Spotify Arrives for PS4 & PS3

This week Sony began rolling out PlayStation Music, and more importantly introduced Spotify for PS4. This new app for the world’s largest streaming service finally lets PS4 users stream from their Spotify Music collection without having to plug-in their smartphone to their television or anything extra.

Officially called, PlayStation Music, featuring Spotify, the new free app for the PS4, PS3 and any of Sony’s Android-based Xperia handsets lets users stream almost anything they want from Spotify. Sony began updating consoles with the feature Monday after announcing it on the PlayStation Blog.

 

The app itself looks and heaves like you’d expect it too. For now on going into the PlayStation Music area directly links users to Spotify. There first thing PS4 users see are prepared playlists based on their tastes. Users can look through the music they’ve already added to their digital collection in the Your Music area, or browser for more in the Browse area. Like the mobile apps, Spotify on the PS4 places an emphasis on particular genres and moods. PS4 users can simply pick a genre or mode and Spotify does the rest. Album Art is a particularly heavy focus for the Spotify PS4 app.

As of today, PlayStation Music featuring Spotify is the only way to stream songs directly to the PS4. Spotify has a library of around 30 million songs for PS4 users to play in their living room and their cache of user created playlists is legendary. Spotify for PS4’s arrival isn’t exactly a shock. Sony announced a switch in strategy for streaming music to the PS4 earlier this year.

Previously, Sony owned and operated its own music service. Called PlayStation Music Unlimited, the service allowed users to stream from an online catalog of songs to their PS4, smartphone, tablet or PS Vita. PlayStation Music stuck around for a longtime, but never caught on with users in the way streaming services from other companies have. When it announced PlayStation Music and the Spotify partnership Sony confirmed that it planned to shutter PlayStation Music for good.

PlayStation Music Unlimited is gone, but Sony and Spotify are at least taking care of those who used to subscribe to the service. Any PS4 user who had an active PlayStation Music Unlimited account as of this past Saturday, March 29th will get two months of Spotify’s Premium subscription service. Anyone who already has Spotify will get a free month of Spotify Premium. So too will anyone who hasn’t tried the service before. Sony and Spotify allow users to connect their two accounts together and bill Spotify Premium directly to the credit or debit card that they buy video games and pay for PlayStation Plus with.

Spotify costs subscribers $9.99 a month, the same as Sony Music Unlimited did. What’s more, Spotify has apps on every major smartphone and tablet platform including Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Windows, Apple’s iPhone and iPad, and Google’s Android. Accessing the service through those apps isn’t any extra once users have signed up through the PS4.

With this week’s Spotify for PS4 reveal, Spotify takes over as the only way PS4 owners are able to play music on the PS4. The PS4 doesn’t yet have a built-in media player for users to play the songs they already own.

For its part, the Xbox One, Microsoft’s entertainment console doesn’t have a Spotify app. Instead, users can sign up for Microsoft’s Xbox Music subscription to stream songs. Any songs users already own can be loaded onto a flash drive and played through the built-in Media app that Microsoft added in a previous software update. In addition to that, Microsoft added OneDrive streaming so that users can upload all of their music to Microsoft servers and stream to whatever device they have with an Xbox Music app loaded on there.