Spotify used to have a side bar that made it easy to scroll through and locate your Facebook friends that are also on Spotify. You could simply drag a song over your friends name, and then provide that song to their ‘Inbox’ with an optional message.

Unfortunately with recent updates, Spotify no longer includes this social sidebar. You could search for your friends using the Search bar, and then load their profile in the center of the screen. This is difficult though, because the option to share a song with them requires that you remember the exact title or artist that created the song.

After pulling up your friend, you can’t simply drag the song you’re listening to over their profile. You have to manually search for the song. Sure it’s loaded in the lower left corner, so you can read it’s name, but still it slows down the process when you have to type in the name of the song. If you want to do this often, all this time can add up.

There is another way to share the song though. I didn’t notice this until a friend pointed it out (Eric). There is a little icon in the bottom right corner of the area where the current song is shown. If you click on this option, you’re given the option to search for your friend by name. You already have to do this in the search bar with the first method shown above, so no loss there.

Next you select to send the song to a friend, type in their name (with popup hints), and then type in your message if you want before you click on ‘Send’. This is much more efficient. I wish I had noticed it sooner.