Spotify has just introduced the Play Button, a way to integrate songs and playlists into websites and blogs completely free, using the Spotify music streaming service.
The all-new feature lets you embed a Spotify player for individual songs or playlists into websites, social networks and even blogs, such as Tumblr. You choose the music that is offered in the player, and all the visitor has to do is click play and listen. The embedded Play widget is neat and follows the Spotify design style, featuring play and pause functions, scrolling and even album artwork.
If a user likes your Play widget they can click the </> button in the top right corner and copy the embed code to add it to their own website. The new feature is looking to change the way we share music tastes, and lands at just the right time, with the popularity of blogging site Tumblr skyrocketing with billions of posts added every day by individual users and companies.
There’s a slight catch, albeit a fair one: you need to have the Spotify program installed on your PC or Mac firstly. When you click play on an embedded Play widget you’ll be asked if you already have Spotify or if you would like to download it now. If you already have it installed then it’s plain sailing and you’ll be listening in seconds, and if you don’t it’s a small and easy program to download and install for free.
So how do you get a Spotify widget on your page? Well, it’s actually pretty easy. For a website or blog, simply right click on a song, album or playlist within the Spotify desktop program and choose ‘Copy Spotify URL’. Copy this and then head to the Spotify Developer website here and paste it into the box at step 2. Click on the Copy Embed Code button and you’re then ready to paste it into your blog when creating a page! You also have Customizable embed options at the bottom of the page, which allow you to alter the size of your Play widget to suit your website along with the theme and the view style.
If you have your own Tumblr blog then the news is good: Spotify has worked together with Tumblr to make it super easy to integrate a song, album or playlist into your blog. Simply hit the Audio Post tool in your Tumblr Dashboard and you’ll now be able to search through Spotify’s epic music library and choose something to post.
The ability to embed Spotify’s music into webpages is also great news for musicians, who will still get monetary compensation every time somebody plays one of their songs through a Play widget. The same can’t be said for other ways of embedding licensed music into various blogs and websites, so says Spotify’s US Director, Charlie Hellman.
For those of you out there who, like us, run a blog via WordPress, a few tools have already been made to help integrate Spotify into your blogs. A great example can be found here.
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Via: Spotify