We've been playing with Spotify's new app framework, and we're impressed. The potential for apps to take advantage of Spotify's streaming capabilities to deliver some incredible experiences is huge.
[partner id="wireduk"]The launch lineup is fairly small, but that doesn't mean that it's weak. The list of apps already available in the beta version of the client include heavyweights like Last.fm, The Guardian, Songkick and Rolling Stone.
But there are some smaller options too that are just as good. Here are the five Spotify apps that you need in your life.
We Are Hunted
Machines still aren't all that great at recommending music. Just because one of your friends listens to two songs next to each other, it doesn't mean that they're necessarily alike, let alone equivalently worth listening to.
We Are Hunted dumps all that sentiment and musical-analysis nonsense and focuses instead on what music bloggers, prominent social media figureheads, music messageboards and P2P fanatics are getting excited about.
The Spotify app lets you access up-to-the-moment charts of what the bleeding edge of the music industry is buzzing about, charts of more mainstream artists, and also who's getting noticed in specific genres. A simple button-click saves those playlists for later listening, even on mobile devices.
TuneWiki
You like karaoke, right? Of course you do. Using a crowdsourced database of lyrics, TuneWiki will show you exactly what the singer's singing. Or at least what the majority of people think that the singer's singing.
If your chosen track isn't there, or the lyrics aren't quite right, then you can add or edit them yourself. Having said that, in our experience the database is pretty great, with only a few exceptions -- which had Spanish translations of the lyrics instead.
Best of all, the lines are time-coded, and will move past as you're listening. All you need is to hook up your laptop to your TV and you've got the most comprehensive karaoke machine ever, for free.
Songkick Concerts
If you're living in a big city, it's often tricky to keep track of when bands that you like are playing nearby. Songkick exists to solve that problem, by scanning your playlists and telling you when those artists are in town.
It's easy to set up, and only takes a minute to build up a list of which bands you want to track. If there are artists you want to add specifically or -- more likely -- remove, then you can do that, too.
Then, when you know which ones you want to go to, you can head over to Songkick's website, register an account and build up a personalized calendar of which ones you're going to and which you've been to in the past, complete with set lists, photos and other media. It's a shame that stuff isn't in the Spotify app, but with any luck it'll be added down the line.
Last.fm
It wouldn't be a music app ecosystem without the grandaddy of digital music services, Last.fm. The Last.fm Spotify app will automatically scrobble your tracks (log them in an archive for you) and display stats based on your listening. For example, we can see at a glance what we've listened to the soundtrack from Home Alone eight times in the last three months. Oops.
You can easily build playlists from that data, and it will also recommend tracks that you might not have heard, based on what you like. Best of all, it can generate playlists of similar tracks based on whatever's playing now, which is enormously useful at parties for when you're not sure what you want to put on next but don't want to ruin the mood.
Moodagent
Speaking of moods, perhaps the most esoteric of the apps in the launch lineup is Moodagent. It attempts to rate tracks on four factors -- sensuality, tenderness, happiness and angriness.
For example, Barry White's You're the First, the Last, My Everything scores highly for sensuality but low for anger, whereas the Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up scores somewhat low for tenderness. By using that data, it can build playlists of songs with a similar mood.
The best feature, though, is the ability to set curves. If you want a playlist that starts out sensual but gets progressively angrier, you can do that. Or one that's tender and starts out happy, dips in the middle, but ends up happy again at the end.
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It's early days for Spotify's app ecosystem, and we're very much looking forward to seeing what developers can come up with over time. Our top request is a DJ app, so if you're a coder and you want to build one, then that would be very nice, thank you. The best place to start is probably here.
Have you got a favorite Spotify app, or one that you'd like to see built? Tell us in the comments below.
