Spotify for Windows Phone update to bring Radio & more

Spotify will add personalized Radio support, along with its Browse and Discover features, to its Windows Phone 8 app this Spring, the streaming music company has confirmed. The new app – which will take on not only Pandora but Nokia Radio as bundled on Lumia handsets – will allow listeners to generate a custom music station based on a seed track or artist, as their counterparts on Android and iOS have been able to do for some time.

Meanwhile, there's also the Browse view, which gathers together new releases, popular playlists, and curated selections of music according to different themes. Again, it's a feature that's been available on the desktop and on other mobile platforms before, and is finally arriving on Windows Phone.

Spotify Discover is for finding new music in a more personalized way, with the service using previous listening habits to generate suggestions as to what the user might enjoy.

The new app also gets a redesigned UI, as well as other tweaks that Spotify will detail closer to launch. That'll happen this spring, and will initially be only for Spotify Premium subscribers paying a monthly fee.

However, Windows Phone will also eventually get a free-access mobile client – launched for other platforms late last year – though Spotify isn't saying exactly when that will happen.