Spotify this morning announced a new partnership with the online GIF database GIPHY to enable the discovery of new music through GIFs. No, the GIFs themselves don’t play song clips, if that’s what you mean. Instead, through a series of new GIFs linked to Spotify, there is the option of clicking a button to go straight to Spotify to hear the artist’s music. When released, artists have, including Doja Cat, The weeknd, Post Malone, Nicki Minaj, The child LAROI, Conan gray, and others have Spotify-linked GIFs on their official GIPHY profile page. More artists will be added over time.
The idea behind the new integration is to connect users to Spotify music from their daily communications like texts, group chats and other places where GIFs are used. This is similar to Spotify’s existing integrations with social media apps like Snapchat and Instagramwhere users can share music through the stories and news they have posted. Essentially, it’s a user acquisition strategy that leverages online social activity – in this case sharing GIFs – while benefiting artists through the exposure they get.
You can find the new GIFs linked to Spotify on the artist page on GIPHY.com or via the GIPHY mobile app. The supported GIFs include a new “Listen on Spotify” button below that will appear next to the GIF when you share it. When clicked, users are redirected from the GIF to the artist’s page on Spotify, where they can stream their music or search for more songs they want to hear.
Photo credits: Spotify / GIPHY
According to Spotify, the feature is part of a broader partnership with GIPHY, which will later focus on providing users with a more interactive listening experience.
The move to the partnership with GIPHY follows a recent expansion of the existing partnership between Spotify and GIPHY’s parent company, Facebook. The social networking giant bought the popular GIF platform worth $ 400 million back in 2020, a few years after Google took over GIPHY rival Tenor. Since then, Facebook has worked to better integrate GIPHY with its apps like Facebook and Instagram.
Earlier this year, Facebook and Spotify also teamed up on a new “Boombox” project that would allow Facebook users to listen to music hosted on Spotify while browsing the Facebook app. This is aided by a “mini-player” that allows anyone who encounters the shared music to click on the content to play the content while scrolling their feed.
Spotify says The new feature will be available to users worldwide on the verified GIPHY artist website.