Spotify beautifies

Spotify launched a new look Wednesday, with a darker palette, defused colorful panes of album art, and less visual distraction.

It's the first major overhaul to Spotify's look across different platforms in years, following the redesign of the Spotify logo last year and some sprucing up to certain elements more recently, like a fresh coat of (darker) paint on its desktop app late last year.

Since Spotify has risen to relative prominence in the US as a streaming music service after dominating in many parts of Europe earlier, its look has largely remained static while new competitors -- like Beats Music, for example -- have launched with more modern interfaces.

The redesign -- which is launching initially for iPhone, the desktop application, and the Web -- is darker to mimic the sensation of pictures coming to the fore as lights dim in a cinema. Artist and people are all quickly identifiable with their photo as a circle, and music-related items like albums and playlists are all presented as square art. The updated Spotify design also includes a new font and employs its trademark green color to highlight scroll bars and other elements.

Its search function gets a lot more space to show the results, and artists' pages will let the background color fade back and bring forward the cover art.

The company said it's also kicking off a Your Music section, which is designed to help you save an album or song you like to a personal collection, organize them, and browse your music more easily. It is also offering its "Browse" playlist section with "more relevant and localized content."

Michelle Kadir, Spotify director of product, told CNET that after Spotify launched a lot of features and rolled out to various platforms, the company wanted to take a step back and give a holistic, cohesive look to the service. She referred to a Swedish concept "lagom," which has no direct English translation but generally means perfect balance or "just enough."

The black theme came from user feedback, she said.

Dark Swedish winters may have had something to do with it too.