Break out your headphones. Spotify just lifted its time limit for free Web listening.
Whereas previously the digital music service granted a six-month unlimited trial (and capped some international users at 2.5 hours per week), now anyone can listen to Spotify 24/7. For free.
As noted by TechCrunch, the move is part of a larger effort towards increased accessiblity, roughly coinciding with a new smartphone app and an on-demand tablet version, both of which support streaming through ads. It also says a great deal about the company’s scalability.
But enough with the boring tech stuff.
To celebrate the milestone, we’ve rounded up 12 impeccably curated playlists from our original Spotify series.
1) Losing My Edge: The definitive LCD Soundsystem sampler
LCD Soundsystem’s debut single offers a blueprint for one of the decade’s defining bands and a paint-by-numbers buyer’s guide for aspiring record collectors.
2) Shake Shake Shake: The roots of White Denim
Bassist Steve Terebecki outlines the tracks that helped shape the sound and vision of the critically acclaimed Austin band.
3) Why OutKast is the greatest rap group of all time
Two dope boyz, a Cadillac, and 55 essential tracks.
4) The best new music of 2013: A 31-hour Spotify playlist
Trimmed to 450 songs, the mix spans hip-hop, indie rock and its sub-genres, metal, electronic, and country.
5) SITAR&B
While often associated with Ravi Shankar and the Beatles, the sitar reared its many vibrating strings on plenty of soul and funk songs of the late Sixties.
6) Balmorhea presents: Movements for Piano
Balmorhea cofounder Michael Muller shares a personal and poignant collection of piano compositions.
With a hat tip to Adele, this 21-song, one-hour playlist sets its sights on some of Bond’s lesser-known musical moments.
8) Lonerism: Bedroom funk and soul
Grammy award-winning guitarist and producer Adrian Quesada shares an intimate collection of homemade recordings.
9) The Real High Priest: A tribute to Alex Chilton
Austin songwriter Randy Reynolds pays his respects to Big Star’s Alex Chilton with a career-spanning retrospective.
10) Bleeding Hearts: The emo class of ’03
Ten years later, emo is experiencing something of a revival. Here’s the soundtrack to your awkward high school years.
11) The outer limits of Spotify
Good Tidings to You is a collection of outsider art and unconventional (sometimes abrasive) sounds that tests the depths of Spotify.
12) Best Roof Talk Ever presents: A Northern Soul Love Story
Nick Divers of Tumblr’s Best Roof Talk Ever spins an uncanny love story using rare soul singles.
Illustration by Fernando Alfonso III