Facebook’s adding another music sharing option, with users now able to add music, as well as new themed backgrounds for selected artists, to your Facebook posts.
As you can see in this example, you can now add a music track to accompany your text post, which will let your Facebook connections immediately listen to the song in-stream.
Which sure is something, but whether that’s a good or bad something, I don’t know.
As explained by Facebook:
“Music has always been something that brings people together, and since the very beginning Facebook has been about showcasing what you’re into and connecting you with your friends. And now, Facebook is making it easier than ever to add music to your Feed posts for more ways to express yourself and create fun, engaging content to share with others.”
It takes me back to the days of MySpace, when opening a MySpace profile would also activate that users’ favorite song. Which was an experience, for sure, but whether you really want that on Facebook is another question entirely.
The audio from these posts will be active if you have audio switched on, so it won’t override your exiting audio settings. But if you do have sound activated, you’re now going to get random tracks accompanying text posts in the app.
In addition to this, Facebook’s also looking to improve its recommendations to feature more musicians, which will also include more relevant music recommendations for these posts.
Facebook has tried out various ways to better integrate music into the user experience over the years, including songs on profiles, and music in comments.
Most of these features have been short-lived, but with music playing a key role in engagement for other apps, Facebook seems determined to find more ways to integrate songs directly into the Facebook process.
So now, you can add a song to your Facebook post, for additional audio context.
Will that be a big thing? I doubt it, but it’s another experiment. Basically, Facebook seems to be throwing music-based functions at a wall (your wall, as it were, using old-school Facebook terminology) and seeing if anything sticks.