Spotify has announced three new treats for its Free users, namely Pick & Play, Search & Play, as well as "Share & Play", rolling out globally.
The first feature, Pick & Play, finally addresses a complaint Free users have had for years now. For what felt like an eternity, people using the free mobile app could only listen to albums and playlists on shuffle.
This limitation was a huge point of contention, leading many to comment on places like Reddit with statements saying they would rather "go to YouTube" or search for unofficial workarounds to the problem.
Pick & Play works exactly how it sounds. You can now select a specific song from any playlist or album, hit play, and listen to that exact track right away. Before, you would just have to cross your fingers and hope the shuffle algorithm eventually landed on the song you wanted.
Up next, we have Search & Play. Similar to Pick & Play, this removes the shuffle-only restriction when you look for music. Previously, searching for a specific song and pressing play would often start a radio station based on that track instead of playing the song itself. Now, it just plays the song you searched for. And finally, Share & Play lets you immediately listen to a track someone shared with you, without getting thrown into a random shuffle playlist.
The new updates come just days after the company finally brought lossless audio to the platform. This is for Premium users only, however. The feature allows subscribers to stream in up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz FLAC format across almost all of the service"s 100 million songs. The rollout is happening through October in over 50 countries.
Spotify also says you get the best results with a strong Wi-Fi Connection or by using wired headphones instead of Bluetooth because standard Bluetooth technology compresses the audio signal, which defeats the point of lossless quality.
Before the roll out of Lossless, the platform got the ability to send DMs (for some reason). This feature, called "Messages," works by letting you tap the share icon on any song or podcast to send it to a friend. This creates a message request, and once accepted, you can chat about the content. It is currently only available on mobile for users who are 16 years old or older.