Music streaming mammoth Spotify has snuck a new 'experimental' app called Stations onto the Google Play Store dedicated entirely to playlists.
Stations is incredibly streamlined compared to the fully-fledged Spotify app, featuring little more than a list of curated playlists to scroll through as well as some of the service’s personalised options, such as Discover Weekly, that use algorithms to suggest new and relevant music.
You can customise which of the pre-selected stations appear in your menu, but you won’t be able to create your own. The current playlist will begin to play as soon as you open the app and the only options you’re given is to pause or favourite the track, or scroll to a different playlist.
YOU get a playlist, and YOU get a playlist!
If you’ve already got a Spotify account and are logged in on your device, the app will automatically log you in and pull your user data for its personalised playlists. Otherwise, you’ll have to create a free account and select a few artists as a starting point.
Stations by Spotify appears to be aimed at the majority of Spotify users who, rather than signing up for a premium account, use the service more casually as a smart playlist generator. As of June 2017, only 57 million of the 140 million active users were premium subscribers.
The new app seems to be available only in Australia at the moment, but we’ll update this news story as soon as we get word on its international rollout.
