Spotify expands its sharing options with podcast timestamps and more

Just a couple of weeks ago, Spotify and Facebook introduced a way to play music from within the Facebook app, and today, the music streaming service has announced a handful of improvements for social sharing in its own app.

One of the more noteworthy additions is the ability to share podcasts with a timestamp, which, as you'd expect, means that whoever opens the link will be taken right to that specific point in the show. With podcasts being generally long-form entertainment, the ability to share a specific section of an episode makes sense, so users can bring attention to a specific topic or comment on the show.

Other improvements are focused on Spotify Canvas, a feature that lets users create "video-art showcases" based on specific songs, which can then be played when other users listen to the song. These short-form videos can now be shared to Snapchat in addition to Instagram Stories, and Spotify is also upgrading the share menu so that users can preview what the Canvas they're about to share will look like on social platforms. Additionally, the share menu is also being updated with a clearer layout that should make it easier to share to your preferred social networks.

Spotify says that 40% of music discovery happens on social media, and its focus on making the sharing experience better obviously aims to attract more users to its platform. As for podcasts, Spotify is a relatively new player in the space, and features like this may help it grow in popularity in an ever more crowded market.