Spotify has quietly launched a new music streaming app named Stations that allows for listening to music for free. Users need to have an active membership with Spotify to use the new Stations app though that happens to be the only requisite to have to get started with the app.
As Spotify claimed, the new Stations app is a pure listening experience and is clearly for those who aren’t eager to register for paid membership programs. True to its branding, music starts to play the moment users are logged in. It is much like a radio and users can scroll through playlists that are already there.
The playlists again are shown in big bold fonts, which makes them easily accessible even while say the user is driving or during a workout. There are quite a few playlists shown by default which makes it quite redundant for the user to type or search for music; more so when there is also the Discover Weekly and Release Radar features available. The latter two are easily among Spotify’s most sought-after features.
Then there, of course, is the self-suggesting feature also available that aims to provide users with songs lists based on your usage history. This pretty much has become staple with all streaming services, and it’s least surprising the same is also included with Stations. So the more a user spends time on Stations, the easier it will be for the app to suggest new song lists to the user.
However, users will have to keep themselves restricted to listening to playlists that are already there. There is no way they can create their own stations though they can customize the list of stations based on their preferences.
Further, the app being free, there are ads that users will have to endure. Spotify also mentioned the Station app is sort of an experiment for them, which means it could well be a work in progress thing so that there might be slight changes introduced later at the app is fine-tuned further even though the basic functioning of the app will remain the same.
