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One of the best features of Spotify has been in the desktop app forever, but not available on the mobile app: the Friend Activity sidebar lets you see what your Spotify and Facebook friends are listening to. I’ve used it to harshly judge my friends, but I’m told it’s also a great way to discover new music. And now you can get it on mobile, whether you’re listening on a iPhone or one of best android phones.
According Chris Messina (opens in a new tab) posting on Twitter, “Spotify has a new community hub to see what your friends are listening to live and what playlists they’ve recently updated.” It’s not the full Friends activity sidebar – there’s no room for that – but it has much of the same functionality.
You can test the new Spotify on iOS right now
The new feature hasn’t been released yet, but it’s hiding in plain sight: If you type “spotify:community” into Safari’s address bar on iPhone or iPad, you can check out the test area by yourself.
This impending new feature is a reminder of a very different Spotify, a music service that was built primarily on sharing your enthusiasm for music rather than paying huge sums to terrible old men to expose marginalized people in their podcasts. One of the reasons I was on Spotify rather than its rivals for so long (I’m no longer a subscriber, largely due to the aforementioned terrible old men) was the ability to subscribe to friends’ streams and interesting strangers, and the mobile app feels a lot less social than the desktop app. So it’s good to see Spotify bringing some old-fashioned sharing capability to its mobile app as well.
It’s not enough to tempt me to come back, though. I opted for Apple: As someone whose whole family uses various Apple devices, it makes a lot more sense to have an Apple One bundle that includes the Apple Music family plan than to pay for a separate Spotify subscription. And because I believe that best headphones for me are AirPod Max, I appreciate the Spatial Audio elements offered by Apple Music – most recently in Harry Styles’ new album. If you have or can borrow a set of AirPods it’s well worth a listen, and the space stuff is great fun.