Spotify has today introduced Group Sessions, a feature everyone who is staying at home practising social distance to curb the spread of COVID-19 will like – at least if you use Spotify to entertain yourself or the people you’re self-quarantining with.
This feature rolling out to Spotify’s premium users will let them share playback control over the music that is being streamed.
Participants in the Group Session will be able to pause, play, skip, add song tracks or select tracks in the queue.
Spotify hopes that groups of people in self-quarantine such as families or quarantine mates can continue to seamlessly enjoy tracks playing in the backgrounds they do other activities such as dancing, laundry, cooking.
It’s worth noting Spotify has been testing this feature since last year
Spotify is working on Social Listening, letting friends to control music together with their own devices
Scan Spotify Code or open link for it to begin
For example, I'm listening Spotify right now. Feel free to introduce me new music: https://t.co/f59D0sis7Y pic.twitter.com/nPOlcPwQdG
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 31, 2019
Here’s how it works
To get started on Group Sessions, a host will have to go to the bottom left corner of their Play screen and click on the Connect menu. A scannable code will appear that then is shared with the rest of the other participants(guests).
The participants join the session by scanning that code.
Once in, you will all be able to control what’s streaming on the queue – your activity is transparent to the other participants as the playlist gets automatically updated on all of their devices.
Spotify wants to encourage its free users to hop on to the premium tier with this new feature as streaming services see a rise in consumption amid the pandemic.
Group Sessions is still in beta and the streaming service will be improving this feature with feedback from users.
