WhatsApp x Spotify
Music. Makes the people, come together...
Summary
This project is something that brings together two apps that I use daily. A substantial amount of time is spent messaging friends and family via WhatsApp, an app that is now owned by Facebook. The other, is Spotify - if it were a person, it would be the love of my life. As Madonna mentioned in her song 'Music', it's what makes the people come together and I truly believe it! Music = life.
This unnamed project is the development of a plugin for WhatsApp that shows your contacts the music you are currently listening to. Additionally, like the way Google Maps introduced it, there is also the option to control your music from within WhatsApp.
A video demo has been uploaded to my YouTube channel too:
What's up with WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is the world's communication channel - 1.5 billion users in 180 countries makes it the most popular messaging app in the world. The app was created in 2009 by two former Yahoo employees, Brian Acton and Jan Koum and sold to Facebook in 2014 for a whopping $19 billion.
What makes it so popular?
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It's free.
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When WhatsApp rolled out in 2009, it was the first of its kind. There was Skype, which excelled at voice and video calling, but Skype was for the PC and made a late entry into mobile phones. WhatsApp was to free messaging what Skype was to free calling.
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It identifies people through their phone numbers. No need to ask for a username.
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It is cross platform. WhatsApp started on Android and iOS mobile phones but eventually catered to Windows Phones, Nokia phones and more.
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All you need is a phone number and that becomes your unique identifier - no need for usernames and passwords.
Spotify
Gone are the days of purchasing physical music on cassettes, CDs or even soft legal (or illegal) copies from iTunes and the likes. S'all about streaming that now. Consumers like myself pay a monthly fee to the likes of Apple, Google and Spotify to get access to millions of songs in seconds.
With all of the competition in music streaming services, Spotify still remains the most-used globally with 180 million active users, including over 83 million paying subscribers. Other advantages of Spotify include:
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50 million songs in their extensive catalogue with the option of playing songs at 320kbps.
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A free version (with ads), giving access to a wider audience.
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Spotify Family allows 6 members of the same family to subscribe using only one account.
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Spotify Connect is a seamless way to stream music from any of your devices.
Spotify continually improves its design, usability and streaming quality making it the platform of choice.
A match made in heaven
The Influence of MSN Messenger
Jigsaw, is that you?!
The design of this project was inspired by a messaging tool that was created by Microsoft.
Before the likes of WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger there was MSN Messenger. Having launched back in 1999, MSN Messenger survived for 15 years before finally being killed off in 2014. It was bigger than AOL, the precursor to Skype and even more addictive than texts. For those born in the late '80s or early '90s you'll remember how many hours you spent on this application.
As the application updated over the years, Microsoft started introducing new features, including the ability to play games. One of the features that I loved was the ability to show what music I was listening to. Whether it was to show off that you were the first to discover a song or subliminally communicate with your crush, this feature was so simple yet impactful.
Let's bring it back y'all!
How it works
As a regular WhatsApp user,
I want to show what music I am listening to,
So that my contact list can discover new music.
For this to work technically, Whatsapp would have to place nice with the music providers. In this project, the provider of choice is Spotify, as it is what I use every day.
Spotify has provided information on how to integrate with the app on their developer's site.
Your app can be authorized by Spotify in two ways:
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App Authorization: Spotify authorizes your app to access the Spotify Platform (APIs, SDKs and Widgets).
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User Authorization: Spotify, as well as the user, grant your app permission to access and/or modify the user’s own data. For information about User Authentication, see User Authentication with OAuth 2.0. Calls to the Spotify Web API require authorization by your application user. To get that authorization, your application generates a call to the Spotify Accounts Service /authorize endpoint, passing along a list of the scopes for which access permission is sought.
This image from the site simply describes how this would work. In this case, 'My App' would be WhatsApp and the user would need to authorise WhatsApp to use their Spotify information.
The following diagram is the user journey flow of this project. It incorporates the Spotify authentication after Spotify is selected as the user's music provider within Whatsapp.
The Result
This video of my project demonstrates the steps that were outlined in the uer journey flow in a high definition prototype.
There are a lot of communication apps out there now, especially due to the Coronavirus lockdown. Many of them have introduced additional features that allow further interaction with contacts. Take the example of Houseparty, which allows contacts to play games together.
Development of future features of WhatsApp could include these types of features to attract a variety of users. Some may say that it might be overkill and many users may not want to see these additional distractions within the WhatsApp. After all, it is a messaging tool. But variety is the spice of life, so these features could be hidden behind a menu or a feature switch.
