Next-gen Spotify arrives with Facebook revamp

Next-gen Spotify
Spotify goes social

Spotify has finally unveiled a new revamp that sees it bring Facebook integration and take a step closer to replacing iTunes on your computer.

The first major change is the addition of Spotify Social, which uses Facebook from within the music program to let you share your track choices with buddies.

The obvious benefit of this is that people can easily discover what their friends are looking at and listening too, as well as 'subscribing' to the people that you think have the greatest taste (you can easily spot these people: they're wearing sunglasses in their profile picture).

You got the power

Friends online with Facebook and using Spotify Social will be listed at the side of the screen, and clicking in will let you see their profile picture and track listings for easy music stalkage.

Spotify founder Daniel Ek spoke at SXSW earlier this year about the forthcoming social network integration, highlighting how it will make music more available to all users:

"We are looking at integrating some parts of the social aspect," he says. "If you think about the problem of how do you browse music – most people approach the problem by looking at genres. I could probably come up with 200 different genres, but I don't really know what 'neoclassical pop' is. What classifies neo-rock or neo-pop?

"Spotify is approaching 10 million tracks - how do you browse through 10 million tracks? Searching is one solution but it's not an optimum way of discovering new music. A social aspect is."

The other big feature with the new update is the option to import your music files from your computer to the Spotify interface, thus making it much easier to listen to the tracks you want to without having to search for them time and time again.

The new update will hit your computer later this week, but if you simply can't wait to try it out, head over to www.spotify.com/download and have a look-see for yourselves.

Check out the video below to see for yourselves how it all works:

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.