Spotify has officially made its way to next-gen consoles. Well, at least one of them: PS4. It’s now available for download as a free app on the platform.
Spotify Premium subscribers know full well just how big of a deal this is. If you’re not one of them, let’s go over what this means.
Spotify Your Living Room
Spotify is a platform that hosts millions of songs from just about every artist you can think of. Using the service you can not only listen to any song you can think of at a moment’s notice, but you can make a playlist of your favorite songs with all the benefits of an intuitive music player equipped with shuffle, repeat, and more.
So, fundamentally what this means is that you can turn your PS4 into a proper music player. If friends are over and you want some music for your living room, this is the solution you want. While that could be done before today using a variety of means (a PC, for example), you couldn’t enjoy your console gaming experience along with a custom soundtrack. Now you can.
You Got the Power
Let’s say you’re playing Driveclub and want to liven things up a bit. If you open up the Spotify app, Driveclub will automatically disable its uni-dimensional Drum and Bass soundtrack, letting you listen to whatever you want as you cruise around its open roads. Trance, Alternative, Pop, Punk. It’s up to you.
Another example. If you’ve been busy playing Bloodborne you might notice that music is usually only reserved for boss battles. You can change that if you want, replacing silence with Metallica or any other band of your choosing. Or, you can make something fun out of it and listen to Taylor Swift while you conquer horrifying beasts.
Metallica + Bloodborne = Awesome.
The point to be made is that you can build playlists for each particular game you play, offering you an opportunity to enrich your gaming experience with music that you enjoy instead of being at the mercy of each game’s pre-built soundtrack.
Cell Phone DJ
One of the best parts of Spotify is that you can manage what you’re listening to from your cell phone. Instead of having to minimize your game to change to a different artist or playlist, you can do so from the intuitive touch screen of your smartphone.
Using the Spotify app you have full control over your playlists and what you listen to while the app is running on your PS4. So, you aren’t barred from any form of interaction that the PS4 app might be missing, and don’t have to stumble around the interface with your controller if you don’t want to.
PS4 Exclusive for the “Foreseeable Future”
Sony UK Marketing Director Murray Pannell has confirmed to Eurogamer that Spotify will not be making the trip to other gaming consoles in the near future. So, the brilliance of the service is PS4 exclusive for the time-being. Given all its perks, this is a huge win for Sony.
Though, it is worth noting that some games don’t support Spotify. Thankfully, many of the most popular ones do. So, I recommend giving it a try and seeing if it’s something your gaming experiences can benefit from.
