How was 2011 for you? It’s been an incredible year for Spotify – we launched in new countries including the US, made music more social than ever with Facebook, and opened up Spotify to a new world of apps. We liked 2011!

But how was 2011 for music? What were the most popular tracks of the year? Find out how your favourites fared in our Review of the Year.

Check out our Review of the Year, which includes the Top 100 tracks by country and playlists from the likes of Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Willow Smith and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park.

Thanks for listening to Spotify in 2011. We wish you a very happy New Year!

This year has been a very musical one. New artists, great new album releases, amazing covers, surprising comebacks and plenty or surprises.

And you guys were there to listen to all of that! We’ll be showing you very soon which ones were the most popular tracks of the year 2011 on Spotify in each country. But before we’d like to make a playlist that includes your favourite tracks os this year.

Which one was the track that marked 2011 for you? Drag and drop the URL in the box below and in a few days we’ll post the playlist created by all of you!

We are excited to let you know that our BlackBerry app is no longer a Preview release and is now available to any user with a compatible phone. To download the app simply point the browser on your phone to m.spotify.com and follow the installation instructions.

Compatible phones include Bold 9780, Bold 9700, Curve 9300, Bold 9000, Curve 8520. Currently the app only supports phones running on GSM networks. CDMA-network phones and the Torch 9800 are not compatible.

As with all of our mobile app you’ll need a Spotify Premium subscription to stream from our catalogue. You can take advantage of our 48-hour free trial directly from the mobile app or sign up to our 30-day free trial to give it a spin.

Enjoy!

The first episode of Music Loves Art is up! With a behind the scenes look at our Music Loves Art events at Ricochet Lounge during Art Basel 2011, this series captures the exclusive performances and intimate interviews between the visual artists and musicians.

Catch the first episode right here - Nas, Rashid Johnson and Luis Gispert inspire and enlighten. Be sure to head to VICE.com for more exclusive content, playlists and the inside scoop on upcoming episodes.

It’s been an exciting year for Spotify and just before we wrap up 2011, we hear incredible news that we’ve won Best Music Service or App at this year’s Mashable Awards.

Thanks to all our fans who voted for us! We love you guys too. To celebrate, jam with us to this playlist!

We’ve got an exclusive live stream of Common performing tonight at the Highline Ballroom in NYC!

Tune in here to see this influential hip hop star take the stage ahead of the release of his ninth studio album, The Dreamer/The Believer tomorrow. The performance kicks off tonight at 9:00pm ET/8:00pm CT/6:00pm PT.

Spotify has partnered with Sonos to give away three exclusive Sonos PLAY:3 designed by Richard Robinson.

Richard Robinson is a London-based designer in the worlds of music and fashion, whose work has graced covers of albums by artists such as Friendly Fires, Klaxons, Soulwax, Tinchy Stryder and Kate Nash.

The Sonos PLAY:3 is the versatile, all-in-one player with big sound in a compact size. With three integrated speakers and three digital amps, PLAY:3 streams all your Spotify playlists wirelessly in any room for wall-to-wall sound. The system can be controlled with free Sonos Controller Apps for iPhone, iPad, Android (phone or tablet) or PC/Mac.

Click here to enter the competition!

Each month, Spotify invites Sean Adams, founder of influential London-based website Drowned in Sound, to compile a playlist of his picks, skewed toward the independent music championed by the website’s informed staff and irreverent community. Here’s his round-up of the year…

Yes, it really is that time of year. Christmas is very nearly upon us and the magazine racks are stuffed with ‘best of the year’ covers and filled with pages of lists, lists and more lists. Websites are no different, with top albums, favourite singles and silly prizes being awarded for all kinds of tenuous ‘of the year’ things. This month’s blog features some of my picks of the year-end lists, with hopefully something to please most tastes… 

It’s DiSmas!!! - a very DrownedinSound.com Xmas

There’s no month-as-a-playlist this month, due to the annual December drought of decent releases. However, here’s one I made a few years ago… It features everything festive from Sufjan Stevens’ version of ‘Jingle Bells’ to Nat King Cole via a song from Low’s brilliant Christmas record, a Tom Waits song about a hooker, Tori Amos singing ‘Emmanuel’ and, er, Mariah Carey and Blink-182. If something on this four hour playlist doesn’t make you feel a teeny bit festive, well, you’re probably dead inside.

