Schematic Labs’ free SoundTracking app for the desktop version of Spotify makes music social and personal at the same time. With the app, you share what you’re listening to on the streaming music service, and you can personalize the post by choosing your own image and adding a comment.
Schematic Labs has been offering free SoundTracking apps for iOS and Android that let you post songs you're listening to and add photos and comments. These apps tie in well with the new version for Spotify’s desktop software. Anything you post or like in the Spotify app appears under your profile in the mobile app.
To share what you’re listening to, launch SoundTracking from the Apps section in Spotify’s left column. You click a button, then add a comment and an image.
By default, the app uses the album’s cover art, but you can pick an image to make your post unique. SoundTracking for Spotify integrates with your Instagram account so you can choose one of your images (a feature not yet available on the mobile apps). You also can choose song-related images from Google, which tend to be images of the artist. However, you can’t select an image from your hard drive for some reason.
You can use SoundTracking to share what you’re listening to beyond the app; it can post to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.
SoundTracking works well for music discovery. You can follow friends who use SoundTracking to see what they are listening to, or check out the trending songs among all users. You can "star" (like) or "heart" (love) other people’s songs. And you can add comments — something you can't do on Spotify without the plugin.
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The new app works as advertised. The biggest advantage: full-length songs. Unlike the iOS app, which offers only snippets, the Spotify-integrated app plays the full track of other people’s songs. Android users with the Spotify mobile app gained the full-length song feature last year.
But the app has a few wrinkles to iron out. For example, if you want to see a larger version of a picture, the app takes you to the SoundTracking site instead of displaying directly within Spotify. Also, you can’t see in Spotify the tracks you like or love; those appear only in your profile on the mobile app.
SoundTracking adds useful features to Spotify’s already considerable wealth of tools. It helps Spotify become more social and makes it easier to discover music within the service’s vast library.
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