Spotify for Windows Phone adds subscription-free play

Spotify has opened up free access to Windows Phone, with shuffle playlist access and new music discovery without requiring a premium account. The streaming music provider has been offering free play to users with iOS and Android devices for some time, leaving Windows Phone owners left out in the cold until now.

With the new update, available in the Windows Phone Store today, users can listen to playlists they've created – as well as those from the people they follow – on shuffle play. Similarly, they can hit shuffle on a particular artist, and here a mixture of tracks from them.

There are also mood-related playlists, covering a wide range of possibilities from dinner parties through to exercise.

It's not quite a free equivalent of a premium account, however. What you can't do is play specific tracks from the catalog: you'll need to stump up the monthly fee if you want controlled access to Spotify's music.

Still, it's a welcome improvement over the rather rudimentary app that came before, while Spotify says it's also tweaked the interface to improve how search results are displayed as well as streamline the whole discovery process around artists and related artists.

SOURCE Spotify