A Guide to Starting and Hosting a Spotify Group Session With Friends

Everyone has distinct musical tastes and preferences. Often times when you listen to music on your phone at a party, your friends and family will ask you to play their favorite song next. It can be tedious to watch the requested songs and make changes to the current playlist. Wouldn’t it be fun to share a music listening session with friends to discover and listen to songs? This is what Spotify is trying to achieve with the new Spotify group session in the app.

Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service, is on a roll with an aggressive push in the podcast industry. That’s not to say Spotify doesn’t have a lot of focus on the music department. The company recently launched a group session for Premium subscribers. Group sessions allow you to listen to songs with friends in real time. Users in a group session can choose what to play and control music together.

The feature can also come in handy when you’re thousands of miles away from your friends and want the team to listen to the same music simultaneously.

So how does it work? How to set up and host Spotify group sessions with friends? How to end the group session? We have all the answers for you. Let’s start.

Availability

The group session is only available for Premium subscribers at this time. The functionality is accessible from the Spotify mobile and tablet application. There is no word on making the group session feature available on the desktop or the Spotify web app.

Host a Spotify group session with friends

To control music together, you need to create a group session and ask your friends to join the group to play and control the music. Follow the steps below to host a Spotify group session.

Step 1: Open the Spotify app on your device.

2nd step: Play any song. Open the music player screen and tap the multi-device icon in the lower left corner.

Step 3: The next screen will give you a bunch of connectivity options such as AirPlay or Bluetooth. You will see group sessions with Start Session and Scan to Join options. Press the Start Session button.

Step 4: The next screen will show the Spotify Group Single Sign-On Code. You can ask your friends to scan the code using the Scan to Join option or tap the Invite Friends option to generate a group session link.

Step 5: Send the link using Messages or any social media chat app like WhatsApp or Telegram.

Step 6: When your friend (he / she should also be using Spotify Premium) opens the link, he / she will be redirected to the app with an invitation to join the group session.

Step 7: They can either join the session or use the not now option to ignore the message.

Step 8: When the other user joins Session, the Spotify app will offer two options for listening to music. Let’s understand the action of each option.

If you select “Join same device as your friend”, you will not be able to hear the song from your side. The playlist will continue to play on your friend’s device. However, you can watch upcoming songs and add your favorite songs to the queue. You can still pause or skip the song.

This option is intended for parties and functions where you do not want the same music to continue playing on each user’s device in the group. Instead, it will only play on the administrator’s device while still providing control to all members of the group session. In short, everyone becomes the DJ.

If you choose the option “On my own device”, the same music will be played on your side. In this situation, the music will be played on the devices of all users. This is useful when you are away from your friends but want to listen to the same music.

Group session controls

A user can add up to five members to a group session. All joined members can play, skip, forward, rewind and pause a song. You can also add your favorite song to the group playlist.

Go to a song you like and tap the three-dot menu. Select Add to Queue from the next menu. And it will add the song to the group’s playlist.

From the song playback screen, you can see how many members are listening to the current song, and if you joined the group as “ Join same device as your friend ” you will see the name of the main device on which the song is currently playing.

How much my information is available to group members

Invited members will be able to see your name, device name, and current Spotify playlist. They can also view your Spotify profile with the following numbers, subscriber numbers and public playlists. However, they will not be able to see your private playlists.

Listening to music together

The group session feature is like a breath of fresh air in the music streaming space. Spotify’s group session feature is quite handy, and the overall implementation is perfect. I can’t help but see Spotify’s lead increase in the race for music streaming apps. Go ahead and try the group session in Spotify with friends. I’m sure you and your friends will have fun exploring and listening to new music.