Today, Napster (formerly Rhapsody) has just become the first streaming music site to incorporate GIFs into its listening platform as part of an update aimed at significantly improving the playlist-making experience. The company has partnered with online GIF titan GIPHY to make millions of short, looping videos available to add to playlists, which is something that has been missing from streaming. Those who use their Napster account to create playlists for parties, for friends or even just for themselves will now be able to cover them with a GIF, which can often be much better at expressing the precise mood or feeling the music about to be played conveys than the album art associated with singles.
In addition to making playlists much more visually appealing with GIFs, users can now also take recommendations from the service when creating their next run of songs. Napster has added a Tinder-like function that takes cues from what songs have already been added to a playlist before suggesting what should come next. Users can listen to a few seconds of a song and swipe one way or the other, depending on if they like what they’ve been served or not.
