After months of preview testing, music streaming service Spotify has finally announced that it has arrived at the Google Play Store for Android 4.0 devices.
The new app has added a few key features like a play queue (which is not available on iOS) and is now available for download. It will further offer cross fade/gapless playback settings for when the user wants to listen to lots of music with no interruption.
Other features in the apps would include a widget to control Spotify from the Android home screen and playlist folders support. Additionally, the app would also offer social features that will allow users to check out the profile pages and playlists of their friends. Further, artist imagery is offered in high resolution and the app has related artist view for the first time on mobile devices.
Spotify also includes an "extreme" sound quality setting of 320 kbps for high-quality playback and has a play queue. That also has Last.fm and promises to be much faster than previous versions.
Gustav Sodertrom, VP Products at Spotify, said: "For all our Android users, this Spotify update is a huge leap forward. We've rebuilt it from top to bottom, making it faster, slicker and much better looking."
These additions are build on the variety of new features Spotify already released to the public when it unveiled its Holo-ified and snappy beta app back in April. That release was already far faster than the previous version of Spotify for Android, which hadn't been updated for months. As with all Spotify mobile apps, one will need a Premium subscription ($9.99/month) to use it.
Here's the full list of features in Spotify for Android 4.0:
- Totally new app with full support for Android 4.0
- All-new slide-out navigation
- Crossfade/gapless playback settings
- Widget - control Spotify from the home screen
- Folder support - organise and order your playlists
- Even more social - check out friends' profile pages and playlists on the go
- Artist imagery in high resolution
- Related artist view - available for the first time on mobile
- 'Extreme' sound quality setting for 320kbps listening
- Play queue
- Last.fm scrobbling
- Speed improvements
