Spotify makes its desktop app more DJ-friendly with crossfading & gapless playback

Streaming music service Spotify is launching an updated version of its desktop application today that’s aimed at the casual-to-serious DJ crowd.

Until now, Spotify users listening to playlists hear a momentary silent gap between songs, which some people find disruptive to their listening experience. This would definitely be true for long scores of music as well as albums from artists like DJ Paul Oakenfold (who is apparently a fan of Spotify). In the updated version of the app, Spotify has pushed out a new gapless playback feature that eliminates the pauses between tracks. It’s turned on by default, but users can toggle it off in the settings.

Also useful for the DJ crowd in the Spotify app update is the addition of a crossfading feature, which lets you start the next song before the current one finishes. This kind of functionality moves Spotify from just a social service that lets you share your music playlists to your go-to application for playing music at parties. Aside from the playback functionality the updated app also contains some revisions to the user interface, faster artist browsing, the ability to restore/save the “now playing” queue, and a number of small bug fixes.

Spotify is rolling out the app update to users beginning today, but anyone who doesn’t want to wait can download the preview version for both Windows and Mac.