Spotify, a Swedish online music streaming channel, is testing a new feature called ‘social listening’. The feature allows friends to listen and collaborate from different devices in real -time playlist.
The feature supports multiple users to add and listen to a shared playlist. A user can be able to use a friend’s playlist via a shared link, or a scan code.
The new feature was observed and reported by Jane Manchun Wong, a Hong Kong-based technology blogger. Jane is noted for reverse engineering of popular social media platforms to have preview features which are still in testing.
It seems that testing a new feature is not yet disclosed and there’s no clear evidence on when the feature will be released to the 100 million global users.
Spotify has recently launched in India in February. During the launch week, the Swedish music stream has claimed to reach 1 million users. During its quarterly filings, the company has acquired 2 million Indian users.
Spotify globally claims to have around 100 million subscribers, with nearly 217 million monthly active users. The company has a total revenue of 1.511 billion euros and has increased up 33% year-on-year.
In April, Spotify has rolled out a lighter version (10MB) of its application to grab a more massive crowd towards its music streaming market in India. The Spotify Lite Beta app uses less space, supporting older phones with a limited capacity. Spotify Managing Director India, Amarjit Batra said that the company has focused on localizing the app to reach more people where they can listen to music, during the Lite Beta version launch.
International players like YouTube Music and Spotify seems like superseding the other streaming platforms, making it difficult for India-first products. Other music streaming platforms in India are Google Play Music, Hungama, Airtel Wynk, Apple Music, Reliance Jio sourced by Saavn, SoundCloud, and Amazon Prime Music are actively used by Indians.
As per 2018 India Music 360 report, on an average, an Indian spend 20 hours listening to music every week. By 2023, the music streaming market predicts that India music stream may reach to $227 million.
