Spotify - Finally FREE on iOS devices (sort of)

There's good news today for those of you in the United States who have been itching to try Spotify on your iOS device - those guys in green over at Spotify have unveiled the latest version of their iOS app and it features Radio.

Radio on Spotify allows you to listen to an UNLIMITED amount of songs WITH AUDIO ADS (aka commercials) for FREE*.  Download app to your device, start it up and login with your Facebook account.  You can search and select any artist or album or playlist or track and press the radio icon and be treated to endless music based on your selection.  (And more than a few ads.)  Plus there are 28 genre radio stations to choose from such as Blues, Death Metal or 70s.  *Because Spotify adheres to the same DMCA guidelines as Pandora, Slacker and other streaming radio services for its FREE Radio app, you may only skip six songs an hour.

A unique feature of Spotify Radio is when you Like (thumbs up) a song, it "improves" the station and the track is saved to a Liked On Radio playlist.  An auto-building playlist of songs you like?  Pretty cool.  The Liked On Radio playlist, along with all the playlists featured on HERC's HIDEAWAY, WILL play on your PC based Spotify which has always been FREE.  (As HERC has been unable to test this app on anything but his Touch with his paid Spotify account, he cannot say with certainty if this is part of the FREE service.  All screenshots by HERC.)

What is Spotify's endgame with the launching of FREE Radio in their latest iOS app?   To convert non-users into users and users into paying users, duh.  For $10 a month, the ads and skipping limits disappear and all the other Spotify features open up including higher streaming rates (up to 320 kbps!) and device caching of up to 3,333 tracks (what an odd number).

So while you may not get the full Spotify experience, the updated app does provide yet another weapon in your audio arsenal in your personal war on silence.  HERC encourages you to put it up against Pandora or whatever other streaming radio service you currently use on your device and let him know how you it turned out in the Comments.