Facebook today announced a new Apple Music integration for Messenger that allows you to stream full songs, a first for the social network’s messaging service. Prior to this partnership, you could build collaborative Spotify playlists inside Messenger group chats and Facebook’s digital AI assistant M would also recommend songs via Spotify based the content of your conversations. Yet you could not stream full songs, until today.
Now, you can only stream from within Messenger so long as you’re an Apple Music subscriber. If you’re not a subscriber, you can still stream and share 30-second snippets. You access Apple Music by clicking the “+” sign from a one-on-one or group chat in Messenger on mobile and navigating over to the Apple Music extension. You can also interact with an Apple Music bot on both desktop and mobile by searching for it as a new contact in your friends list.
Facebook says sending an emoji to the bot will prompt it to suggest a new playlist based on the nature of the emoji. Naturally, I sent the fire emoji and got back an “It’s lit!” playlist. Sounds like it’s working as designed.
Now, you can only stream from within Messenger so long as you’re an Apple Music subscriber. If you’re not a subscriber, you can still stream and share 30-second snippets. You access Apple Music by clicking the “+” sign from a one-on-one or group chat in Messenger on mobile and navigating over to the Apple Music extension. You can also interact with an Apple Music bot on both desktop and mobile by searching for it as a new contact in your friends list.
Facebook says sending an emoji to the bot will prompt it to suggest a new playlist based on the nature of the emoji. Naturally, I sent the fire emoji and got back an “It’s lit!” playlist. Sounds like it’s working as designed.