Spotify may convey again a characteristic everybody liked until 2018 (APK teardown)

Spotify has been steadily remodeling from a pure music-streaming service right into a social media platform. Final yr, the corporate launched in-app Messages, and simply yesterday, it quietly expanded that characteristic with group messaging assist. Now, we’ve found proof within the newest Spotify app that implies the corporate could also be making ready one other long-requested improve: editable usernames.

At the same time as Spotify provides extra social options like Jams, Blends, collaborative playlists, and now messaging, discovering folks on the platform remains to be awkward.

Not like conventional social media networks, Spotify doesn’t allow you to seek for somebody by a novel username. Looking by show identify additionally isn’t very useful when 1000’s of customers can share the identical identify. Messaging somebody new isn’t easy both.

As The Verge factors out, Spotify at the moment limits messaging to folks you’ve already interacted with by way of its different social options. You possibly can’t simply search for a person globally and begin chatting with them, except you employ invite hyperlinks. However we’ve discovered proof that Spotify might quickly get rid of this limitation.

In model 9.1.20.1132 of Spotify’s Android app, we noticed new code strings that strongly recommend that the platform is engaged on permitting customers to edit their usernames.

There’s additionally an inner description that explicitly reveals what’s coming:

A web page that permits modifying the person’s social deal with (referred to as username within the UI)

That wording is essential. Spotify isn’t simply cleansing up labels, it’s clearly framing usernames as social handles, a time period that’s largely used to explain person profiles on conventional social media apps than in music gamers.

Current Spotify usernames and what’s altering

Spotify technically already has usernames, however they aren’t in any respect user-friendly, and haven’t been for years.

Since 2018, all new Spotify accounts obtain robotically generated alphanumeric usernames. Earlier than that, customers might select their very own distinctive username throughout account creation. As soon as set, this username turned everlasting and couldn’t be edited.

The present auto-generated usernames additionally function distinctive identifiers on your account, which is why Spotify doesn’t allow you to change them.

That setup works fantastic for a personal listening app. However with messaging, group chats, and different social options coming into the image, the dearth of easier, customizable usernames is turning into extra evident by the day.

These new editable usernames ought to make it simpler to seek out and work together with Spotify customers with out counting on hyperlinks or earlier interactions. What’s unclear is when the characteristic will roll out and if the prevailing alphanumeric usernames will live on in some type, on condition that Spotify binds them to customers’ accounts.