Little glowing story circles are now everywhere. Spotify is the latest platform to introduce a Stories feature.
I think you would agree with me on this that Snapchat’s Stories format is highly contagious and has infected almost every social media platform present on the internet. Few months before Twitter recently rolled out its own version of Stories called Fleets, and now it seems that Spotify didn’t want to be left out either. The music streaming service is the latest platform to introduce a Stories feature, though it appears to only be available to a selective number of big musical artists at this time.
In this ubiquitous social media world, stories that disappear after 24 hours came out to be a blessing for those who post first and then think! Back in 2017, Snapchat brought a key feature to its social media platform dubbed Stories. The idea behind the Story was that it will disappear after 24 hours on its own. The feature was then adopted by many popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Well, Spotify might also join the club as the company is now testing a new Story format feature.
Spotify is testing a new Stories feature that will allow influencers to incorporate video elements into their public playlists. Like other Stories products found on social media apps, the Spotify version offers a similar experience that includes short video clips that users can tap on to advance to the next screen.
Spotify story appears on the streaming app’s Christmas Hits playlist and features videos from several artists featured on the playlist. The artists include Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson, and Pentatonix.
Spotify testing stories feature:
Since August 2019, Spotify has been testing Stories features for a while now. This recent introduction of Stories feature is kind of a public test being done by the company as an effort to improve user experience. Currently, the feature is in its public testing phase, the feature is only accessible to certain users of the music streaming application. It is being estimated that Spotify’s stories feature is rolled out for the artists to post short content in order to better connect with their fans and listeners.
In 2019, it started testing ‘Storyline’, a version of stories for artists that allows them to share behind-the-scenes information about the music with fans. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the year, the company also started letting influencers share stories with their public playlists.
To check out the Stories feature for yourself, head to Spotify on your phone, search ‘Christmas’ or tap the ‘Happy Holidays’ card from the Search tab and select the ‘Christmas Hits’ playlist. If you’re part of the test, you should see a small green circle of Christmas that you can tap to view the Story.
Honestly, I find myself a bit confused because this feature feels really out of place on Spotify. Let’s remember that the feature is still in its testing phase and we really don’t know that the feature will ever be available on large scale or not. But the fact that it exists has me scratching my head. As far as the testing is concerned, it is quite obvious that there is a chance that the Stories feature might soon be available.