Spotify Launches In Playstation 3 And Playstation 4

By  Max Willens @maxwillens m.willens@ibtimes.com on March 30 2015 6:47 AM EDT

A screenshot of the Spotify tile on the Playstation user interface. Sony

If you've got a Spotify playlist that serves as the perfect soundtrack to your Bloodborne or Destiny sessions, rejoice: as of Monday, Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 owners can now soundtrack their gaming sessions using Spotify. The partnership puts the full range of the streaming music service's features inside 64 million game consoles in 41 countries, and it is exclusive. “You won’t see us on any other game consoles any time soon,” a Spotify spokesman said.
According to Eric Lempel, Sony’s vice president of business and operations in the Americas, the two companies entered discussions about a possible partnership last year, and before long their product teams were visiting with one another on a regular basis. The end result is an integration puts Spotify and its catalog at or near the center of the gaming experience. In addition to being
able to access and play songs, albums, playlists and radio through the game console, users are able to listen to that music while playing games, and set a balance between game audio and music. If you want to be able to hear the game action mixed with your hip hop playlist, you can set that up with a handful of button presses.
Playstation users can use both Spotify’s premium and ad-supported tiers, with the console’s ad-supported tier identical to the one available on desktop computers. Neither company would comment on whether Sony receives a portion of the advertising revenue generated by Playstation users engaging with Spotify.
The integration is likely to hit big with PlayStation users, who embraced the console as a hub for digital media consumption right away -- PlayStation 3 was the world’s top device for streaming Netflix to televisions all the way back in 2012, though it’s lost some ground to dedicated set-top devices like Roku over the past year and a half, PlayStation remains the world's top device for streaming Netflix to televisions. The partnership announced today rounds out a rich media and entertainment experience that already includes streaming video, cloud storage, social media connectivity and even music-making.
For Spotify, Monday’s announcement continues a recent push to layer its product onto and into other devices. In addition to desktop and mobile devices, Spotify is already available in a number of cars, and it recently signed a partnership with Uber that allows riders to act as backseat DJs.