Spotify launches a new SDK to tap its music-streaming service for iOS apps

Get ready to see Spotify more often in iOS apps.

The music-streaming service has launched a new software-development kit (SDK) for developers to tap when integrating Spotify into their iOS applications, the company announced today.

The new SDK, which is in early beta testing, enables developers to look up metadata, pull playlists, search Spotify, and play audio, according to a developer blog post on the news.

One motivation is to make sure not to take up too much CPU or RAM. Spotify designed the SDK to be lightweight and fast, company software engineer Dan Kennett wrote in the post.

For consumers, this could mean Spotify could show up in more of the iOS apps people use on a regular basis, because developers might be able to drive better performance when they try to bring componenets of Spotify into iOS apps.

Spotify is already a rich source of music and data about it. Now that Spotify is buying the music-data company Echo Nest, mobile developers could be even more inclined to call the service in their apps.

That’s especially true given that Daniel Ek, Spotify’s chief executive, believes the acquisition will enable Spotify to make “the best music intelligence platform on the planet,” as VentureBeat’s Tom Cheradar reported.

Spotify initially opened access to iOS developers through an application programming interface (API) in 2011.