We have just released a new version of Spotify. In this release:

• Different versions of the same album have been grouped in the artist view
• The growl notifications have been modified to support replacement of a message rather than just stacking them
• The prefetching model has been modified to prefetch across track boundaries
• Feedback has been added for when changing tracks is not possible due to an ad being played
• The row numbers in the top list view have been right adjusted
• Keyboard short cuts for changing tracks or toggling pause no longer repeat
• The error message for URIs to non-existing playlists has been improved
• A bug causing password reset login to be very slow has been fixed
• The album header has been modified to work better with very long titles
• Context menus have been added to album covers and titles in the album view
• The error messages for missing tracks have been clarified

Earlier this year, in February, we started testing advertising within Spotify for a few of our beta testers. As we get closer to launch we’re expanding this advertising test to include almost all Spotify users. As from today you’ll notice that we’re testing a number of different models and formats, including audio spots and banners. As always we’d appreciate any ideas or input.

Throughout the summer we’ll research how the ads are received and hope you’ll be up for helping us with feedback. Spotify will be launched in two flavours: a free version with advertising, and a premium version without. More details on the product launch will follow!

Music can be a powerful messenger. We’ve put together a list of songs that probably will make you think about a specific brand or message. Can you match the right song with the right brand? Send me your guess and the first one coming up with the correct answers will get five extra invites!

A shout goes out to our friends here in Sweden at the media agencies Bizkit, Carat, MindShare, OMD, Starcom and Wisely for providing us with the creatives. Last but not least our continued thanks to all of our beta testers! You rock!

We have just released a new version of Spotify.

For this release:

• More country top lists have been added
• Browsing on Various Artists (which is not a real artist after all) has been disabled
• A warning has been added, informing the user that he needs to complete the information in his profile
• Links have been added to error messages where appropriate
• A new class of info messages has been added and the look of all info messages has been updated

At Spotify we spend most of our our waking hours online, so it’s very hard to imagine a world without the web.

It’s an exciting time in history and there is a bunch of interesting people behind it that we’re grateful to. Read more about our heroes in the July issue of Vanity Fair.

Spending all day trying to index all music in the world you tend to think about this sort of question.

A friend sent us this really interesting podcast from Radio Lab in which they are trying to discover the main ingredients of music and understand why it touches us so intimately.

So what exactly is music? My best guess it’s in the ear of the beholder and could either be described by exact mathematical formulas, a picture like the one below or a quote like this one “Music is what feelings sound like” by a unknown wise person.

What do you think? Why not leave a comment below with your thoughts?

Thanks Delorean for the recommendation and for being so generous with your music expertise.