The social network announced a new feature Thursday called “Listen With” that gives users a chatroom in which to share songs. They get to DJ the tunes they are streaming via services such as Spotify and Rdio.
Real-time sharing from such services was introduced with Open Graph in September. Users can already see in that chat sidebar what friends are listening to, and click on those songs to play them, but they don’t have the option to listen together in a unified virtual environment.
The new feature, as Facebook’s introductory blog post puts it, makes it so “when your favorite vocal part comes in you can experience it together, just like when you’re jamming out at a performance or dance club.”
The feature will start rolling out within the next few weeks. To use it, look for a music note in your chat sidebar. This shows who is listening to music. When you hover over someone’s name, you’ll see a “Listen with x” button that plays the song through whatever service your friend is using. When your friend chooses a new song, you’ll continue to hear what they hear.
Multiple people will be able to listen in on one friend’s music, and the entire group will be able chat together. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s a lot like Turntable.fm without the avatars or the “awesome” button.
