In their quest to become the dominant streaming music service, Spotify has introduced yet another new feature: the Spotify Play Button. If you interact with Spotify through Facebook, you already have an idea of what this is like. You see a box for a song on Spotify, you hit play, and it automatically loads up the song on your desktop Spotify app.
Giz Au Editor’s Note: Still no word on the “coming soon” Spotify in Australia, but as we know it’s coming, this should still be appropriate locally. At some point.
The player is designed to work with virtually any internet platform that supports the common web standards, and allows enough freedom for anyone to tinker and customise the embedded widget to their liking. You can create play buttons for songs, albums or playlists, with or without album art. And if you want to drop a widget you see on your own site or blog, you can easily copy the embed code to do so. In addition, Spotify is working with Tumblr, Spin and The Fader to have the buttons fully integrated into the respective sites.
The only downside is that you have to be a registered Spotify user, which also means you have to have the desktop app up and running for this to work. If you’re among the unconverted, you cant just visit a site and press play, like you would with deceased services such as LaLa.
And even if this isn’t the redesigned set of mobile apps we really want, hopefully this steady stream of new features means a bigger overhaul will eventually head our way. [Spotify]