【Science Fiction Archives】

Spotify's mobile app just got a major overhaul.

The Science Fiction Archivesmusic streaming app, available for iOS and Android and rolling out globally to users in the coming weeks, has been redesigned from the ground up to be faster and easier for non-paying users to access specific songs from playlists.

Additionally, the app's got a new "Data Saver" mode that'll reduce its data usage by up to 75 percent over 3G.

Spotify's mobile app previously didn't let non-paying customers listen to specific tracks, only playlists on shuffle mode. The old gimped mobile experience was a good way to push users to pay for Spotify Premium, but it never made much sense, especially when the desktop apps didn't have the same limitations.

With the revamped app, the company's over 90 million non-paying users can now listen to selectplaylists with songs on demand just like Spotify Premium users. Free tier users will be limited to 15 on-demand playlists in any order and skip as many songs as they want.

But there's also one big catch: Spotify picks the 15 on-demand playlists based on your favorited songs.

So for example, if you favorite a lot of Drake, you're going to maybe get a playlist of his songs, which you can play and skip to your heart's content.

And of course, free users will still have to deal with ads, though.

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"We want users to have a great playlist experience," Babar Zafar, the company's vice president of product development, said. "This is something that has never been done before for free. The free version of Spotify is becoming a lot more like Premium."

"The better our free experience is, the more chances they'll become premium users," Spotify's chief product officer Gustav Söderström said. "Engagement is the most important indicator of growth."

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As often is the case with apps that get updated with new features over the years, Spotify became bloated.

The new app streamlines the user interface so that it's easier to discover music and navigate between different sections.

One of the most notable changes to the Spotify mobile app is the navigation located at the bottom. On the old version, there were five tabs (Home, Browse, Search, Radio, and Your Library).

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While it could hardly be called confusing, Spotify deemed it too cluttered and has done a little consolidating. The new version of the app has four tabs: Home, Search, Your Library, and Premium.

The previous Browse and Search sections have been rolled into a single new Search section with more visually attractive categories for essentials like top charts, new releases, genres, etc.

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Whereas the previous version of the mobile app was excessively text-heavy, the new app puts things like album art front and center. The new app also simplifies things like saving songs; instead of tapping the "···" next to a song to open up a list of options (save, add to playlist, share, etc.), there's now a heart icon.

Moreover, Spotify's also making its mobile app more personalized. When users download the app, they'll be prompted to select what types of artists and genres they like. Over time, the app will learn a user's personal preferences to help surface relevant playlists... hmm, wonder where that idea came from (*cough*Apple Music*cough*).

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Another important addition to Spotify is the Data Saver mode. With a flip of a switch within the app's settings, users will be able to reduce the app's data usage by up to 75 percent less when connected over 3G, Zafar said.

"We are creatively using the user's device to cache, store music so they can listen to [music] ahead time. We will also optimize how streaming works when you are playing music on 3G. This will not be limited to music streaming. As you use the app, we get creative on what images it shows."

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Asked about whether the Data Saver mode will result in reduced audio streaming quality, Zafar didn't provide a straight answer, but you can read between the lines.

"We do many creative things, optimize streaming to use less data. Part of that is optimizing the audio quality. There is no fixed set of rules for what is happening. It is an opt-in mode. Users will always be in control."

Zafar also said there's no specific amount of storage the Data Saver mode will use. It'll be specific to each user; a heavy Spotify user will have more data cached.

We've yet to dig into all of the new tweaks made to the Spotify mobile app, but so far the changes look like a step in the right direction for a company chasing growth after going public earlier this month.

Spotify currently has over 157 million users, 71 million of which are paying customers. Ahead of its IPO, the company said it expected to grow its paid users to 96 million by the end of the year. That nice prominent "Premium" button on the far right of the navigation should help them reach that goal.