Spotify ICS App, Beta app out now, download instructions here

[Rankhar]

Finally, the wait is over! Spotify has released a beta app for ICS that hopefully fixes all our problems.

If you want to have it now on your phone, do the following:

- Go into your phone's settings, and click on 'Security' > scroll down and switch on 'Unknown Sources'

- Open your phone's browser and surf to 'www.spotify.com/blog

- Depending on the country you're in, the first post will be about the new beta app. If you don't see it, switch your country (below on the webpage) to Switzerland (German) (I assume it will be posted to all the other blogs later today). You will then see a big green button that says 'Herunterladen'. Press it, and it will start installing the new app on your phone.

If you want to download the apk directly, use this link: http://download.spotify.com/android/PreviewSpotifyAndroid.apk

EDIT: In another topic, a moderator posted the following link, where you can also find the big green button, without having to go through the blog:  http://www.spotify.com/download/previews/

Post any questions here, and the community will help you out.

Enjoy!

[licenced]

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@eriklindskog wrote:

Regarding lockscreen, i think they need to use this.

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/RemoteControlClient.html

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They must already be using that for the HTC Sense lockscreen control to pick it up.
Anyone able to confirm if any other third-party lockscreen music control widgets are working with Spotify now?

[Rankhar]

Have been listening using the new app for a while now, and am experiencing some glitches in audio every few minutes, Nothing major though. Perhaps the phone is in need of a reboot, it's been a while...

[eriklindskog]

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@licenced wrote:

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@eriklindskog wrote:

Regarding lockscreen, i think they need to use this.

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/media/RemoteControlClient.html

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They must already be using that for the HTC Sense lockscreen control to pick it up.
Anyone able to confirm if any other third-party lockscreen music control widgets are working with Spotify now?

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Edited my post, works on my Galaxy Nexus now after clearing cache for app.

[hgss]

Used it for a couple minutes. Looks amazing and feels a lot faster.

Can't find a play queue though. Is it me or is it not in there? I can slide to next song in the now playing view, but no way of seeing all (or some) of the songs queued up.

[yreuvekamp]

Same problem as the old app: no playlists showing up, despite having a premium account. This happens when I log in using my Spotify credentials. I refuse to ever log in using Facebook. Playlists are showing up just perfectly on the desktop client, by the way.

[topbunk]

Finally! I'm trying it out now, looks a lot better and all issues with loging on ICS (Galaxy Nexus) seem to have been fixed.

I'd like some info on bitrates, there's three options now.

Couple of feature requests:

• The long awaited folders
• Equaliser
• Continue play when jack is plugged back in

[piphil]

Looks like "Normal" is 96, "High" 160 and "Extreme" 320 kbps.

It's difficult to tell how much difference it's making without being able to download different tracks at different bitrates (and without being able to interegate the actual cache files to see what bitrate they report) but to my ear they sound OK, maybe a bit more high-end crispness than previously? (Yes, I'm an audio snob...) 😛

[Afront]

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@piphil wrote:

As a follow up to my last post, I've done a bit more fiddling and the app ISN'T downloading to my external SD card

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Well, it seems to be for me. I had the previous version set to save to my external SD card and this new beta seems to have picked up those same settings (I checked my total usage, downloaded a playlist, checked usage again: SD card gone up, internal storage the same).

[Rankhar]

@yreuvekamp I don't log in with Facebook either, perhaps something else is wrong. I assume you have tried the usual stuff, like clearing cache, logging out and back in, all that jazz?

[mseele]

first of all thanks for the preview version. Here are the "bugs" i got:

- Cannot change the location for the offline files (e.g. move/save them to the external sd-card). This was possible in the old app (by pressing the menu button on login screen).

- Nothing happens when i press the menu button in menu. I would guess the sidebar should open/close if i press the menu button

- Make it possible to search in (offline) playlists for songs/artists/albums (kind of filtering...)

- Please add a view where you can browse through the offline music sorted by artist/album (like itunes)

- Make it possible to sort the playlists (maybe this will come with folder support)

- Use the Tabbed Pane for Downloaded/All Playlists instead of seperated lists (the problem here is that i have lot's of playlists that are offline so i have to scoll a lot to get to the "all" list which is under the "downloaded" list)

[licenced]

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@hgss wrote:

Used it for a couple minutes. Looks amazing and feels a lot faster.

Can't find a play queue though. Is it me or is it not in there? I can slide to next song in the now playing view, but no way of seeing all (or some) of the songs queued up.

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Er, yeah good spot. No way to view the now-playing queue. You can select a song and add it to the queue easily enough but no way to see what's in the queue

[piphil]

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@Afront wrote:

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@piphil wrote:

As a follow up to my last post, I've done a bit more fiddling and the app ISN'T downloading to my external SD card

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Well, it seems to be for me. I had the previous version set to save to my external SD card and this new beta seems to have picked up those same settings (I checked my total usage, downloaded a playlist, checked usage again: SD card gone up, internal storage the same).

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Yeah, I think that may have been working for me too. But when I said "fiddle" I meant "Uninstall program, wipe data, wipe SD card, reinstall". This was partly to make sure that the app was downloading in "extreme" quality, but also to see if a first-time program startup would offer the download location option. It didn't... 😞

[yreuvekamp]

@Rankhar: Yeah, I've tried all those things. I really don't know what's wrong. The problem started with the old app, though.

[hnilsen]

I'm using an ASUS Transformer Prime, usually with the keyboard dock, and the app forces portrait. It would be wonderful if you could stop this so that we can use it in portrait (with the keyboard dock) 🙂

Other than that it looks great and I love it thus far (at least on my galaxy nexus) 🙂

[MarcelT]

This app become useless if you want to listen to music with a tablet or phone while docked in a landscape dock!!! Both my Transformer Prime and my HTC Sensation are docked this way, and could become a home music center. So please please enable accellerometer rotation!!!

This is essentlial!

[hnilsen]

As the problem was with the tablet version, it still goes into offline mode whenever I have downloaded a playlist. This tells me nothing has really changed except for the design.

This happens on my Transformer Prime running 4.0.3, but not on my Galaxy Nexus running 4.0.2.

[Calibrae]

It's still a beta guys. At least we can 1/ use spotify 2/ sync playlist 3/ stop eating way to much memory to play music.

Still, 6 months to release a draft like this is pretty painful development wise.

[user-removed]

@hgss
can't find the play queue either. 🙂

[bradavon]

@ piphil:

It's bound to mean this:

Normal: 96Kbps

High: 160Kbps

Extreme: 320Kbps

Extreme is 320Kbps anyway: www.spotify.com/us/blog/archives/2012/04/19/new-android-preview and those are the two bitrates Spotift have always used otherwise in the past.

p.s - Folder support is coming.

[pullasuti]

Ok. This may be a dumb question, but where has the music library gone to? I've been going over the menus, and all I can find is "Playlists", which forces me to play each album separately. So, how can I randomize between all my playlists? 

Also, the left top corner menu seems very unintuitive to use. Don't know if it's better on tablets, but when holding the phone with my right hand, reaching for the button with my thumb is just clumsy. 

Call it resistance to change or misunderstanding the app, but I liked the old one better 🙂