Spotify Linux app goes live

Online music streaming provider Spotify has announced a native application for Linux operating systems. This is the first time Spotify has released a Linux client, although some users have previously reported being able to install the Windows application using the Wine emulation environment.

According to the blog post announcing the development, the app contains most of the features of its Windows and Mac OS siblings. However, playing local mp3 files is not supported, due to "issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform". Also, it appears that displaying adverts has been problematic for the developers, which unfortunately rules out the free-with-ads model available on the other platforms.

Like the company's mobile apps, the Linux version is available to Spotify Premium subscribers only. The company will offer no official support for the application, but does promise regular updates and feature parity with Mac and Windows.

Users running Debian-based Linux distributions such as Ubuntu can install the app by following these instructions:

1. Add this line to your list of repositories by editing your /etc/apt/sources.list
   deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free
   
   
2. Run apt-get update
   
   
3. (optional) If you want to verify the downloaded packages, you will need to add our public key
   gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.de.pgp.net --recv-keys 4E9CFF4E
   gpg --export 4E9CFF4E |sudo apt-key add -
   
   
4. Run apt-get install spotify-client-qt spotify-client-gnome-support

Further information on the beta application is available on the Spotify site.