Spotify announced today that it is expanding its free streaming option to all devices. Users of Spotify’s free service can now listen to music tracks and albums via the Spotify app for iOS and Android devices.
“We’ve found that users are increasingly listening to music in the home not on their computers but on their tablets,” said Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek. It made sense, Ek added, to start treating a tablet just like a regular computer.
The announcement took place during an event Wednesday at Spotify’s U.S. headquarters in New York City.
Previously, non-paying listeners could only listen to Spotify Radio on their mobile devices. Spotify Radio allows listeners to listen to “stations” made up of artists and genres. The new option will allow users to listen to tracks they select, just as they do on the desktop version.
The company is also now offering a free streaming option on all devices, including mobile. “Spotify Shuffle” will allow listeners to “shuffle play” their playlists, and shuffle while listening to any artist they choose.
While users can specify an artist, album, or playlist, they won’t have direct access to specific tracks.
TNW notes that while Spotify had restricted users in some area in Europe to 10 hours of listening per month, following a 6-month unlimited grace period, they will be lifting those caps. The service will be ad-supported.
Spotify’s new options go live today, Wednesday, December 11th.
The Spotify iOS app is available FREE in the App Store. [DIRECT LINK]
