Stations by Spotify has now been launched on iOS, although only in Australia for now. The app first arrived in the market over a year ago when it rolled out to Android users in the same country. Now, iOS users can enjoy a radio-like listening experience, too.
Stations is an "experiment" app by Spotify that allows users to jump right into streaming instead of having to curate their own playlist or stations. Stations has a more minimalist user interface compared to Spotify, where playlists are displayed with massive typefaces and the navigation is coated in single pastel colors.
Stations App By Spotify
The user can scroll up and down between the playlists, select one, and begin listening. This way, the user is easened into the actual selection process instead of perusing for the perfect tracks to listen to, which can be a difficult tasks given there are so many choice on Spotify. No need to type words in a search box or bark voice commands — just scroll, pick, and play.
As TechCrunch reports, launching Stations triggers the music automatically. Some people call this feature as having been lifted from Pandora, which makes sense, as instant music playback is something that the app already has.
What Is It For?
So why release an app like this? Well, Stations is catered to people who want a more radio-like music experience as opposed to being burdened with the task of choosing from a mountainous library. Free users of Stations will hear ads, as on Spotify, but Premium subscribers get unlimited skips and ad-free listening.
Stations, in its current iteration, features a bevy of playlists based on genre, decade, and other categories, but it personalizes the curation the more it's used over time. The user can also create their own stations by selecting from favorite artists, similar to the recently rolled out customization feature on YouTube Music.
When listening to a song on Stations, the user can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down to teach the app to create more personalized custom stations. That includes a Discover Weekly playlist, Release Rader, and a Favorites playlist.
Although it's an interesting idea, Stations never made it stateside, indicating that Spotify's experiment didn't quite pan out. It's still not giving up on it, though, as evidence by the app's launch for iOS folks in Australia.
When reached for comment about Stations, Spotify gave a boilerplate response:
"At Spotify, we routinely conduct a number of tests in an effort to improve our user experience. Some of those tests end up paving the path for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We aren't going to comment on specific tests at this time."
