Not long ago, TMT reported on Spotify’s latest antics of overpriced family plans and major label hostage situations. Now, the streaming music platform has gotten even more celestial and decided that future editions of Spotify’s desktop program will not feature apps. No more App Finder tab, and no support of Spotify Apps. “This feature is being discontinued” is how Spotify chose to surprise developers last week with the news.
For more than one hundred app creators who have contributed to Spotify’s platform over the years — from Pitchfork to Digster to TuneWiki — this is kind of a slap in the face. “With the growing importance of mobile and many of you asking for the tools to build apps outside of our desktop platform, we recognized the need to make a new set of APIs and SDKs available,” explained Spotify for the abrupt change. However, the company’s latest mobile software and dev platform doesn’t support full song streaming on outside developers’ apps — only 30-second clips. A few companies have stuck it out and made new apps with these constraints, like BBC and Soundhound, but it could prompt an exodus from the Spotify platform. Those developers get no respect.
• Spotify: https://www.spotify.com
