Spotify app gets streamlined navigation, personalized search, endless artist radio

The iOS Spotify app has been updated to make it quicker and easier to play music you love.

First up is streamlined navigation, with three clear tabs.

Subscribers can get great recommendations on Home, discover something new with Search, and access favorite songs, artists, playlists, and podcasts in Your Library …

Search now offers a quick way to search within your favorite genres. When you tap the Search button, you’ll still get the usual search bar at the top, but now have buttons to search within your own Top Genres.

But perhaps the most significant change to the Spotify app is what the company calls Endless Artist Radio.

If a subscriber wants a great playlist based on one of their favorite musicians or songs, they can simply search for it and start listening to one of the brand-new Artist Radio playlists. These offer an endless listening stream personalized to the listener’s own musical tastes. They’re updated regularly to keep things fresh—and what’s more, they’re even downloadable and available to play while offline.

Spotify and Apple Music between them dominate the streaming music business, with more than 50M subscribers in the US alone.

The revamp will put more pressure on Apple Music to keep working on its own playlists. While I find its recommendations are excellent, there aren’t enough of them on a daily basis, and I agree with my colleague Bradley that the app needs to be more context aware in the way the Spotify app already is.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about Spotify is how it always has recommendations with context. On a Monday morning, it’s showing me a playlist to help me get moving.

One the reasons I occasionally install Spotify is that Apple Music always feels a bit stale to me with recommendations. The For You tab doesn’t recommend something to me until four rows down the list. Even then, they are never as spot on as Spotify’s advice.

While Spotify is showing me playlists to get motivated on a Monday morning, Apple music is recommending Pure Throwback. “For You” needs to get smarter [and] have more context.

Check out the video for a quick intro to the new features in the latest version of both the iOS and Android Spotify app. As with all updates, it may take a little time to roll out to everyone.