Spotify release new feature ‘Jam’

Spotify, among all other streaming services, have always had issues with members attempting to share music with friends from one audio source up to this point, but Spotify has finally come up with a solution. Releasing Jam for premium members, friends now have access to a new way to stream together with others with added benefits.

Spotify is no stranger to introducing new and unique features for Premium members. Earlier this year the streaming service unveiled their AI-generated, curated and hosted playlist for members titled DJ, in which an AI would look over a members listening habits, favorite artists, and frequented genres to give listeners old favorites and new finds, all hosted by a personable AI-voiced host. Now, Spotify has announced on September 26, 2023 that immediately following their announcement on their blog, they would be releasing a new feature for Premium users called Jam.

Jam allows multiple Spotify users to share and stream their music with their friends from the same audio source but from separate devices. The move towards this type of feature has slowly been building at Spotify ever since the advent of the Collaborative Playlist which allowed users to create a playlist that allowed additions and subtractions from users aside from the initial creator. Spotify then followed up with Blend playlists, which allowed 2 separate users to create a shared playlist that was randomly generated for them to share their individual music tastes in such a way that the playlist fused similar and dissimilar music tastes into one enjoyable playlist.

Jam differs from the previous features as it is not a playlist feature, but rather a real-time queuing feature with some added surprises. The feature allows one user, or ‘host’, to create a Jam queue and share this queue with other users in their vicinity. To begin a Jam session, the hosting friend must simply hit the speaker icon in the bottom left corner or the icon with the 3 dots in the top right corner and continue on by pressing the ‘Start a Jam’ button. Friends can then utilize a Bluetooth connection, access a QR code for the unique queueing session, or simply share a link with others via social media, text, SMS, or other similar options to access each unique Jam session.

Once friends are all connected together to the Jam queue, they can begin adding their own choices into the Jam queue for real-time playback from a singular audio source, such as an in-home audio system, car sound system, etc. However, the feature does not stop there. Jam also looks into each user’s music in the queue and offers up suggestions that the group may enjoy and allows users to add them to the queue, similar to the way that genius shuffle works for individual listeners. Jam sessions also show which user in the Jam has added each song to the queue.

Image credits: Spotify