In my previous Branch thread, several of you expressed your love for specific Spotify apps. I'd love to hear more about your favorite apps and why you like them.

I just found Swarm, which I like (though admittedly, I've only played with it a tiny bit).

I haven't looked at a lot of others. I have NME and Pitchfork, but those just give me reviews. I have We Are Hunted, which is a decent discovery app, but there doesn't seem to be a lot there that I couldn't get anywhere else.

There's an iOS app that I really like called Band of the Day. It's very slick and an excellent discovery method. I would love to see something like it in Spotify. (Though for all I know, there is something like it.)

I like Domino because I listen to a lot of artists on that label, you can stream the label's latest releases, and also have access to playlists create by label artists.

Swarm is my favorite, but still has some performance issues. Another nice app is Ulysses' Classical, which has an impressive collection of curated playlists, mainly of classical music.

Soundrop is my favourite for sure. In combination with their dedicated iPhone app it makes a great spot to let the audience at a party decide what the music will be like.

@Dan

A Spotify version of Band of the Day would be cool. I have not seen one yet. The simplicity of that app feeds into its appeal. I also use Swarm.fm and find it to have lots of useful features. I love that it reads your library and shows where the holes are.

Have you used that feature? There are a few flaws, like that it lists far too many random songs and albums, but its good.

@Rich

I'm somewhat surprised that you enjoy the label apps. I always viewed them as unnecessary bloatware, brought about by label pressure, that would never have much use for normal people. So few labels have a brand and a sound that people care about.

@Klass

Is there anything specific about Soundrop that you love? To me, it sounds more dynamic, less static.

@Kyle - I don't enjoy a lot of the label apps out there, but I think Domino does the best job out of them all. Along with the label apps, I'd have to say We Are Hunted is pretty fun to use.

@Kyle: Like I said, I just picked up Swarm today (due to something someone said upthread here), so I haven't really explored it. I'll definitely check it out.

@Kyle The fact that you are not the only one who decides what you are going to listen and you vote together what you get is for me really great to do once in a while.

I haven't really spent too much time playing with Spotify's apps, just because I've been skeptical that I actually will use a lot of the ones I've looked at -- but I use the Last.fm one a lot. It's nice to have their recommendations and your tracks scrobbled right in Spotify.

I do think Spotify's long term success could be hugely dependent of the development of apps -- since the program doesn't really even have an actual homepage, and the what's new page is pretty limited, good apps could really enhance it.

Definitely MusicXmatch or TuneWiki when I'm in a karaoke-wanna-sing mood.

I also like Rolling Stone Recommends, it's nice to have playlists or albums reviews from the magazine directly in Spotify so you can quickly listen to the songs they talk about.

Finally, one of my favorites : Filtr. Filtr is an app that takes the artists, genres, songs, facebook friends/events that you submits and tries to create a playlist based on these informations. It's a nice way to discover similar songs to the one you like.

I added Swarm after reading this branch and really like it so far. Admittedly, it reminds of rdio.

The other apps I've really enjoyed are Classify (really good for Classical recommendations), Moodagent, Tunewiki and last.fm. I've started giving Soundrop a try lately too.

The instant playlist feature in We are Hunted is pretty good, at least I found it better than Spotify's own radio (and it makes a playlist, so you can edit it). Was also handy for me recently when needed to make an evening's playlist for a friend's party at fairly short notice but didn't want to trust the radio feature.

Which app has the best if-you-like-this-then-you-might-like-this feature?

Our whole office loves SoundDrop, it's powers our offices music all day. Couldn't recommend the Spotify app any more. They also recently released an iPhone app which is a bit less impressive, still needs a little polishing!

I'll say Songkick, clearly. It scans your artists and lets you see which are playing near you. Using the site you can track venues, cities and artists. The service often informs you earlier than the ticket outlets and some times even faster than the artists' sites.

I was going to suggest Classify, but I see Jeff has pipped me to the post. That said, it can't hurt to have a +1 - it's incredibly slick, and makes discovering classical music incredibly easy - by composer, by era, and instrument. The latest update has added curated content, in a similar vein to Ulysses' Classical.