Spotify recently published a public beta of an upcoming version of their app. This major update will introduce a redesigned user interface. The new main page gives you a better social overview, as for example what your friends are listening to, both of songs and playlists. Search has been reimplemented with predictive search results. Just start start typing in the search bar and Spotify will suggest possible tracks, artists, albums and playlists. The Buddy List now shows what your friends are listening to right now and you can also see and hear your friends’ starred tracks, as well as the music they’re adding to their playlists. OS X Lion users can enjoy the new Spotify as a full-screen app.

Another major new thing in Spotify is their app store, called App Finder. The new Spotify comes with an improved Last.fm support. It is now not only limited to scrobbling, it now also give you recommendations. There are also apps for newspapers that review music, and funnily enough the first Norwegian newspaper is already present:

The Dagbladet app is beautiful and I have both read reviews and at the same time listened to the albums being reviewed. Hats off for Dagbladet, as they have made one of the best apps available in App Finder and I hope that they will have great success with it. Another Norwegian app is Soundrop, but I’m still trying to figure out how it works

The songs on the album is descretly put on the left side of the review under the album cover, and you can easily add songs to your favourite list of music and to other playlists as you are used to.

Other applications to look out for are the one from Guardian and Rolling Stones magazine. They are both not in the same league as the one from Dagbladet, but both provide great music suggestions and that is what it’s all about in the end.