Facebook Messenger is trying to integrate easy music sharing with Spotify

Facebook has teamed up with Spotify to create a unique new system that makes sharing music with your friends a breeze. Or, at least, that’s what they’re trying to do. Although the premise is pretty golden, the actual implementation of this new feature is about as graceful as a drunken camel.

The idea is this. You want to send a song or playlist to a friend, which is something that happens fairly regularly these days. A tap of a button, and you transition seamlessly from Messenger to Spotify, pick the song or playlist you want to share, and then jump right back into the conversation with tunes at the ready. Sounds pretty peachy, right?

Well, E for effort, Facebook. In practice, this whole system is pretty damn clunky. The Spotify option is tucked away in the Messenger app’s “…” menu, which is where things like GIPHY, Bitmoji, and Draw Something like to hang out. Tapping Spotify will hop you over to that app’s interface, and from there it’s a cinch to pick out what you want to send. No problems so far. Tap, tap, and it’s away.

And that’s where the trouble kind of begins. There’s not really an obvious play button of any kind. Tapping the main image will just blow up the album art, and the big, obvious button that rides alongside the attachment just opens up a set of additional sharing options. To actually start playing the music, you have to tap the teeny little “open” button hiding underneath the main image. This will kick you over to Spotify for listening. However, if your friend is using Messenger in-browser, the two of you are SOL. There’s no option at all to actually get to the song or playlist for anybody not using the mobile app version of Messenger.

This might be an unfair first impression. After all, it’s a brand new feature, and Facebook is sure to improve on it in the future. In these post-CD days, we’ve really yet to settle upon a universal medium for the once-ubiquitous mixtape, but if Facebook can pull this off, our go-to playlist sharing interface might just become a Messenger-Spotify one-two combo.