Apps. They're everywhere these days, and now they've even infiltrated Spotify.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that these little programmes have appeared for the sake of it.
What's big this year? Oh, apps, brilliant. Let's do some. Perhaps that's how lesser companies work, but we think Spotify is a little bit different.
Its technology seems born of a real passion for music and, as founder and CEO Daniel Ek put it, a sense of "Why doesn't this already exist?".
While some of the apps are simply album reviews with a one-click process to get you listening to the album in question, others are much more ingenious and go some way to solving the music discovery problem that Spotify has always had.
The apps live in their own section of Spotify's familiar left-hand navigation panel. The service launches with eleven apps on board - all free to all users, premium or no. The new apps section also houses Spotify's top lists and its hit-and-miss radio player.
It seems that the app finder is a bit redundant at this point; with only eleven apps to play with, many people will simply add them all and have no further need for the page. But as the app services grow, perhaps this page will come more into its own.
Adding the apps is super simple - just a button click to add it to your sidebar, a log-in where necessary and you're good to go.
All the apps make it easy to start listening to a track either by clicking the album artwork or using the 'add as playlist' button.
The Share button also makes it simple to send albums and playlists to friends using Twitter, Facebook, Windows Messenger or simply through Spotify's internal mail.
