In January 2018, Spotify trialed a streamlined new music app in Australia called ‘Stations’ that was dedicated to playlists. After almost 18 months of testing the waters, the app has now officially launched in the US for both iOS and Android.
While plenty of Spotify users utilize the full depth of the app’s standard interface, there are also many casual listeners that would likely find it too convoluted for their needs. These are the people that Stations aims to please.
Stations’ interface is much more refined, but loses the deeper customizability. [Image credit: TechRadar]
After initial setup, Stations will begin playing music as soon as the app is opened, and offers very little in the way of a user interface outside of choosing one of the many curated playlists from the list (including the service’s algorithmically-selected Discover Weekly).
Users can customize which of these playlists will appear in their list but can only create plalylists by selecting preferred artists, genres and moods. The app will curate your selections further as you ‘favorite’ tracks while listening, which you can do by clicking on the ubiquitous ‘thumbs-up’ button.
It doesn’t matter if you're a free or premium user – so long as you have an account, you can log into the Stations app and it will use all the existing listener data that the streaming platform has on you.
The only differences between the two user types is that, as with the primary app, free Spotify users will have to endure periodic ads between their songs and won’t have the ability to skip tracks at will if they’re not enjoying them.
It seems that the immediacy and simplicity of the app made enough of an impact in its time Down Under to convince the music streaming giant to unleash it on the US, so we can only expect that its popularity will continue to rise.