The story behind app stories starts with Snapchat back in 2013. Once known solely as the app that made your sexts and snaps disappear after 10 seconds, Snapchat was looking to become known as more than just the Mission Impossible messaging app. Snapchat introduced stories which it envisioned as a series of photos taken by users to show friends and family what he or she has been doing over the last day. Each story would stay posted on the app for 24 hours before it was taken down.
In 2016, Instagram added its own version of stories and put them at the top so they could be instantly discovered. To say that Instagram got a jolt from adding the stories feature would be an understatement. Other social media and messaging apps have added their own stories feature recently. LinkedIn and Twitter did so with the latter calling its version Fleets. With Fleets, Twitter users can post texts and respond to tweets, photos or videos and use different backgrounds.
Now, it appears that streaming music service Spotify is looking to join the club. According to a tweet from “Internetainerpreneur: TmarTn, when searching for the annual Christmas Hits playlist curated by Spotify, a hint appeared on the playlist’s profile picture that said, “Tap to see the story” as celebrities revealed their favorite Christmas music. More on this below. The UI is similar to the ones used by other apps with a broken bar on top that divides the stories into individual sections. Tapping on the left or right side of the screen moves the story back or forward respectively.
The new feature is apparently part of an A/B test so if you open up the app on your iOS or Android device, you might be able to check it out. We happened to find it on the iOS app by going to search and searching for Christmas. Tap on the Christmas Hits “album cover” and as we already noted, in the profile picture on the page there is a prompt that reads Tap to see the story.” Do so, and you’ll see video stories from famous celebrities such as Kelly Clarkson, Meghan Trainor, and Phil Springer (composer of Christmas Baby).
Spotify has stories now….
S P O T I F Y
This has got to stop pic.twitter.com/xsurbrJblx
— TmarTn (@TmarTn) November 27, 2020
Since Spotify is not a messaging app, we would expect that the stories on the app will be limited to big names in the music industry keeping in touch with fans.
