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.

Spotify Releases Two Potential Game Changers

Happy Star Wars Day to all of HERC's fellow Jedis!  

May the Fourth continue to be with you!

And now back to our regularly scheduled post...

This past week saw Spotify finally unveil its long awaited, much anticipated iPad app as well significantly update it's PC based app with new features and functions.  HERC's here to tell you just a little about both.

Not just a bigger iPhone version as teased in the video above, the iPad-centric app is gorgeous and simply fun.  Did someone say Airplay?  Yeah, HERC just did - this app allows HERC to stream the music, crossfaded or gapless, to his Airplay enabled receiver.  Highly functional and easily navigable, HERC gives it a rating of 8.5 but with just a solid update or two, it'll be closer to a 10!  Labrinth likes it, too!

Just a reminder for all you music-lovin' iPad owners - this free app is useless unless you are a paid Premium member.  It's $10 a month to join the club.  Let HERC help you with the math: simply eat out one or two times less each month and you got this.  More than 20 million songs at your beck and call on your iPhone, Android and now iPad.

Like HERC mentioned in that other Spotify post, Spotify now emails Premium members when the playlists they subscribe to are updated with even one song.  But that's not all.

In an update yesterday to the Spotify PC app, they have added more Radio functionality as well as simplified the ability to embed the Spotify Player on web sites.

Each playlist now features a "Start Playlist Radio" button.  Selecting any Radio button, whether it's "Start Artist Radio" on the Artist page, "Start Album Radio" on the Album page or now the "Start Playlist Radio" button on every Playlist page takes you to the main Radio page which can also be accessed from the Radio button on the side menu.

The redesigned Radio page now offers you a side-scrollable history of "Your Recent Radio Stations" as well as handy links to "Your Top Artists Radio Stations", "Your Top Tracks Radio Stations", "Popular Radio Stations" amongst Spotify users the world over and "Popular Genre Radio Stations".

All Spotify Radio stations feature unlimited forward skipping as well as the ability to select any of the four previously played songs and be taken to their Album page.  There are no voting on the tracks played.

Before the update, the Player embedding process involved several steps and different web pages. While it is still possible to embed playlists that way, there is now the option to "Copy Embed Code" if you right click on playlist title.  Then simply paste the code in your HTML page editor and Voila!  Instant Player!

Have you Spotified yet?