Spotify is testing its own version of Stories, bringing the feature into its app as a way for artists to interact with their audience.
The new feature, which was spotted on Twitter and is available in some users’ apps, has been added to Spotify’s updated playlist of Christmas music with artists talking about their favourite festive memory.
Tapping on a playlist in the streaming service’s iOS or Android app might now bring up a series of familiar bubbles above the playlist’s name. Some artists currently featured include Jennifer Lopez, Kelly Clarkson and Pentatonix.
Spotify’s Stories have also appeared on top of other playlists, including “Tear Drop”, an emo rap playlist, as spotted by Engadget, and an “enhanced” version of Megan Thee Stallion’s Good News album.
In a statement given to Engadget, Spotify said that Stories were a test, and gave no indication of when it would be fully rolled out.
"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."
The Independent has reached out to the streaming company for more information.
The addition of Stories to Spotify is not entirely unexpected. App investigator Jane Manchun Wong found a question-and-answer session with Norwegian singer Sigrid in the Spotify code in 2019.
As well as Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn, YouTube, Snapchat, Airbnb, and many other apps all have their own version of Stories.
Twitter also recently introduced its version of Stories, called ‘fleets’, although has delayed updates for some users due to it crashing the app.
Last week Spotify experienced a short outage, with users unable to play music and their downloaded playlists and songs scrubbed without warning. Spotify has said that the issue has been fixed, but offered no details on the cause of the disruption.
