The hugely popular music streaming service Spotify has unveiled its ‘new direction’, and as The Gadget Helpline predicted just a few days ago, the new direction is apps.
Founder and CEO of the company, Daniel Ek, took to the stage in London last night to announce Spotify App Finder – a new way for apps and software to integrate with Spotify’s music streaming machine.
The platform is powered by the latest HTML5 technology, and will allow apps to work alongside Spotify, just like Facebook has been doing recently by showing you what your friends and family have been listening to.
Spotify feels that apps will be the next big thing for music, and they already have some big names on board. At present there are 11 apps available to install within the Spotify desktop program for Windows and Mac, including apps from The Guardian, Pitchfork, US Billboard, Last. fm and Rolling Stone.
App Finder for Spotify will roll out to all Spotify desktop users in the coming weeks, but if you’re like us, then you’re an impatient gadget fiend and you want to try it right now. The good news is that you can, simply head over to Spotify’s ‘Previews’ page and download Spotify again; the same software albeit with the new features bundled in this time.
The new App Finder feature will be available for all Spotify users – free, premium and ultimate subscribers alike.
We’ve had a gander at the apps, and although there isn’t much available yet (Spotify promises this is just “the tip of the iceberg”), apps are a welcome addition to the favourable service. We can see this getting pretty big!
As an example of what the apps will be able to do – Last. fm will analyse your Spotify listenings and make recommendations based on your taste, much like the Last. fm website will do for you when you scrobble play counts from iTunes or your iPod. It’s already a great tool for discovering new artists, and now that it works with Spotify it’s even better.
You can learn more about Spotify’s new App Finder in the video below. Let us know what you think.
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