Facebook inches one step closer to music with update to Android app

Facebook edged one step closer to your music with a neat little update to its app on Android, which you can use to control tunes via Facebook.

Don’t hold your breath for a similar feature on the iPhone.

The new update enables you to control the music you’re listening to right from your lock screen, but only if you’re using Facebook’s Home feature. That means you can pause, fast forward to the next song, and rewind to previous tunes without unlocking your phone and without opening an app. The feature also works if you’re using Cover Feed, an option for some Android folk who set their lock screen to display Facebook updates.

It’s not rocket science, but it is one step closer to providing more of a complete music experience, going along with its existing listen-to-music-with-friends and music dashboard features.

Also in the update are animated stickers — “see Pusheen, Beast, and Anooki wave, dance and wiggle,” a Facebook representative e-mailed me.

I simply can’t wait to try them out, naturally.

But I’m sure that will be tremendously exciting for prepubescent Facebook users, and that’s probably exactly who it’s for. Six of the top 10 most-downloaded apps on Google Play are messaging apps, if you don’t count games, and while Facebook itself is the most-download app on Android, Facebook Messenger is No. 4, and Facebook’s Instagram is No. 6, Facebook needs to compete with fast-growing WhatsApp, Line, Skype, WeChat, and Viber.

So anything that adds a little spice and sizzle is probably not a bad idea for the Mountain View social giant.

The app is available now on Google Play, where you can see that it currently has between 500 million and one billion downloads. That’s a lot of bits flying our right now, updating phones across the world.