Spotify launches ‘Spotify radio’ to its 2.5-million paying subscribers

Daniel Ek, CEO of online music service Spotify took the stage at LeWeb in Paris to announce ‘Spotify Radio’ a new app for the service.

Ek’s announcement so caught the attention of LeWeb attendees that it resulted in an immediate Twitter trending topic.

The new radio app will allow users to create their own custom radio stations with the option to skip through an unlimited number of songs. This feature is not yet available on Pandora, Spotify’s leading competitor in the space.

“The new ‘Artist Radio’ experience brings Spotify on par with services like MOG, which have long offered a radio experience. For Spotify, which always focused strongly on playlists, this is quite a bit of a departure from its regular user experience. To get access to this new feature, you have to download a preview version of Spotify,” says former Read Write Web writer, Frederic Lardinois

Spotify believes that the new app creates a “unique experience” through to “astute recommendations” available from its catalogue and doesn’t require an additional subscription.

Users can save songs from the radio to a playlists for later listening, and songs can be shared on Facebook as well.

Spotify has made starting a new radio station is pretty easy — Simply click “Start Artist Radio” in an artist’s profile. Alternatively there is a drag and drop option.

According to Ek, Spotify has 2.5-million paid subscribers, all of which pay 10 Euros a month and the service has added 7-million users following its partnership with social networking giant Facebook.