Facebook is now in the music business and expect to see your News Feed populated with music clips from Spotify and Apple Music.
Chiming true on a promise made years ago, Facebook is finally adding music samples to users’ News Feeds from Spotify and Apple Music through a new feature called Music Stories.
The new post format allows users to preview 30-second clips of songs and albums their friends are enjoying on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes.
The feature was first previewed as a future direction for Facebook at F8 a few years back and has only really begun to surface now, starting today with iOS users. It follows on the heels of Facebook launching content discovery mechanisms, including music discovery, in 2013.
“On the Facebook iPhone app, songs and albums shared from the leading music services will become ‘Music Stories’ a new post format that allows people to listen to a 30-second preview of the shared song (or album) while on Facebook,” explained Michael Cerda, director of product at Facebook.
“The preview is streamed from either Apple Music or Spotify (depending on the source of the link shared), and can be purchased from or saved to the respective music-streaming service.”
Facebook is now in the music business
While the feature is designed to be warm and engaging, let’s be clear there’s a serious e-commerce proposition behind it.
The previews from Spotify and Apple Music are also available directly through Facebook and if users want the full song they can click through to stream full tracks on Apple Music or add music to their library with a single click to purchase through the iTunes store.
They can also click through to stream full tracks on Spotify or add them to their library without leaving Facebook.
“We will expand Music Story support for additional streaming music services soon,” Cerda said.
