Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek has just announced that the streaming music service is opening its doors to third party app developers.
The developers will be able to create HTML 5 apps, which Ek said would make Spotify a music platform with which users could customise their experience.
The first generation of apps were revealed on screen and included big music brands such as Pitchfork, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Last.fm
Ek took the conference attendees through The Rolling Stone app, which linked reviews and editorial playlists to tracks, the Last.fm app, which offered a range of sharing options, and Songkick, which brings its live music services including tour dates and ticketing to Spotify.
"More than anything we really look forward to being surprised by developers," said Ek. "We really think they're going to deliver amazing apps within the Spotify platform. There are going to be things here that we can't even imagine sitting here today.
"This is a geat time for music and the Spotify platform is going to make it even better with a burst of innovation. The possibilities are truely endless."
While answering questions from the floor in New York, Ek implied that the Spotify app functionality would be limited to its desktop platform at first but there were of course plans to make the apps as platform agnostic as possible in future.
The question of paid apps as well as revenue systems for developers and artists was also asked. Ek said that apps that exist at the moment are free and that monetising wasn't an element at the moment.
When the question of Spotify's terms becoming onerous as the service grows Ek replied:
"We pay every time someone plays a song and we feel that's a great model because it adds value every time someone listens to a song. We don't feel those are onerous terms in any shape or form.
"We're actually very happy with how our model is performing."
"From a percentage standpoint all I can say is we're paying out a vast majority of all the revenues and that's how we want to keep going."
The Spotify Platform beta can be found at www.spotify.com/us/download/previews
