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Play Spotify together by Remotion — Talk and listen to music like you’re side by side
Lightweight audio rooms that synchronize music in your Spotify macOS app. Music fades when you talk. And best of all, it’s free for everyone. No Spotify Premium Required.
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👋 Hi Product Hunters, excited to be back with something for everyone who listens to music at work: A new way to talk and listen to music like you’re side by side.
At Remotion we’re looking to help remote teams feel like they’re together. Knowing that music is a powerful connecting agent, we shipped an experiment to pipe YouTube into rooms. From there, we quickly had power users wanting to express more personality with their own music and playlists in Spotify. So we built it!
You might be wondering: “Doesn’t Spotify have Group Sessions? Or what about streaming audio over Zoom?” Well, Spotify Group Sessions simply don’t work on desktop. (Did you even know they exist?) And streaming on Zoom is clunky.
Feeling like you’re in the same room boils down to three ideas: 1/ Music plays in sync for everyone, 2/ Talk like you’re side by side, 3/ It doesn’t feel like a meeting
🎵 1/ Music plays in sync for everyone
Real-time, synchronized playback in the Spotify app: That way everyone controls their own volume, can add songs they like to playlists, and enjoy high audio quality. Since our users work on computers (not phones) we built on macOS APIs, and in a way that includes folks on free Spotify accounts too: If someone’s on basic, their Spotify will occasionally do its thing and play ads. We’ll catch them up to the group right afterwards.
🎙 2/ Talk like you’re side by side
We started with voice chat (and camera or screenshare if you want). But the devil was in the details: How do you prevent music from echoing when people aren’t muted? Can people can hear each other over music? The answer was deceptively simple: Fade the music when people talk. After a ton of iteration, headphones are optional, muting is optional. And it kind of sounds like everyone’s famous—or giving GPS driving directions—your choice.
Here's a blog post with the technical details.
🙊 3/ It doesn’t feel like a meeting
Nobody wants another meeting, let alone another minute of forced socializing in a Zoom happy hour. Instead, we’ve made Remotion as lightweight as possible. The UI is tiny. The defaults and shortcuts encourage spending most of the session muted with camera off. Just enjoy the music and the company—it feels great.
We’re excited for you to try this out. You can sign up for Remotion on macOS for free here. Would love to read feedback in the comments, and feel free to drop your favorite playlists while you’re at it.
BONUS: Here are 4 great playlists created by awesome teams on Remotion:
- Pictarine: https://open.spotify.com/playlis...
- Innovatemap: https://open.spotify.com/playlis...
- Tithe.ly: https://open.spotify.com/playlis...
- SelectFew: https://open.spotify.com/playlis...
Happy listening!
Finally! Multiple times I wanted to listen to an album with a friend while working and chat about cool moments. So we just try to hit the play button at the same time and then if one of us wanted to take a break we pause at the same time. I struggle a lot when want to listen to something on Spotify with friends. Thank you guys you created this tool 🙏
@degisner Love to hear it! Think you will find this magical. And let us know if not.
@besart_copa Thanks! And yes this is intentionally one of those features that could be used with either friends or colleagues. We're curious to see how people use it!
The impact of music can’t be overestimated for remote co-working sessions. Love it!
This is cool! We currently use a slack channel for sharing music but this is much better. Also thanks for the feature launch. Helped me discover the Remotion app. Looks helpful to getting our full remote team closer. I'll give it a try.
@florin_biro Great to hear! You can sign up on the site for free. Looking forward to hearing what you think.
Our team loves this feature. Allows us to explore new music w/ our coworkers while connecting in a fun little room where we can see each others faces and chat when the time is right. Great job, Remotion team!
@devon_malloy Thank you, Devon!! Your feedback over the last few months has been so helpful!
tried the website, and I must say that it looks cool. Congratulations on the launch 🚀.
@daksh_bhardwaj thanks, let us know what you think when you try the app!
Finallyy! THIS is the product I always wished existed for years re my LDR/Fs. Surprising how much of a difference this makes in bridging the gap on in those inter-time-space study / work sessions... Thank you for making this a reality.
@victory_marvin So glad you're into the idea! We hear this all the time from folks in LDRs and I love that it helps people feel close from afar. Let us know what you think!
This is great! Excited to check it out for our remote "coffee and code" sessions
This is a really great concept, and well executed! We definitely need more ways to connect in a remote setting without just creating awkward digital analogues of in-person events/interactions, we need to create new interactions that are remote-native, and this is a great example of that! Excited to check this out properly. Congrats to the team on the launch! :-)
@maxim_wheatley Thank you so much, Maxim! Really appreciate the support—let me know what you think or if you have any feedback when you check it out!
This is very cool 🎧 We have a Dash Spotify playlist we all contribute to and listen to while we're in the office - can imagine this would feel just like that, only from home!
rad! as a writer i spend big chunks of time working independently, but it easily can feel isolating. always looking for ways to spend time with other writers without interrupting one another. this feels like a good answer for that. thank you!
Troops