One of the best parts of listening to music is getting to share it with your friends, and thanks to the magic of modern playlisting, collaborative playlist creation can is now a reality. Here Randy Zimmerman walks us through how to create group playlists on both Spotify and Apple Music.
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Guest post by Randi Zimmerman of the Symphonic Blog
If your group of friends is anything like mine, you’re obligated to share every great banger you come across. Whether you send it to the group chat or through social media, sharing our favorite songs with our closest friends is one of the best ways to find new music.
If only there was a way you could team up to create the ultimate playlist that all of your friends could add to whenever they please…
Oh wait, there is!
Here’s how it works:
There are two great streaming services that offer the collaborative playlist feature, Spotify and Apple Music. Both of them are the same concept and super easy to use, so feel free to use whichever one your heart desires.
Spotify
With Spotify’s collaborative playlists, it’s up to you to decide who you want to give access to. The only way your friends can start adding songs to the playlist is if they’ve been given the web address for your playlist. To make sure no random strangers can start adding nonsense to your perfect playlist, you also can’t publish these playlists to your public profile. (It’s for the best, I promise)
To add some accountability to what’s added, the username for whoever adds which track is shown for you to see. That way, if your friend Jim keeps adding Brittney Spears to your strictly Underground Rap playlist, you know exactly who to yell at.
Follow these steps to get started:
- Go ahead and create a regular playlist.
- Then, right-click its title in the main sidebar and select Collaborative Playlist from the pop-up menu that appears. (The music note will turn from white to green, and a little dot should appear next to it.)
- On that same right-click menu, click share to give access to whoever you want to collab with.
Apple Music
- When you open the app, tap on My Music at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see the thumbnails for Recently Added Playlists.
- To create a playlist, tap the New button at the upper right corner of the screen.
Now that you’ve made a new playlist on Apple Music, there are two options to add songs to the playlist.
Option one: Go to the new playlist, tap the green plus button to add the songs that you want into this newly created playlist.
Option two: Browse songs first, and then tap the three-dot icon on the right of the song you want to bring up a new list. Choose Add to a Playlist… Then, tap the playlist you just made.
After you’ve added the songs you want to this playlist, it’s time to share it.
- Go to the playlist that you want to share, click three-dot icon at the upper right part, a list will appear.
- Tap Share Playlist. Then, you’re free to choose whatever platform or person you want to share your playlist with. (Message, E-mail, Twitter, etc. are all available for you)
Collaborating on the ultimate playlist with your friends is a really fun way to keep everyone up to date on the hottest tracks. My only recommendation is to be super picky with who you let in on the action. You don’t want that one friend with terrible taste in music to mess up all your hard work. Other than that, go wild.
We hope this post helped you through creating some collaborative playlists of your own. Drop us a comment below if you’ve used this feature before and how you like it.
Happy playlisting!