Facebook pours out audio features

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said it is working on Project Boombox, which makes music and playlists provided by Spotify playable on social media platforms. He added that although the feature was designed to enhance the creator experience, he added that he wants to make it a medium that musicians value for sharing and promoting their work on Facebook.

The player Facebook integrates into the platform is said to support not only music but also podcast playback. It also offers options for paid subscribers and free users. Spotify said the company always aims to make Spotify ubiquitous across platforms and devices, and deliver music or podcasts to a wider audience.

Zuckerberg said he expects audio to become a top-notch media, and that he believes it can create a wide variety of products across the field. He added that he thinks there’s something else that hasn’t even been pioneered yet, even though there are areas that have recently become popular, such as live audio rooms and podcasts.

Project Boombox has already begun testing in Mexico and Thailand. It is said that sooner or later it may become available in the United States as well. Related information can be found here.

Meanwhile, Facebook announced Live Audio Rooms, a voice chat feature that has been developed before and is a battlehorse of the clubhouse. In addition to this feature, which will be available in the summer, there are also new features such as Soundbites, which share podcasts and short audio clips.

The live audio room can be used by Facebook groups or messengers, and you can enjoy voice chat as well as the clubhouse. In the recently announced hotline, it is assumed that the use of a Q&A session is rather than a conversation using a camera, but the live audio room can be said to be pure communication.

It is said that this feature will first be offered to groups and celebrity accounts. Facebook says it can provide a forum for discussion without feeling the burden of being reflected on the camera.

Another audio feature is SoundByte, which allows you to post short audio clips to your Facebook news feed. You can create original audio clips in short forms that express anecdotes, jokes, moments of inspiration, poems, and more. It has not been confirmed how it will be used, but over the next few months, we plan to conduct a creator test and try a variety of concepts. After the feedback, it will be distributed to all users.

You will also be able to listen to podcasts on the Facebook app in the coming months. This can be used even when the Facebook app is in the background. In addition, the live audio room is also considering monetization. If you want to participate in the Creators Room, you can charge it every time or provide a subscription model. It is said that SoundByte will also introduce a fund to support new audio creators. Related information can be found here.

On April 19th, Facebook also expanded the data transmission function so that the content of Facebook posts can be directly transmitted to Google Docs, bloggers, and WordPress.com.

Data transfer is done using DTP (Data Transfer Project), an open source project that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and Apple participated in. Until now, photos and videos could be transferred to Google Photos, Dropbox, and Koofr, but new posts and notes can be exported to the outside. Accordingly, the name of the tool was changed to send a copy of Facebook information.

To use the tool, you must re-enter the password as before, and the data is encrypted when transmitted to other services. In addition, the number of data transmitted and partners will be expanded in the future.

Facebook said it hopes this update will help policy makers, developers, and experts discuss how to clarify who is responsible for protecting the data transmitted in data transfers. It can be said that the expansion of this function also has the purpose of appealing the performance ahead of the regulations to Facebook, which is criticized by the antitrust law. Anyway, from the user’s point of view, data portability is welcome. Related information can be found here.