Spotify For Android Gets NFC Sharing For Ice Cream Sandwich And Better Offline Mode

Drew Olanoff

Drew Olanoff has over 10 years of marketing, PR, customer service and support, relationship building and management, product management, and technical support experience in multiple verticals. Online, including mobile. He prides himself on being a connector. Connecting people, stories, information. He has worked under some amazingly talented and gifted PR pros while working for startups as a “Director of Community”,... → Learn More

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012
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Without a doubt, Spotify is my service-of-choice for listening to music these days. It was a huge win when I was in Mexico, and its offline mode is an absolute life-saver.

The team appears to be ramping up its mobile efforts, which is quickly becoming one of the service’s strongest areas. As it stands, the desktop app still feels a bit heavy to me, with features that don’t really fit into my daily usage. For example, its “Apps” section has never really grabbed me.

For those of you that use the Android version, an update has hit the tubes, and here’s a look at what’s new:

- New: Better offline mode bar, so you know why you’re offline.
- New: Share music with NFC (Near Field Communication) on ICS.
- New: Check out the Audio Effects on ICS (Settings > Audio Effects).
- Fixed: More crashes and bugs are now history.
- Fictitious: This app likes doing jigsaws on a rainy day.


The sharing mode is particularly interesting, as it’s fun to share your playlists with friends. Right now, the only way to do that is via the app itself, with some tapping, or on Facebook. This NFC “insta-share” introduces a whole new dimension.

By being social without having to find your way through a series of settings, it’s likely that sending a rad hip-hop playlist to your friend will become an every day thing. There’s nothing worse than standing in front of a friend and saying “wait a second while I share this with you.”


Company: Spotify
Website: spotify.com
Launch Date: 2006
Funding: $183M

Spotify has created a lightweight software application that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. It was launched in the fall of 2008 and had approximately 10 million users by September 2010. Spotify offers streaming music from major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Users download Spotify and then log onto their service enabling the on-demand streaming of music. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record...

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