Facebook Makes Music More Social, Starts Rolling Out "Listen With" Feature

Facebook just announced that it will soon start rolling out the next part of its music service. Launched in September 2011, Facebook Music only let users see what their friends were listening to on popular streaming music services like Spotify. Now, as part of the next phase of this rollout, Facebook is also launching its "listen with" feature that doesn't just show you what your friends are listening to, but also allows you to listen along to what your friends are playing in real-time. Facebook users will also be able to play DJ to a group of their friends.

To see if any of your friends are currently listening to music on a compatible service, just take a look at the chat sidebar and look for the new music note icon. To listen to a song, Facebook says, you will just have to hover over your friend's name and click the "Listen with" button. Here is how Facebook describes this feature: "You can listen to the same song, at the exact same time—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."

Facebook's announcement doesn't mention which services will support this feature, but chances are it's the same group of companies that also currently support Facebook Music, including Spotify, Mog, Rdio, iHeartRadio, Slacker, Earbits, Turntable, SoundCloud, and Rhapsody.

Facebook will also allow you to chat about the music with your friends and will automatically create a group chat for all of those who are listening to the same stream.

This isn't turntable.fm, of course, so you can't take turns playing the DJ and there are no gamification features, but this is clearly a smart step in the right direction for Facebook Music.