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Spotify Confirms It’s Testing a “Stories” Feature

By Laura Tucker
Spotify Stories Featured

Choosing a social media outlet to participate in depends on which features you’re interested in. What makes it more confusing as time goes by is that the organizations are competing with each other by picking up the features of other social networks, such as the “Stories” feature. An unexpected outlet, Spotify, has confirmed that it’s testing a “Stories” feature this holiday season.

Spotify Stories Feature Discovered

Snapchat was the first to have a “Stories” type of feature. These are posts that differ from others in that they aren’t there permanently. They’re only there for 24 hours. Read it when it’s there or forget it.

Instagram then started using the feature as well, and before long, Facebook users could post stories too. YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn also joined the party.

Spotify Stories Playlist

Despite not being thought of as a conversation platform, Spotify is testing a Stories feature, too. A user discovered it while searching for Christmas music. The service informed him he could “tap to see the story.” That “story” was celebrities sharing their favorite Christmas tunes.

It’s been known for more than a year that Spotify was testing such a thing. A Q&A session with Sigrid, a Norwegian artist, was discovered at that time. The difference is that back then it wasn’t publicly tested, unlike this holiday season.

Public Spotify Stories Test

The public test of Stories rolling out now to Spotify appears to be a public a/b test. Some users may already have it showing up. To test whether you have it or not, search for the Christmas Hits playlists. Try tapping the Spotify profile image to view the story.

This featured story includes videos from a selection of artists – including Mariah Carey, Meghan Trainer, Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson – discussing their favorite Christmas songs.

Spotify Stories Trainor

“At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement. “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.”

In the span of time between now and when Spotify can produce further news on the topic, what we can do is discuss whether this is a feature that Spotify needed. iTunes introduced a chat feature called Ping in 2010. Users could chat with each other and also get updates from the artists they followed. Two years later, after little interest, Ping was discontinued.

But this leads to the question of whether it’s necessary for all social media outlets to have the same features and whether other popular apps need to incorporate social media features. It’s no doubt bringing the competitive nature out in all the services.

Read on to learn why Spotify said the new Apple One will bring “Irreparable Harm.

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Laura Tucker Avatar
Laura Tucker
Laura has spent more than 20 years writing news, reviews, and op-eds, with the majority of those years as an editor as well. She has exclusively used Apple products for the past 35 years. In addition to writing and editing at MTE, she also runs the site’s sponsored review program.

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