Spotify attempts to socialise with major software update

Posted on 27 Apr 2010 at 12:45

Spotify has unveiled a bevy of new social networking features in the latest revamp of its popular music streaming service.

Facebook integration is undoubtedly the headline. It enables you to view your friends' playlists and recommend tracks to them. As soon as you've signed into Facebook via the application, all of your Facebook friends using the feature will be listed in the new People sidebar on the right hand side.

You can recommend tracks to friends by simply dropping them onto their name in the sidebar. Recommended tracks appear in your Spotify inbox, which also indicates who recommended it to you.

The update also enables you to publish your Spotify profile online - either on your own website or on Facebook - to give other people an idea of what you're listening to. This also enables you to share playlists with other web users, too.

Possibly the most interesting feature though is that Spotify now searches into libraries of music stored on your computer and allows you to play that music back in the software. It's clearly targeted at iTunes, which does a similar thing when you first install it.

Spotify uses the Gracenote service to retrieve track information and album artwork for locally stored music. Premium account holders can also synchronise music stored on their PC with their smartphone using the offline playlists feature.

The new features are being rolled out to Spotify users over the next few days. The update will happen when you restart Spotify, but there's no way to force the process without downloading the installer again.

Spotify has created a short video which explains how the new software works.

Author: Tim Smalley

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