NEW YORK: It’s been a good year for Spotify, the free European music service that hit the US with such a splash this summer.
It’s gaining cred as the hip music app to show around Silicon Valley. And today, in New York, even Rolling Stone celeb founder Jann Wenner even took an hour to show up on stage, adding star power to what otherwise would be a pretty geeky announcement. There’s a new Spotify API available to developers, Spotify CEO Dan Ek announced today. There shall be apps. The announcement hasn’t met with round success — Gigaom was quick to point out its perceived shortcomings today.
Spotify, to no one’s surprise, announced in New York’s Greenwich Village today it’s got a new Application Program Interface (API) for music and other app developers.
Here’s Wenner, at left, with Spotify CEO Ek up on stage. They’re announcing the Rolling Stone app for Spotify.
The details: The apps will run within Spotify, so future users won’t need to install new apps per se. And everything is HTML5 all the way, Ek said. That’s good news for most. It’s primarily a Javascript based API, Ek added.
As for Rolling Stone, Ek and music mag cofounder Jann Wenner said Rolling Stone’s offering will be editorial, plus concert tickets, lyrics, you name it — all available in the newly available App Finder within Spotify. Expect customizable playlists and a long list of launch of app partners to come. Spotify really rocked 2011. I’ll be eager to see how the meteoric service unfolds throughout 2012.
Spotify announced partners including: Rolling Stone, TuneWiki, Top10, Billboard, and MoodAgent among others. Free music has that effect — and Ek says those 15 million free songs it has will now be in play with new Spotify app developers.
HTML5 is the way to go these days and I imagine that Javascript should be the next thing to go away after Adobe Flash (I hope). Yours from the Kingdom of Command-Line Junkies, Robert.