Facebook and Apple have partnered to bring a new feature to Facebook Messenger that selects music based on emoji.
Facebook's messaging app was updated this week with an Apple Music bot that can recommend songs and playlists based on emoji.
The new bot presents music recommendations based on your preferences – or whatever emoji you happen to be using that day. Send the bot an emoji and it will present you with a series of songs that match it.
Some emojis tend to work better than others – you'll have better luck with ? than with ? – but the feature seems to do a decent job overall at guessing the music related to the theme.
You can also get music suggestions the old-fashioned way by typing in genre or specific artists or albums. Or you can choose to see broader categories, like new picks.
For each recommendation, the bot serves up an Apple Music link that lets you listen to the songs within Messenger.
Additionally, Facebook Messenger has also been updated with a chat extension for Apple Music that lets you share song clips directly in your conversations. You can enable the extension (+) from the menu in Messenger. Then, all you have to do is search for a song or artist.
Of course, Apple's goal is to drive more people to its paid music streaming service, so with both new features you won't be able to listen to full songs unless you're a paying subscriber. Even if you don't sign up, you can preview and share 30-second clips of songs. And the recommendations alone should be useful, regardless of whether or not you want to pay for Apple Music.
