Listen to 2018 New Music Adds now. Listen to 2018 New Music Adds in full in the Spotify app. Play on Spotify. In 2018, Spotify continued to grow, and fast. We had 200 designers. 45 different platforms. The days of designing for mobile and desktop were long gone. Now we were also designing for cars, smartwatches, speakers, and even smart fridges. This was in part due to a new company strategy: ubiquity.

Spotify's mobile app just got a major overhaul.

The music streaming app, available for iOS and Android and rolling out globally to users in the coming weeks, has been redesigned from the ground up to be faster and easier for non-paying users to access specific songs from playlists.

Additionally, the app's got a new 'Data Saver' mode that'll reduce its data usage by up to 75 percent over 3G.

New Spotify App

Spotify's mobile app previously didn't let non-paying customers listen to specific tracks, only playlists on shuffle mode. The old gimped mobile experience was a good way to push users to pay for Spotify Premium, but it never made much sense, especially when the desktop apps didn't have the same limitations.

There's also one big catch: Spotify picks 15 on-demand playlists based on your favorited songs.

With the revamped app, the company's over 90 million non-paying users can now listen to select playlists with songs on demand just like Spotify Premium users. Free tier users will be limited to 15 on-demand playlists in any order and skip as many songs as they want.

But there's also one big catch: Spotify picks the 15 on-demand playlists based on your favorited songs.

So for example, if you favorite a lot of Drake, you're going to maybe get a playlist of his songs, which you can play and skip to your heart's content.

And of course, free users will still have to deal with ads, though.

The new free Spotify mobile app gives you 15 playlists that aren’t limited to shuffle mode pic.twitter.com/ixYA4BMaX0

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

'We want users to have a great playlist experience,' Babar Zafar, the company's vice president of product development, said. 'This is something that has never been done before for free. The free version of Spotify is becoming a lot more like Premium.'

'The better our free experience is, the more chances they'll become premium users,' Spotify's chief product officer Gustav Söderström said. 'Engagement is the most important indicator of growth.'

What personalization on the new Spotify mobile app looks like. Daily Mix will reflect users range of tastes pic.twitter.com/Oz0IXiAfeC

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

As often is the case with apps that get updated with new features over the years, Spotify became bloated.

The new app streamlines the user interface so that it's easier to discover music and navigate between different sections.

One of the most notable changes to the Spotify mobile app is the navigation located at the bottom. On the old version, there were five tabs (Home, Browse, Search, Radio, and Your Library).

Video tour of the new redesigned Spotify iOS app (also coming to Android) pic.twitter.com/0EpLdbr9bL

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

While it could hardly be called confusing, Spotify deemed it too cluttered and has done a little consolidating. The new version of the app has four tabs: Home, Search, Your Library, and Premium.

The previous Browse and Search sections have been rolled into a single new Search section with more visually attractive categories for essentials like top charts, new releases, genres, etc.

New Spotify mobile app has been simplified with fewer tabs. Consolidated browse and search tab pic.twitter.com/8Lb77w9w28

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

Whereas the previous version of the mobile app was excessively text-heavy, the new app puts things like album art front and center. The new app also simplifies things like saving songs; instead of tapping the '···' next to a song to open up a list of options (save, add to playlist, share, etc.), there's now a heart icon.

Moreover, Spotify's also making its mobile app more personalized. When users download the app, they'll be prompted to select what types of artists and genres they like. Over time, the app will learn a user's personal preferences to help surface relevant playlists... hmm, wonder where that idea came from (*cough*Apple Music*cough*).

Your Top Songs 2018 Spotify

New Spotify app asks users what artists they like after they download the app...hmm looks familiar pic.twitter.com/ruXrsSZGDB

Spotify Download

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

Another important addition to Spotify is the Data Saver mode. With a flip of a switch within the app's settings, users will be able to reduce the app's data usage by up to 75 percent less when connected over 3G, Zafar said.

'We are creatively using the user's device to cache, store music so they can listen to [music] ahead time. We will also optimize how streaming works when you are playing music on 3G. This will not be limited to music streaming. As you use the app, we get creative on what images it shows.'

Spotify users can save up to 75% of mobile data with data saver mode while streaming on 3G pic.twitter.com/pZvMBtAOI4

— Raymond Wong📱💾📼 (@raywongy) April 24, 2018

Spotify App For Pc

Asked about whether the Data Saver mode will result in reduced audio streaming quality, Zafar didn't provide a straight answer, but you can read between the lines.

Spotify App For Mac

'We do many creative things, optimize streaming to use less data. Part of that is optimizing the audio quality. There is no fixed set of rules for what is happening. It is an opt-in mode. Users will always be in control.'

Spotify For Artists 2018 Wrapped

Zafar also said there's no specific amount of storage the Data Saver mode will use. It'll be specific to each user; a heavy Spotify user will have more data cached.

We've yet to dig into all of the new tweaks made to the Spotify mobile app, but so far the changes look like a step in the right direction for a company chasing growth after going public earlier this month.

New Spotify App 2018 How To

Spotify currently has over 157 million users, 71 million of which are paying customers. Ahead of its IPO, the company said it expected to grow its paid users to 96 million by the end of the year. That nice prominent 'Premium' button on the far right of the navigation should help them reach that goal.