Online music streaming giant Spotify to carry apps

As if Spotify wasn't cool enough (except maybe to indie artists), now they've got apps in the mix

Online music streaming behemoth Spotify rolled out a brand new feature Wednesday to their already insanely amazing service, (that is, if you can ignore the possible repurcussions to indie recording artists.) Spotify will now offers Facebook-like apps for user accounts, to enahnce listening by recommending songs, providing cool analytics on listening data, even song lyrics.

Spotify users can get song recommendation apps from Last.fm or We Are Hunted, or get clued in to new music by apps from Rolling Stone, The Guardian, or Pitchfork. Another interesting app is SongKick, which we recently wrote about in affiliation with Flavors.me. This app notifies users when their favorite artists are coming into town to play local concert venues.

Spotify apps will be open to any developer, though like its fellow app-merchant Apple, all submissions will be closely vetted and tested.

Spotify apps are free, both to those users on the free plan and those paying for premium service. However, the apps only work on computer-based Web platforms, and not yet on mobile.

Spotify was founded in 2006 and based in the U.K., with about 300 employees, and offices in Stockholm, Paris, Oslo, Madrid, Amsterdam, and New York. They have received €183M to date from such investors as Creandum, Northzone Ventures, Wellington Paertners, and online music guru Sean Parker.

Spotify provides their users with over 15 million licensed music tracks, with 10 million users and 2 million premium service users.

Aside from the general coolness of this addition to Spotify service, which is hard to deny even for someone like myself who is skeptical of their remuneration to indie artists, at least one report indicates that the move will differentiate Spotify from other established and emerging online music streaming service, from Google, Amazon, and Apple.

Factor in their undeniably cozy BFF-dom with Facebook, and we think it might be safe to call it official... Spotify is killing the online streaming market.