Spotify is bolstering its mobile app on iOS with a slick new widget, plus Podcasts on the platform are about to get a lot more musical in the best way possible.
The widget is pretty straightforward. There are two widget sizes — small and medium. Both widgets do the same thing by offering quick access to your recently played songs, and some Spotify playlists like your ‘Daily Mix.’
Overall, it’s not the most useful widget, but it’s still nice that Spotify has adopted this. Personally, I’m going to put it in a ‘Smart stack,‘ but it probably won’t get its own place on my home screen. If it had play/pause controls, I think I’d find myself using it more. That said, Apple doesn’t let developers use playback controls on the home screen due to battery life concerns, according to MacRumors.
Beyond that, Spotify is allowing people who use Anchor to produce podcasts to use full songs in their shows. Anchor is a podcast-making tool that Spotify bought back in early 2019.
This new update should be rolling out now and allows creators to search for songs and add them to their podcasts with ease. That said, you can only add full songs without cutting them down. While this might not be the best format for shows that like to direct to specific parts of songs, it’s a good way for people to make mixes and radio shows similarily to how Sonos Radio sounds on MixCloud.
This is an interesting move for Spotify, and it hasn’t been making a big deal out of it, but this opens up a whole world of radio on the platform. That said, if you don’t pay for the Premium version of the service, you only get to listen to a 30-second version of the song.
Source: Spotify
