Spotify, the online streaming cloud music service, continues to shed the layers of their walled garden.  First came the US invasion last year, followed by the Facebook integration – though not everyone was particularly happy with that one, as people were able to see what you’re listening too.  The matter was quickly addressed by Spotify, and now, they just launched the Spotify Play Button.

The Play Button is a widget that you can embed on your site so you can share your favorite tunes to your readers or fans.  Spotify made it easier for music lovers to put tunes on their sites but the best thing about this is its legal so people using the Play Button won’t have to worry about getting shutdown because of music piracy.

“We believe that the web is very fragmented when it comes to adding music,” Spotify’s chief product officer Gustav Soderstrom told the BBC.  “We want to enable people to be able to add music and soundtracks to their websites without having to distract the user with videos, banners and pop-ups. Previously it’s just been short samples, or the audio quality has been poor.”

“We think if we can allow the music to be integrated seamlessly then people will be more engaged with the sites and will stay longer absorbing the rest of their content,” Soderstrom added.

Not-so-seamless integration

If you’re already a Spotify subscriber and you have the desktop app installed, visiting a site with the Play Button is a great experience.  Unfortunately, if you’re not a subscriber and you want to listen to the music, you need to create your Spotify account first and install the desktop app since the widget itself doesn’t really contain the music, nor does it directly stream music from the web.  So in context, the Play Button widget is like a Spotify URL, click on it and you get redirected to the Spotify desktop app.

Another thing, if you do have a Spotify account but you’re using the free version, clicking on the Play Button will open up ads.  So this strategy would not only entice people to sign up for a Spotify account but it would also encourage free subscribers to upgrade to a premium account to get rid of the ads (if it doesn’t scare them off entirely).

But don’t fret.  As Spotify expands their user base, you can bet that they’ll do everything they can to make the integration more seamless so the listening experience can be more enjoyable.

Music cloud gets more accessible

Music services are amping their offerings to better compete with rivals, and of course, to make it easier for people to access their service.  Google recently announced that they’ve added new features to Google Play Music.  It now features track notifications that pop up when a new song begins playing, but you must be using Google Chrome in order for the feature to work.  Users can also rate songs on a scale of 1-5, and the last but most notable feature is the ability to enable HTML5 Audio playback, averting Flash all together.

Early supporters

Though Sptofiy’s new Play Button widget is somewhat flawed, some web content operators, such as Huffington Post, MSN UK, Vogue.com, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and the social networking micoblogging site Tumblr, have already started using the widget.

If you’re a blogger or you have your own website and you want to spice things up by adding some cool tunes to it, click here to learn how to embed the Spotify Play Button.
But if you’re not a blogger or you don’t have your own site to share your Spotify Playlist, here are things to help you share your playlists:

• On Spotify, you can create and share your playlist with friends, the best thing about this is their collaborative playlist – you and your friends can co-create playlists of songs you both enjoy
• You can enjoy listening to Spotify and share your playlist with your friends through Facebook as well as listen in on what your friends are currently listening to and chat about it
• RetroFuzz created two app for music labels, EMI and [PIAS], which features the record labels’ most popular songs.  The great thing about these apps is that users can also create their own list and share it with others
• And you can also share your playlists or see other playlists through services such as ShareMyPlaylists, SpotifyList, SpotifyPalylists, and Spotylist.