Spotify now lets you build playlists with friends inside Messenger

Earlier this year, Spotify introduced a new Messenger bot that let users share song clips with friends. Today, the company is expanding on that bot’s functionality to now allow a group of friends to build a playlist together via Messenger – even if not everyone in the group is on Spotify.

The feature, called simply Group Playlists for Messenger, is accessed through Spotify’s existing Messenger app. This is found by tapping on the blue plus sign to the right of the input box in Messenger, then selecting the Spotify Messenger extension in the list that appears.

From there, the person creating the playlist – who must be a current Spotify user – clicks the new “Create” button at the bottom of the screen, gives the playlist a title, then sends it into the group chat session. The thumbnail preview shared to the group will show the playlist’s name and offer a button below to add songs.

Anyone in the chat at that point can click to add their song selections to the playlist. And this doesn’t require them to have a Spotify account, the company says.

However, non-users can only preview the playlist in Messenger – to listen, they’ll need to sign up and download Spotify’s app. Meanwhile, existing users who have not yet connected their Spotify accounts to Facebook will be able to do so from the Spotify extension, we understand.

Spotify already supported collaborative playlists before today, across desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android. These could be shared directly from Spotify to social networks and various messaging apps, too.

But the new feature brings playlist building right into Messenger itself.

Spotify declined to say how many people have used the Messenger bot since its launch, but did note that to date “millions of songs” had been shared via the extension.

The company also didn’t say if it would roll out similar bots for other chat platforms in the future.