Spotify Jams are a lot of fun: you can create shared playlists with your Spotify-subscribing friends whether they're right next to you or connecting from the next continent. But the feature lacks one crucial component: if you want to mock your friends' terrible taste in music (or have any other kind of discussion, I guess), you need to do that in a separate app.
That's not a huge problem, because of course Spotify keeps playing in the background when you switch to another app. But it's still a minor niggle, and it's one Spotify is about to address. According to app investigator @AssembleDebug on X (via Android Police), there's code in the latest Spotify beta that strongly suggests Jams is getting an in-app chat feature.
Chat's where it's at – eventually
The bad news is that while in-app group chatting appears to be coming, it doesn't appear to be coming very soon. The code indicates that the feature is in its very early stage of development, so this is a hint of things to come rather than a leak of an imminent new feature. In the meantime you'll need to keep using separate apps for your shared playlist chat.
Jams is a fun feature, and the chat feature would make it even more entertaining. If you haven't already used Spotify Jams, we've put together a guide that shows you how to set up and share your Spotify playlists with friends using the Jams feature.
There are a couple of important limitations that you need to know about before you start picking your tunes: you need to be a Spotify Premium subscriber in order to host and control a Jam, and while subscribers to the free tier can join a Jam locally, they have to be on the same Wi-FI network. Premium subscribers can listen remotely from wherever they happen to be.
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