Spotify ports its music streamer to Linux

Spotify is previewing a Linux version of its popular music-streaming service.

According to a blog post from Andres Sehr, Spotify's global community manager, the company's developers built this Linux incarnation for selfish reasons — at least in part — piecing it together during hack days and late-night coding sessions.

"A lot of our developers are using Linux. Obviously, they want to listen to music while they’re coding away," Sher says, "and looking at the feedback we get, it appears that they’re not the only ones. So today we’re pretty happy to present a preview version of Spotify for Linux."

Sehr says the Linux preview offers "most of" the same features as its Windows and Mac siblings. But it can't handle local files due to "issues regarding decoding of local music on the Linux platform." At this point, it's unsupported. And since it doesn't yet handle ads, it's only available with a Spotify Premium account.

With Spotify, you can instantly play any of the millions of songs on its online jukebox. On the free version, every so often, you'll hear some advertising. But if you pay for a premium account, you can turn those ads off. With the Mac and Windows versions, you can also purchase and download certain tunes and albums via technology from Spotify's download partner, 7digital.

Currently, the service is available in Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

You can download the Linux preview here as a Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 10.04 package. And users are encouraged to provide feedback here. ®