At Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, the company has announced their plan to introduce Chat Extension for Facebook Messenger, which will integrate with Apple Music and Spotify. The extension will allow Messenger users to link to Apple Music or Spotify content and share their favorite songs and playlists directly within the Facebook Messenger app.
Messenger’s new music sharing feature will launch with Spotify initially, which will let users share song snippets with friends over the platform. Spotify has also published a blog post detailing the Spotify chat extension, which will undoubtedly share similarities with Apple Music.
Apple has not shared details on how its chat extension will work, but Apple Music is already committed to integrate as well and will similarly be available in the near future.
I’m really excited to share with you that Apple Music will soon be on the platform as well.
Using the Spotify chat extension, users can search and share Spotify songs, albums, and playlists. Song links will play 30-second clips, and users can tap on a link to open the Spotify app to listen to a full song.
In addition to this, the Spotify chat extension will allow users to share songs and will offer up playlist recommendations to users based on mood, activity, and genre. It is not clear if Apple will introduce a similar feature.
Apple Music already offers music sharing feature natively on iOS 10. While the new Facebook integration will come in the form of a Messenger app, Apple Music includes an iMessage app for Messages on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that lets you share tracks including currently playing music.
The latest move shows that Apple Music operates a bit differently than Apple’s other apps and services. Apple has made an effort to make Apple Music widely available on multiple platforms and services. There is already an Android app and an iMessage extension and now the new sharing feature will be coming to Facebook’s Messenger.
In other related news, Facebook has also announced an offline mode for Instagram, which allows users to view content that was previously loaded on Instagram’s feed, without using a Wi-Fi or mobile data connection.
