Apart from podcasts, car accessories, and annual listening reviews, Spotify has been experimenting with Stations, a “lightweight” app available to both free and paid subscribers, since 2018.
After making its international debut with an Android version, Spotify launched an iOS version in 2019 and made it available to US consumers. The test is now over, and Spotify has begun telling customers that the service will be shut down on May 16th, according to 9to5Google.
If you utilised Stations, you can go to the website to transfer your favourite curated playlists to the regular Spotify app, which now displays the message:
Stations is shutting down on May 16th. The stations you created will go away, but you can still enjoy Spotify by logging in with your Stations account. Discover playlists made for you, plus millions of songs and podcasts.
The Stations gimmick was that it began playing as soon as you opened the app, and while users could switch between their favourite stations / playlists, there was no ability to select specific music or artists, and returning to a station resumed where it left off. The accessible stations contained a variety of presets as well as ones that you could build yourself by selecting your favourite music from a list, and it attempted to personalise the experience for you over time.
Spotify said of its different experiments in a statement: “Some of those tests end up paving the way for our broader user experience and others serve only as an important learning. Our Spotify Stations Beta was one of those tests. We will be sunsetting the current feature, but users will be able to easily transfer their favourite stations and enjoy a similar radio experience directly within the Spotify app .”