by Jennifer Lane 

For audio4cast

January 17, 2012 at 8:22 am  

Facebook has a new music sharing feature that allows friends to listen to what their friends are listening to – at the same time. When connected friends see what their friends are listening to in the chat sidebar on facebook they can click to join the listening experience and hear the same song at the same time from the same service. It’s a new feature that facebook launched last week with integrated partner Spotify. Plans are to roll it out with other music streaming partners in the coming weeks.

It’s easy to see how this could really take off virally and increase time spent with facebook as well as time spent with music services. Spotify has 4.6 million daily active users on facebook already, while other services have far less – MOG has 10,000 daily active users, iHeartRadio has 230,000.

As friends join friends in listening, they can chat about the music they are hearing. Other friends can chat and listen as well, joining a group chat that can expand into new networks of friends of friends.

On demand services like Spotify and MOG probably stand to gain the most from these features which allow any user to become a DJ for their friends, and their friends’ friends. At the same time, it’s bound to be building the online listening audience and time spent with the medium..