When you’re really enjoying a song you’re listening to, you might want to share it to your story. But the standard result might seem underwhelming: When sharing from Spotify, for example, you can share the album art, song title, and artist name, but you won’t actually be able to hear the song itself. If you want to share the audio, you need to rely on Instagram’s built-in music feature, not the Spotify extension.
That’s changing this week, as Spotify will now let you share audio snippets to your Instagram story. The company announced the new integration on Thursday, and it’s pretty simple. When you share a song on Spotify to your Instagram story (press the share button on the Spotify song, then choose “Stories” with the Instagram logo), your Instagram app will open to a new story, featuring the album art for your chosen song. You’ll also hear a snippet of the song playing over your story. Of course, Spotify wants engagement, so the feature comes with a sticker that lets viewers of your story open the song in their own Spotify app.
It’s a small but welcome change for Spotify users, some of whom have been asking for the integration for years. This post on the Spotify subreddit is from April 2021, so there should be some happy Spotify fans who happen to also be Instagram users.
Real-time music sharing to Instagram Notes
Credit: Spotify
As part of this announcement, Spotify is also rolling out the ability to share what you’re listening to in real time to Instagram Notes. Notes lets you post a short message to your DM feed, and now, you can have your Notes update whenever you’re listening to music on Spotify. If you want to set this up, start a note in Instagram, then tap the music icon. Here, tap “Link Spotify,” then follow the on-screen steps to connect your account.
What do you think so far?
Spotify says if you’re already listening to music, your note will update immediately. If you’re not, it will display the next song you listen to within the following 30 minutes. You can also share a specific song you’re listening to to Notes, if you prefer. It works just like sharing to a story, only choosing “Notes” from the option.
I don’t use Instagram Notes (or Stories, for that matter), but even if I did, I’m not sure I’d be comfortable sharing my real-time music experiences directly to my entire Instagram follower list. I can understand wanting to highlight a new favorite song, but I listen to so much random music, I don’t need all of my Instagram friends knowing each and every track that plays on my end.
