Streaming music services have been social from the very beginning, but actually sharing songs and playlists has always been difficult because your friends may not use the same service as you. If you use Spotify and a friend uses Apple Music, sharing songs isn’t easy.
Noted, a music discovery service that officially launched in March, is looking to change that with its new SongSync feature. The new feature essentially acts as a middleman, letting users share a song, then presenting it to that user’s friends in the way that they prefer.
“SongSync enhances the listening experience of users’ favorite streaming services by adding universal sharing with friends,” said Tim Welch, co-founder and chief technology officer of Noted, in a statement. “For example, I can share a music video from YouTube, and Noted automatically recognizes my friends’ preferences so they can add it to their Spotify playlists or listen to it in Apple Music.”
The launch of the SongSync feature also comes as Noted adds support for Spotify and Apple Music for the first time. Previously, only YouTube and SoundCloud were supported for sharing songs. This integration works both ways as well, with users being able to share to Noted from Spotify or Apple Music, allowing anyone who sees the share to listen to the song from their preferred service, as long as the song is available there.
When Noted launched, we referred to it as something between a stand-alone social network and a more social Pandora. With the addition of SongSync, the service also aims to function as a “glue” between various streaming services.
“I don’t want people knowing I listen to Katy Perry at the gym, so I turn off social features for Spotify. But when I find a great song that I want to tell friends about, there isn’t a really good way,” Ben Hewitt, co-founder and CEO, said. “In the same way that people take a lot of pictures on their phone but only post a few to Instagram, people can listen to a lot of songs and only share a few on Noted.”
Noted is free and available for both iOS and Android devices. For more information, see the Noted.fm website.
