NORTH East firm ShareMyPlaylists.com has been unveiled as one of the first partners in a new feature for music service Spotify.
Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek presented Spotify Platform at a press conference in New York, and revealed that Boldon-based ShareMyPlaylists.com was among a list of launch partners that also included Pitchfork, Rolling Stone Last.fm, the Guardian and Billboard.
Spotify allows users to stream music from a library of 15million songs onto their desktops, mobiles and tablets, and currently has 10million active users including 2.5m who pay subscriptions. It is particularly popular in Sweden, where around a third of the population use the service.
It finally arrived in the US this summer, and linked with Facebook to allow users to share music they were playing with friends on the social network.
The newly-announced Spotify Platform will allow third-party developers to produce quality-checked HTML5 apps to add something different to the Spotify service, whether that’s displaying lyrics or recommending tracks.
The apps will be free, and available to both free users and subscribers.
“We’re launching truly integrated apps inside Spotify from the best and the brightest”, said Spotify CEO Ek. “We really believe they’ll deliver unique experiences tailored to you and your music tastes.”
ShareMyPlaylists.com founder Kieron Donoghue is a big fan of Spotify, and set up his service two years ago to enable other fans to share Spotify playlists and make their own “mixtapes”. It is available for free on iPad, iPhone and Android, and offers features such as Playlist Generator that throws up a playlist based on the listener’s favourite bands.
ShareMyPlaylists.com boasted 10,000 playlists a day back in June, and was expecting a further boost in numbers following Spotify’s full launch in the US. It received £250,000 in investment over the summer from MyVoucherCodes.co.uk founder Mark Pearson to help it develop its community functions and its profile in various countries.
Donoghue was present at the New York press conference, and the company offered a sneak peak of its app after the presentation.