All social platforms are becoming similar especially with the ephemeral Stories format. Spotify is the latest app as its Stories format get more prominent with the upcoming Holiday season.
Snapchat launched Stories in October 2013. Instagram then introduced their Stories three years later in October 2016.
In 2017, lots of tech companies went all in on this new format.
Facebook then added Stories to its Facebook app and Messenger in early 2017.
In the same year, Facebook also added Stories in the form of Status to WhatsApp.
Google jumped on the bandwagon with Stories in 2017 in the form of STAMP(Stories in AMP-based format). The tech giant also added Stories to YouTube creators and rollout to all the following year.
Microsoft also added Stories to Skype in early June 2017. LinkedIn which was bought by Microsoft in June 2016 has also been testing Stories since February this year.
Twitter joined the trend this year with the launch of Fleets in mid-November and this feature has been received with mixed reactions. Fleets was being tested since early March this year.
Spotify has now increased its efforts with the Stories format and has partnered up with major artists as the holiday season kicks off.
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The streaming giant began testing Stories with Storyline feature in May that let select artists share their content with their audiences. However, this feature was only limited to mobile users in the United States.
With the holiday season picking up, Spotify is ramping up its efforts on the ephemeral format.
It still limited for now as it has been spotted by quite a number of users on Spotify’s ‘The Christmas Hits’ playlist which recently got updated.
The Stories feature major artists including Jennifer Lopez and Kelly Clarkson.
Megan Thee Stallion’s new album ‘Good News’ also has an enhanced album look with exclusive videos
where she talks about songs in the album and the recording process.
There’s a prominent ‘tap to see the story’ icon to access the videos and you can tap through to view.
We are not sure if Spotify will go ahead with Stories and if they’ll be available to all users once the holiday ends as this feature is still in test.
“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We have no further news to share on future plans at this time,” a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget.
