Spotify to be even cleverer than Genius?

By Rich Trenholm on 20 May 2009, 5:30pm

Our favourite free music-streaming service, Spotify, is unveiling even more plans for world domination. 7digital integration, an API, and mobile apps up the wazoo: is there anything it can't do? Well, the recommendation side of things isn't great, you say with a resigned shrug, and that's when we slap you upside yo' head with the news that Spotify has teamed up with Echo Nest to work on a recommendation engine.

Echo Nest powers intelligent digital music applications, and showed off a pre-release demonstration this week at the SanFran MusicTech Summit. Eyewitnesses describe it as looking like iTunes Genius, but with the added advantage that it pulls suggestions from the entire Spotify catalogue rather than your own library.

The new feature is still in development, but in the meatime Spotify is in the process of releasing version 0.3.15 of the application. This includes a search by record label, for the more superior indie snobs among you. You'll be able to type 'label:"Fat Wreck Chords"' into the search box for blasts of NOFX-style punk, or 'label:Warp' for bleepy Aphex Twin headachenoise. Or 'label:FDNY Pipes and Drums' for... well, that one's self-explanatory really.