Spotify adds music discovery, Rdio updates Mac app design

Music subscription services Spotify and Rdio both released updates for their apps Wednesday, with Spotify adding a new “Discover” feature for its website-based music player.

“Don’t know what to listen to next? That’s okay. We do,” Spotify said in a statement announcing the service’s new Discover feature, which will give users personalized song recommendations.

The Discover feature is a section users can click on to find the latest recommendations Spotify has to offer. The recommendations include new songs, albums and artists based on which artists users follow as well as what their friends are listening to.

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Spotify is also rolling out “Audio Preview,” which lets users click and hold on any of the songs they see on the Discover page to get a short preview of what they’ll hear if they play the entire track.

The Discover page and Audio Preview feature are launching first on Spotify’s Web player but will roll out to the mobile and desktop apps over time.

Meanwhile, Rdio also rolled out an update Wednesday, albeit a smaller one than rival Spotify. Rdio updated the Mac version of its desktop app with a more minimalist look that is similar to the service’s iOS app.

Now, when users play music on the Mac desktop app they can initiate a now-playing view that emphasizes an album’s cover, displaying a large version of the image in the foreground and turning the entire background into a large and faded version of the artwork. To the right of the foreground album cover, users can see what songs are coming up in the album, and toward the bottom of the list, they can also see what songs are next in their queue.

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