Spotify quietly rolled out a new feature that makes it easier for iPhone users to share song snippets with their friends in a text message.
The Swedish music streaming service now has its own app within Apple’s iMessage service that allows users to search for and send 30-second song previews from Spotify without having to leave their text conversation. TechCrunch first reported on Spotify’s new iMessage app on Thursday, noting that Spotify users had previously only been able to share songs from that service with their friends on iMessage by using a share button within Spotify’s main app. Anyone who received an iMessage containing a Spotify song would then have to open the main Spotify app to listen.
Now, iMessage users must only enable the new Spotify iMessage app (by clicking the “App” button next to an iMessage text box) to be able to send, receive, and listen to those song snippets within iMessage. Spotify users are able to search for any of the more than 30 million tracks in the service’s catalog to generate a 30-second clip for iMessage. Of course, iMessage users who use Apple Music also have the option of sending full songs through that service, but Apple Music only offers the choice of songs recently listened to by each respective user.
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Spotify and Apple Music are two of the top competing streaming music services on the market. Spotify currently boasts more than 60 million paid subscribers (and 140 million active users, including its free, ad-supported service) while Apple Music has picked up roughly 28 million subscribers since launching in 2015. (Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has been critical in the past of Apple and Google about how the tech giants run their app stores.)
Earlier this year, Spotify also launched its own app within Facebook’s Messenger chat service, which allows Messenger users to search Spotify’s full catalog and share song clips with their friends.