Facebook Announces “Music Stores” Feature

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The aim of Music Stories is to help users discover new music and share tracks with their friends via Facebook.

Facebook now offers a new post format which integrates with Spotify and Apple Music to allow users to listen to a 30-second snippet of the shared track on Facebook itself, writes Sarah Perez for Tech Crunch.

Music Stories streams directly on Facebook iOS app

Although the music is streamed from Spotify or Apple Music, it plays directly on Facebook. After listening to the preview, users can choose to buy it or save it from the streaming services. If the track is provided by Apple Music, you can stream it or buy it, while Spotify links will allow you to stream it.

While Facebook has partnered with Apple and Spotify for the launch, it says it will soon support other music services.

”We’re excited to be a part of Music Stories with Facebook and provide Spotify listeners with a more engaging and simple way to listen to, discover and share music they love,” said Jorge Espinel, Head of Global Business Development at Spotify, in a statement. “Music Stories are a great way for people to continue bringing Spotify into the conversation on Facebook.”

As it stands Music Stories is only available on the Facebook iOS app. The social network has not confirmed whether or not it would expand the feature to other platforms such as Android.

New strategic direction for Facebook

Facebook has so far not focused much of its energy on music, but it now has the opportunity to drive huge amounts of traffic to artists’ albums and tracks. Spotify users can already post updates to Facebook, but Music Stories is more focused on making specific recommendations via a rich media-filled status update.

Copy the link to the song or album you want to post and paste it into your status update box to create your Music Story. You will then see a preview for the update, which includes a spinning record and a pause button when the music is streaming.

Artists stand to benefit from the new feature as it will allow them to market their work on Facebook. It looks like a sound strategic decision for Facebook as it vies with other social music services such as SoundCloud and Apple Music’s Connect platform.

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