Spotify is rolling out a new version of its desktop application over the coming days. Here’s a quick, rushed look at it.

‘What’s New’

Well, when you launch you begin at a redesigned ‘what’s new’ section with the top showing some recommend songs for you.

Next there’s ‘top playlists near you’. This seems and is pretty pointless. The only thing that links the people who created these playlists with me is geographical location. It’s the same with ‘top tracks near you’. I just don’t care that my neighbour down the street likes Beyonce.

Some banners promoting the new features follows.

Then there’s a ‘people you may find interesting’ section that is blank for me. I presume that is a beta issue.

Lastly is ‘new releases’ which use to be at the top of the page.

Interestingly, there seems to be no appearance of that feed thing that also use to be on this page. And it’s not just missing on this page either. I can’t find it anywhere within the app.

People

This section’s just a load of 125×125 thumbnails of your friends’ avatars. You can filter them by searching, that’s it. When you click on a friend, their page is much as it was. The only difference is a large initiative asking to recommend them a track or two. You can also search and recommend a song/album/artist without leaving their page and can add a message too.

The next sections of the ‘main’ navigations of ‘Inbox’, ‘Play Queue’ and ‘Devices’ seemingly remain exactly the same.

Radio

The radio page has been beefed up a lot. Unnecessarily so, I think. It shows you fairly pointless stations like your recent, top artist, top tracks, and popular stations. There’s also the option to pick a station based on a genre like from the previous version.

The biggest improvement is meant to be under the hood and apparently the radio is a lot better now. I haven’t used the feature enough to prove or disprove this though. All I’ll say is that the classical genre station is still terrible. It only ever shows songs from albums with names like ‘Baby Genius: Mozart Will Lick Your Babies Brain With His Genius Tongue’ and ‘ 101 Masterpieces of New Age That Have Been Ruined By Bad Conduction’.

Apps

For a 20-year-old I have the tastes of an old man and my music rarely ventures past 1980. However, I do often attempt to find ‘new’ music I might like. Problem is a rarely get positive results. I’ve now been using this new Spotify for half an hour and I’ve already discovered a ‘new’ band! For me and Spotify that’s a real accomplishment and it’s due to the app.

(I wouldn’t really call them apps though. They’re basically Spotify-friendly websites. Despite this though they’re pretty much all great looking and link in with Spotify well.

I’d never heard of a lot of these ‘apps’ before, so excuse my ignorance. These reviews are based on a few minutes of fiddling only.)

Billboard

This seems purely and simply a music ‘chart’. It lists the ‘hot 100′, ‘Billboard 200′ and some gender-specific charts. It’s one of the worst apps. You can only view 10 of the ‘hot 100′ within the app. If you want to view more it takes you to their website using your browser. Also, I have no idea what the ‘subscribe’ button does. I clicked it and nothing happened.

Fuse

News + playlists. They write a news story and create a relevant playlist.

The Guardian

A list of the papers lastest reviews. Simple. (Photo is of an album-specific page of the app)

Last.fm

Despite being logged into Last.fm within Spotify I still needed to login in order to get my account up in the app. That’s just a niggling point though as this has now rendered http://last.fm extinct for me. I can get all I want from this ‘app’ and it’s a lot prettier than the Last.fm website.

Moodagent

I like this. I’m yet to really use it but it’s a nice concept. You pick a ‘mood’ or a song and it’ll give you relevant songs according to ‘mood’.

Pitchfork

Similar to the Guardian one, only more in-depth and indie.

Rolling Stone Recommends

Again, similar to Pitchfork and Guardian. It has some call playlists though like ‘Mick Jagger’s Top Reggae Songs’

Songkick

Fuck Songkick. I’ve never been able to uninstall their crap software from my Mac. Plus, you need a Facebook account for this app, so I didn’t try it.

Soundrop

Like Moodagent, only more social. It’s like a radio station. Everyone is streaming the same song together at the same moment. You can talk with other listeners of the ‘station’ and add tracks to be played. Fellow users can then vote for them so they are played sooner. It’s a really great real-time more personal radio station. It’s a shame clicking a persons avatar in this app doesn’t take you to their profile. It would be a great way to find new friends. Also, you have to be logged into Facebook to to comment or vote tracks up. Also, sometimes a song pops up on the station that isn’t available in your country and the radio stops playing. That’s annoying. It would be nice if it automatically started playing again once the not-allowed song ends. At the moment you have exit, get rid of a banner and start up a new station just to be able to go on it again.

You can also ‘start a spot’ with friends. I’m yet to try this out though as not many of my friends spend their friday nights trying out software. I’m sure they’re out having a jolly old time, so I’ll try this feature out on the saturday afternoon comedown with them.

TuneWiki

This shows you the lyrics of the song you’re listening to. It automatically scrolls and enlarges to the line the song is currently playing. A nice addition to this new Spotify experience.

We Are Hunted

A more visual chart to the others. It also offers a recommendation engine. You type in an artist and it gives you others you might like.

Artist Page and Search

Search has been improved. It searches in realtime and the results drop down displaying them in the various categories.

A musicians individual page is pretty much the same as from the previous Spotify. However, the ‘biography’ and ‘related artist’s section get their own pages, which is nice.

Final Thoughts

This is a massive stride forward. It’s the biggest update since I’ve started using Spotify and the best by far. This new version has bridged the wide crevasse between discovery and consumption.

You can download the beta version from here if you’d like.