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Spotify wants to keep you up to date with new singles and albums from your favorite artists
The "What's New" feed turns your Release Radar up to 11
With so much new music released every week, it can be challenging to keep track of what's coming down the pipeline. Unless you're deep into music blogs, knowing when one of your favorite artists has dropped a new single or album often feels impossible. Spotify's app lets you follow the bands you love, and now it's taking that feature to its logical conclusion: a new feed designed to keep you updated on all of your favorite music and podcasts.
Spotify's finally rolling out that snazzy new library UI
Coming next week, complete with new tags and filters for easier sorting
For several months now, Spotify has been testing a new interface for its library on mobile devices. Redesigns can be controversial, but the response to the UI changes on Android has mainly been positive. Although many of Spotify's users have had access to the improved library management since February, its new UI design is finally official.
Spotify thinks it's really, finally, definitely figured out what you want to listen to this time
Spotify Mixes look to improve on its old Daily Mixes
Spotify has spent the last year annoying its users with podcast exclusives and UI changes on desktop, but if you've been sticking by the app on the strength of its discovery engine, there's finally some good news for you. Daily mixes are getting a much-needed rejuvenation, with three new types of custom playlists now available for streaming.
In December, Spotify garnered controversy after forcing some of its paying users to test a new version of its desktop and web apps. Not only had these users not signed up to become beta testers, but the interface itself was clunky and broken, with questionable changes made to search and artist pages. Spotify is making the update available to everyone beginning today, and for better or worse, most of the UI elements we saw last year seem to be here to stay.
Spotify is forcing some paying users to test a confusing new desktop UI
Understandably, they're not happy about it
It's not uncommon for apps and services to try out experimental features with a small batch of users who have knowingly signed up to an alpha or beta test program. However, things get annoying when users are included in an experimental update that they never signed up for and can't opt out of. This is precisely what's happening to some Spotify users who are being made to bear a new Desktop UI that - in polite words - is pretty bad.
Spotify's latest shortcut should help streamline casting
One of its best features is getting even better
Apple Music might be upping its game on Android, but Spotify is no slouch. From karaoke mode to offline playback for free users, the defacto music streaming service has been experimenting with a lot of new additions recently — and we've spotted another that makes one of Spotify's best features even better.
Spotify started rolling its v3.0 update to users today, which brings some design tweaks to the player screens as well as a new feature for the mini player. The relationship between the main player screen and the mini player is now clearer, since there is an up arrow and animation to maximize the mini player along with a down arrow on the main player to do the opposite. You can also now swipe left or right on the mini player to skip tracks, rather than go to the main screen to do that.
Hey, Spotify users – how's it going? It's about to be going even better, because with the latest update to the music streaming app, you can finally add full albums to playlists (I kind of can't believe this wasn't possible before), and it will also confirm if you try to add the same song to a playlist twice. Both are welcome features, and should improve the playlist experience pretty drastically – it'll definitely make it a lot easier to make playlists from the collected works of a single artist.
While Spotify has likely seen a fairly dramatic drop in subscribers since the launch of Play Music All Access, the all-you-can-eat streaming audio service hasn't quite given up on its Android users just yet. The last significant update finally brought landscape support (which, honestly, should've been baked in from the beginning), and today's version bump brings another feature long missed by Android users: notification controls for Jelly Bean devices (4.1+).
Spotify App Update Rolling Out, Finally Brings Landscape Support
One of the biggest peeves that, well, everyone had when the redesigned Spotify app hit the scene back in June of last year (yes, it's already been a year)
One of the biggest peeves that, well, everyone had when the redesigned Spotify app hit the scene back in June of last year (yes, it's already been a year) was the lack of landscape support. Updates came and went, but we were all left wanting.