https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZBqV_yMq4

The music industry is experiencing a huge shift with physical and online music purchases declining and streaming music services on the rise. Among the most popular is Spotify who today in New York City made some interesting announcements to bring their customers entirely new experiences.

The most exciting new feature is for runners: Spotify now has a mode that will detect your running pace, the rhythm of your feet, and select songs that perfectly match the way you run. This is an outrageously cool idea that I know exercise enthusiasts will be dying to try out.

Spotify also announced partnerships with Nike and RunKeeper to bring this feature to the Nike Plus and RunKeeper apps later this year. We can only assume you’ll have these features on your Android Phones in due time.

Running Mode is the most exciting feature Spotify announced but it’s not the only thing. The new Spotify aims to deliver 3 key elements:

The perfect soundtrack for any part of your day

New types of content

Better experiences with innovative solutions

The “soundtrack for your life” could also prove promising. They’ve created an auto-create playlist feature that takes into consideration everything about you to continually decide what song it thinks you’ll want to hear next.

Depending on who you are it selects music for when you wake up, when you go running, when you get to work, when you’re commuting, and so on and so forth. It constantly learns who you are, where you go and when, what you like during those times, and creates the soundtrack for your life in real-time.

This isn’t a particularly new idea, but alternatives offered by the likes of Google Play Music, iTunes Radio, and Pandora don’t choose music particularly well. Spotify’s “soundtrack for your life” could end up being pretty darn awesome. We’ll have to wait, try it, and see.

Enhancing the experience with new types of content is an interesting concept as well, but again, nothing particularly new here. Spotify is adding new forms of media from popular podcasts, news programs, television shows, and more- including some video content.

Are you a Spotify customer? If so, do any of these developments sound particularly exciting? If not, will these new features entice you to become a Spotify customer?