Facebook Messenger gets first music integration with Spotify

This follows its first transporation integration, with Uber, a few months ago

As Facebook Messenger continues to grow quickly, adding 200 million users in just 10 months to reach 800 million users, the company is continuing to build out the platform. That means integrations with other existing services.

First it was its first transporation app, with Uber, back in December. And now it has announced its first music integration, as well teaming up with Spotify.

The partnership makes it easier use Messenger to share playlists or songs. Messenger users can access Spotify through the “More” tab, or, if a friend sends them a song through Spotify, all they have to do is tap “Open” to open Spotify and start listening.

The feature is available worldwide on both iOS and Android. 

To celebrate the occasion, Spotify and Facebook created a joint playlist, called Messenger Favorites, which features a pretty eclectic group of songs. It includes everything from the cheesy, such as Tequila, Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up and Danger Zone from Top Gun, to the hipsterish with Arcade Fire and Daft Punk to the terrible, with Maroon 5.

Teaming up with Spotify makes sense for Facebook, as it is one of the largest music streaming services out there, second only to Pandora. In June of last year the company had 75 million active listeners, up from 60 million users in January. With Pandora actually losing subscribers, Spotify could eventually pass it.

"Music is a big part of the way people express themselves. Adding the ability to share music, via Spotify, is another way people can choose to communicate when text and words just aren't enough," a spokesperson for Facebook told VatorNews. 

For Spotify, while there surely is some overlap between its users and Messenger, will be exposing itself to potentially hundreds of millions of new listeners. With all the increased competition out there, from Pandora, Apple, Google, Tidal and all the other music streaming companies, this seems like a sure way to keep itself ahead.

Vator reached out to Spotify for comment on this partnership, but the company had no additional comment. 

Facebook Messenger integrations

This is the second integration for Facebook Messenger, and you should expect a lot more of them tvery soon, as David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook, made clear earlier this year.

"It is so much easier to do everything in one place that has the context of your last interactions, as well as your identity – no need to ever login – rather than downloading apps that you’ll never use again and jumping around from one app to another," he said.

"Our early tests in 2015 with brands are showing that interactions will happen more and more in your Messenger threads, so we’ll continue making it easy for you to engage with businesses, and we’ll also do more to enable additional businesses and services to build the right experience in conversations."

Messenger will also integrate more social features, allowing users to personalize their conversations, but more importantly it will go deeper with M, the AI-driven mobile assistant it released last year. 

With M, users can send it a note in exactly the same way they send messages to other users, asking it questions. M can then ask followup questions in the message thread, and send updates as the task is completed.