14 DAY TRIAL // Spotify may not be any closer to a launch in the US, but for the parts of the world where it’s available there’s now a handy Chrome extension for it. The Spotify Chrome Extension, it’s literally called that, enables users to search for an artist or band inside their favorite browser and then easily get a list of tracks available in Spotify. With just a couple more clicks, the tracks they select will start playing in the desktop app.
“We wanted to let everyone know about this neat Spotify Chrome extension that allows users to search and find music in Spotify directly from their browser. Use your mouse to highlight the text with the name of an artist or group in your current web page. Click on the extension’s icon to listen to their music on Spotify. A fun way to quickly start up music you’re reading about while surfing the web,” Spotify’s Andres Sehr writes.
The extension itself doesn’t do much, but at least what it does do, is does well. It’s just intended as a tool to simplify the search process. If you’re reading up on a band, doing a bit of Wikipedia ‘research’ maybe, or your favorite music blog is raving about the hot new thing, simply select the band’s or artist’s name and click on the Spotify icon in the Chrome toolbar.
The extension will then list a number of tracks from that artist along with a link to the tracks’ page on Spotify.com. Then click on the huge play button and it should launch the Spotify app along with the track. The Chrome extension is clearly not built as a web app for Spotify or as an additional service, it just streamlines the process of searching for a track by removing the need to move back and forth between apps and manually copy-paste everything.
Spotify Chrome Extension is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Windows is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Linux is available for download here.
Google Chrome for Mac is available for download here.