Picture this: after curating the perfect Spotify soundtrack for your party, your DJ unexpectedly has to leave the house — and takes their phone with them. The music stops. The empty airwaves are suffocating. Everyone turns around and looks at you in an uncomfortable silence, while you rush to connect your smart device and get the tunes rolling again. RIP, party vibe.
Thanks to Spotify’s upcoming feature, that may no longer be an issue! Spotify is currently developing an option that lets users sync the music they’re listening to and DJ together in real time. With this feature, there’s the possibility that you and your friends could collaboratively DJ – eliminating the need to specifically use one person’s device while listening to a playlist. Or, if you are in separate geographic locations, you could remotely co-listen to music with friends.
How does the social listening feature work?
While the function has not yet been released, a software engineer named Jane Manchun Wong was able to uncover it through some fancy coding, and shared her discovery with the world on Twitter. Rachel Kraus over at Mashable tells us:
Here’s how it works: In Spotify, there’s a button that takes you to your connected devices, which normally allows you to determine what device you’re playing your music on. For those with the new feature, the option “Connect with friends” appears in that menu.
When you choose that option, Spotify generates a QR code and a link, or an option to “scan code.” You can either share your code or link with a friend, or scan someone else’s code. Once you do, the “Now Listening” section of Spotify becomes social! It will show who’s listening in the “Connect with friends” module, and anyone connected can control the music
However, since technically the feature has not yet been deployed there are still some questions remaining regarding how the “real time” aspect will function. Kraus relates:
Spotify doesn’t say whether the song will be synchronized for people listening to it virtually together, or whether they’ll just be listening to the same song, but at different time codes. It’s also not clear whether playing a new song just adds it to a queue, or if it will switch to a new song entirely.
Spotify refused to comment when asked to clarify on this issue, so we’ll just have to wait and see when it officially comes out!