How to Throw a Party on Spotify
Of course, you and your friends can do your quarantine by looking at everyone’s queues on all existing streaming services. And that’s all well and good, but what if you’re not in the mood for movie night? What if you just want to have fun with your friends while remaining socially distanced?
If you’re a Spotify premium user and all of your friends are Spotify premium users, you now have the opportunity – thanks to a Spotify beta feature called “group sessions.” To get started, open the Spotify app on your Android or iOS / iPadOS device and then download the song. It can be any song you want, but you’ll probably want to pick the first song in some giant playlist you’ve created, otherwise you’ll be getting all your friends together for three minutes or so?
From there, click on the small Connect icon in the lower left corner of your screen.
Scroll down past your streaming devices and you’ll see a new list for Spotify group sessions.
Click that big green button to start your session. Nothing will happen until your friends join your little “Who’s Listening” room, and you can call them by clicking the “Invite Friends” button and sending them a text message with a link to your room. You can also copy and paste this link anywhere – useful if, say, you want to get a bunch of random Twitter followers or whatever comes with you.
However, don’t expect your little session to be a one-man concert. In total, up to five people can chat in a group session (although the UI seems to imply five plus you, Spotify’s announcement suggests that group sessions only work with two to five people in total).
When you are all done, everyone will have the same control over the listening session. This means that anyone can play or pause tracks at any time, skip to a new track, or select one to play, and queue up any new songs they want everyone to listen to. Surprisingly, Spotify doesn’t allow the host to block the specified room and only allows people to listen and not interact, but the company notes that this feature, still in beta, could be changed in the future. Perhaps this option will appear in the future if you think that you are a much better virtual DJ than your friends.
If you’re not a fan of the Spotify implementation, there are other alternatives you can use for general jam sessions. At Lifehacker, we’re big fans of JQBX , which also requires a Spotify Premium account to use. I haven’t tried groovechat.fm myself as I mostly stick with JQBX, but this is another option for group listening.