Instagram and Spotify have teamed up to create “Reels Charts” playlists featuring the top 50 songs from the short format of the same name. Photo credit: Alexander Shatov
Spotify has officially partnered with Instagram to create Reels Charts, or playlists, of the top 50 most popular songs on Instagram’s short-form eponymous offering.
The Stockholm-based streaming service and Meta-owned social platform recently announced their collaboration, which has drawn the media spotlight as TikTok continues to expand the reach of its own music streaming app. Additionally, earlier this week, ByteDance-owned TikTok unveiled an artist discovery program called Elevate, emphasizing its perceived role as the “ultimate platform for music discovery.”
Not to be outdone, Spotify — which says it’s “continuously trying to expand the way fans around the world discover music” — has integrated Reels Charts in Brazil and Mexico, where streaming is hugely popular, according to IFPI. While the playlist-centric union is likely to reach other markets later, Spotify hasn’t announced any plans to take Reels Charts to other countries.
However, the streaming giant has stated that the playlist charts will consider “several variables” including the frequency with which songs are used in reels, tracks with “the largest increase in views”, “level of engagement” with the corresponding videos and “overall consumption”.
Reels charts will be updated weekly going forward, according to the Spanish language description of Mexico playlist, which had about 84,000 likes at the time of writing this article. The top five songs on this playlist were Myke Towers’ “LALA”, Laurindo Almeida’s “The Lamp Is Low”, Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World”, Enzo’s “Smooth Operator” and NewJeans’ “Super Shy”.
Longer term, it’s worth keeping an eye out for other joint initiatives by Instagram and Spotify, both of which (given the latter’s continued global adoption of TikTok Music) tend to compete directly with TikTok. About a month ago, Instagram completed the global launch of its “broadcast channels,” and earlier this week the service unveiled a number of upgrades to the Reels templates.
And finally, aside from the aforementioned expansion of TikTok Music and the launch of Elevate, it’s worth noting that the highly controversial app this week announced an expanded partnership deal with Warner Music Group (WMG).
According to the parties involved, this enhanced agreement licensed (among other things) the major label’s repertoire to TikTok itself, as well as its commercial music library, and the companies are now coordinating the development of “alternative economic models” against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving AI landscape.