking “Connect” during the prompt will enable it to play the aforementioned audio content. When enabled, the miniplayer will hover at the bottom of your newsfeed, and would even load up your own personal Spotify playlist once you’ve done listening to the audio track that you’ve clicked on.
You’ll also be glad to know that this feature is accessible to both free and premium users of the music streaming platform. As expected, free users will be subjected to the occasional ad interjections after a certain amount of time using the service. In terms of privacy, both Facebook and Spotify claim that data from the miniplayer or shared audio content will not be utilised for ad targeting. And as mentioned earlier, access to the player will only be enabled if the user consents it.
For those wondering, playing audio content on the Spotify app and then switching to Facebook will not load up the miniplayer. Instead, playback will be managed by the service’s off-app interface that is located in your device’s drop down menu. Playing a shared Spotify song or playlist on Facebook will stop any current track and load up the miniplayer to play the audio that you’ve clicked upon.
The new Spotify-Facebook miniplayer feature is now available to a number of users in our region. Or rather, some form of it. In my own test, tapping Play on a shared Spotify audio on Facebook will indeed load up the miniplayer at the bottom of my news feed. However, oddly enough, it only plays a short preview of the song rather than the full track. Although, it is quite possible that the feature may not be fully implemented just yet.
It’s also worth noting that the miniplayer is only currently available to iOS users in our region, at least at the time of writing this article. Spotify and Facebook confirmed that the feature will be available to Android users as well, but it appears that local users may have to wait a bit longer for it to be available on the platform.
(Source: Spotify [Official blog])
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Telegram for more updates and breaking news.
