Spotify adds on-demand listening to its free tier

Free users of Spotify were previously only able to play songs on shuffle while on mobile. That’s about to change, kind of. Spotify is offering on-demand listening to 15 of its top playlists, including the personalized Discover Weekly. This selection reaches up to 750 songs or around 40 hours of listening. On top of this, custom playlists get new personalization tools. As you add tracks, it’ll begin to learn what you like and suggest more songs you can add. And when you’re streaming on a limited data plan or in a area with poor coverage, there is a new data saver toggle that optimizes music to save bandwidth. These new features will be arriving in the coming weeks.

Source: Android Police

Spotify’s upcoming event puts focus on mobile app

Spotify is holding an event on April 24^th and a new flyer related to the event confirms that the event will heavily focus on Spotify’s mobile efforts. Those presenting at the event include Chief R&D Officer Gustav Söderström, Vice President of Product Development Babar Zafar, and Global Head of Creator Services Troy Carter. There are a number of things the music streaming service can announce. One is the expansion of its voice control feature beyond testing with select iOS accounts. Another is talks about changes to free subscription tier where the service will be easier to use, especially for those on mobile. And there’s also been rumours that Spotify is entering the hardware space, we might hear more then.

Source: The Verge

Spotify might be launching an in-car 4G music streamer

Spotify has long been rumoured to be entering the hardware business with job listings posted in the past few months suggesting this was coming soon. Now, a premature promo showing up to some of its users show the company might be launching an in-car music streamer. The ad shows a circular control that doubles as a display with navigation and shuffle buttons to the side. Some users were told it would get 4G connectivity and others saw Amazon Alexa integration. Its price would be included in the monthly subscription fee with some users seeing that it would cost $12.99 USD a month, while others saw $14.99. It had a pre-order button, too. But this resulted in an error page.

The streaming service hasn’t commented about the post. But one moderator, who isn’t a Spotify employee, commented on the company’s official forum that this was simply a test. The company has an upcoming event in New York City on April 24^th. We should hear more then.

Source: SlashGear

Help Spotify identify song genres with new feature

Spotify is now looking to tap its diverse and big userbase to help them “better understand how Spotify listeners interpret music” and give them insight on how to improve the listening experience. You can now suggest edits to metadata just by clicking the three dots next to any song, album, or artist when you're using the desktop app. Aside from describing music by genre or era, this new Line-In feature will let you describe things differently. But before that it will require you to answer a slew of surveys to test your music knowledge as well as describe the music you like. The edits you make will be considered as suggestions and will pass through different reviews and checks for accuracy before it is shared to other users.

Source: CNET