Drowned in November 2011

November was a busy month and I somehow forgot to send this playlist over. November’s selection featured a track from the bit bonkers but rather brilliant David Lynch (yeah, the famous Twin Peaks director) album with Karen O on vocals plus an equally nutty song with a child talking about licking frogs from the M83 album, and plenty more besides. 

DiS User-Generated Tips for 2012

We asked our community who they think might do well next year, and here’s a selection of new music for you to plough through, featuring names you might begin to spot on festival bills and may be hearing on the radio before too long. I’ll admit the first few are the ones I’m tipping to will do well in 2012. 

Seanin2011

Here’s my songs of the year mixtape, which features most of what I’ve loved this year, most of which has featured on my monthly playlists, which you’ll compiled below. 

More Best of 2011 Playlists 

DiS’ Favourite Albums of 2011 - Sampler - a taste of Drowned in Sound’s albums of the year. Full list of DiS’ 75 favourite albums of 2011, plus commentary can be found here.

Drowned in Sound Top 120 Singles 2011 - Wendy Roby does a column for DiS every week. She’s listened to over 3000 singles this year and these were her favourites. Click here to watch all the videos and read her fascinating thoughts on many of these tracks. 

P4K Songs of 2011 - Our US friends over at Pitchfork have also done their songs of the year, which includes the likes of M83, EMA, Cold Cave, Charli XCX, Jamie xx, Toro Y Moi and more… 

S/FJ: 2011 BEST OF - The New Yorker’s pop music critic shares his picks of the year.

DiS Does Pop 2011 Playlist - The Best Pop Songs of 2011… according to DiS pop columnist Robert Leedham. His end of year column for us is well worth a read, especially if you’re looking for last minute gifts, including a Britney jacket for a dog!

Basstard tracks of 2011 - this was submitted by one of our users, who described it as a mix of the “sons of drum n’ bass: dubstep, bass music, wonky and all that stuff” and features the likes of Burial, SBTRKT and a brilliant Nathan Fake remix of Radiohead. 

2011: Best of Electronic/Dance/Bass - a 250+ track dance-floor adventure, which was submitted in our songs of the year thread.

Two Thousand and Eleven Cats - this was also made by DiSser meowington, and it features a dizzying mix of Minaj, Katy Perry, ‘A Real Hero’ from the Drive soundtrack and Bon Iver. 

2011 - if you’re of a somewhat noizer persuasion, this selection by ClamingToBeOnTele includes Mogwai, Battles, Russian Circles and Morbid Angel. 

Thrash Hits Slaylist: Our Albums of 2011 - about 100 times louder that that, is this ‘slaylist‘ full of the year’s best metal from the chaps at Thrash Hits.

A Year of Playlists for the Spotify Blog

Drowned in November 2011

Drowned in October 2011

Drowned in September 2011

Drowned in August 2011 

Drowned in July 2011 

Drowned in June 2011

Drowned in May 2011

Drowned in April 2011

Drowned in March 2011

Drowned in February 2011

Drowned in January 2011

…and that’s yer lot for two thousand and eleven. Check back in January, Sean promises that he has heaps of great records lined up to kick-start the year already.

Get full access to Spotify Premium with our 30-day free trial. For 30 wonderful days you can enjoy millions of tracks, online and offline, on your phone, your computer and lots more devices.

Music wherever you are

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Take the Spotify Premium 30-day free trial right now. You’ve got nothing to lose…but the ads!

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We wanted to let everyone know that we’ve begun updating users to Spotify version 0.8.0. This is the latest Spotify release which includes both Spotify Apps and our new and improved Spotify Radio.

It will take a number of days to update all users. When your account is ready to be updated you’ll received a blue notice bar in Spotify asking you if to install and restart. You can also download the new update directly here.

To recap, the great new features we’ve packed into this release include:

• Spotify Apps: includes the first apps from Rolling Stone, Last.fm, Songkick, The Guardian, TuneWiki, Soundrop, Pitchfork, Fuse, We Are Hunted, Billboard Top Charts, Moodagent, Top10, Tunigo (Sweden) and Dagbladet (Norway). More to come!
• Spotify Radio
• Updated ‘What’s New’ page
• Predictive search results
• Playlist search
• New “Buddy List”
• Add to Favourites
• Full-screen support for OS X Lion

We hope you enjoy all the cool new features we’ve built into this release.