When it was first introduced, the Snapchat Story format – a picture or video update that disappears after a day – was at odds with how social media had traditionally been used, but it's now so successful that everyone else has copied it, and Spotify could be next.
As Spotify has confirmed to Engadget, some curated playlists now come with Stories attached, so you can tap through a series of brief videos put together to show the artists involved with the playlist.
Whether this feature is going to roll out to users or artist profiles as well as playlists remains to be seen, but it doesn't seem to be available to listeners at the moment. Spotify says the feature is just a test for now.
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"At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience," a Spotify spokesperson told Engadget. "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."
Tell me a Story
Spotify has actually been experimenting with the Stories format since May, and you'll see Story-style updates alongside some popular songs while you play them in Spotify. This seems to be a separate test focused on playlists.
In the last couple of weeks, Twitter has rolled out Fleets, its own version of Stories. Those are the circular icons you can now see at the top of your timeline when you open up the Twitter app – brief, ephemeral updates from the people you're following.
Facebook and Instagram of course piled in on copying the Stories format as soon as it started to become popular on Snapchat, and it's now an integral part of both those apps (the option to share Stories across both platforms is currently being tested).
Even LinkedIn has got involved, and with Spotify now running its own test we're not sure that any app is safe from getting this particular feature – everything from Netflix to Gmail might end up adding Stories eventually.
