Spotify really gives other music discovery apps a run for their money with its hip, functional interface and impressive song library.
Depending on your device and whether you're streaming or listening offline, it's conceivable that the app can run down a full charge of the battery in three or four hours. One important thing to note about using the Spotify mobile app is that it can quickly suck your battery dry. The iPad version of Spotify has yet to get the full makeover, but it's still functional and easy to use. It's a neat way to help distinguish between the two, and again it fits with the iOS 7 design principles.
We also like the way that artist images appear in a circle, and record covers are in squares. The typography is punchy but elegant, the semi-transparent sidebar looks great, and the blurred cover artwork that appears in the background when a song is playing affirms the iOS 7 feel of the interface. Spotify's trademark charcoal black, white, and green color scheme is stamped across the interface but in a way that's softer on the eye than it was before. Our only gripe with the interface would be that the context menu buttons (the ones for sharing, adding to a playlist, etc.) are a little small on the iPhone version. Playlists are simple to edit, allowing you to remove tracks in a pinch, and reorder songs by holding and dragging them up and down. It features a slide-out sidebar listing all the main features of the app. The Spotify app is generally easy to use. We love the design of the Spotify interface for iPhone. The preset numbers on the dashboard allow you to store playlists, albums, and artists. Spotify users can also access the Your Music, Browse, and Radio options on Ford SYNC AppLink. While you're viewing an album on iPhone, you can check out more releases from an artist in one tap. Playback settings include crossfading, gapless playback, and an option for hiding unplayable songs. The Settings menu is also home to social controls, where you can set whether you want people who follow you to be able to see your activity and opt to feed Last.FM scrobble. Even on the 'Normal' setting the quality is pretty good but if you want crystal clear quality you can ramp it up to 'Extreme' (though obviously, this puts a load on streaming performance). You can change the audio quality of tracks in Spotify in the Settings menu. You can listen to stations based on a genre, or build stations around artists, tracks, and even playlists that you've been playing. The Radio feature within Spotify is another neat way of discovering tracks and artists you might enjoy. Simply mark a playlist as “Available offline” and the tracks will be cached to your device so you can listen to them without a connection.
Spotify supports offline listening, which is a godsend for saving on mobile data. And there's more you can do with playlists too, including editing, sharing, or even making them collaborative, so others can add songs to them. You can use the app to listen to playlists you've already created via the mobile, desktop, or web versions of Spotify. Playlists are, of course, still a key feature of Spotify. If you find playlists too fiddly to maintain you'll love the Your Music feature of Spotify, which allows you to simply add songs to a non-organized collection for times when you don't want the hassle of putting tracks in a particular place. It recommends artists, songs, and albums based on your listening habits, and what people nearby are listening to. The Discover feature of Spotify is a more simple way of discovering new stuff you might like.
Examples include "songs to sing in the shower", "songs for sunsets", and "re-energize." As with Genres in the Browse section, you can apply filters to set what kind of moods are displayed. The Mood section (not available on iPad, unfortunately) includes playlists based on what you might be doing or feeling like at the moment. There are thousands available and it's a great way to check out sub-genres of the type of music you like. Spotify is getting better and better at music discovery and there are plenty of ways to expand your musical awareness through the app. For example, the Browse section allows you to explore curated playlists based on different genres of music.