Spotify 'Radio' Now Offers Unlimited Skips and Stations

 

Spotify today (Dec. 9) improved its streaming radio channel with unlimited skips and stations, in a game of one-upmanship over Pandora’s streaming radio service. A preview version of the new Spotify is available for free download.

 

Spotify’s “radio” now generates playlists from a single artist or song specified by the user, which is identical to Pandora’s discovery function. However, Spotify doesn’t limit skips or user-generated stations — Pandora allows only 12 skips per day of listening and 100 custom stations. Both services intersperse songs with ads in the free versions of their products.

 

Listeners on Spotify can create a radio station in two ways: Click “Start Artist Radio” at the top of any artist page or drag a track to “Radio” in the left sidebar. Spotify will make a radio station of similar music. The new station will keep playing music based on the initial choice.

 

While Spotify  may be new to the Internet streaming music scene, it’s racked up several big firsts for the industry. It jumped the competition by being one of the first services included in Facebook’s “frictionless sharing” feature introduced earlier this fall along with the Washington Post Reader. By connecting a user’s Spotify account with a Facebook account , songs are automatically posted to Facebook’s ticker and linked to the track on Spotify for instant listening by Facebook friends. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek last month reported the company had added 7 million new users since its Facebook launch.

 

The company was also the first to open its service to app developers. Its new app store offers free apps so users discover new music, find out what’s popular and even match their moods to music. The app store has been live for less than two weeks, but big names such as Rolling Stone and Billboard are among the handful of offerings.

 

Spotify said its final version — meaning bug-free — will be available soon, but listeners can download a beta version now for Mac and Windows.