Yahoo’s Contextual Homescreen App Aviate Adds A Smart “Listening Space” For Music Lovers

Aviate, the contextual Android homescreen application Yahoo bought for $80 million in January, has rolled out an update today which introduces a smart “Listening Space” that allows users to more easily find their music applications in one section, while also being pointed to relevant information about their music, including bios and recent tweets from the artist, upcoming shows nearby, and more. It also adds the ability to listen to top tracks in Spotify.

The update was announced on Yahoo’s Tumblr blog, which noted that the feature was something current Aviate users have been demanding.

Explains Yahoo, Aviate is able to detect the song you’re listening to as you begin to play it, then delivers the related information in the “Listening Space” section.

For those unfamiliar, Aviate is something of an Android launcher, but one where the smartphone apps presented to you change as you go about your day. For example, in the morning, you might see a weather application and your preferred news and finance apps, and while out-and-about, you may be presented with apps like Google Maps, Foursquare, or Yelp.

Following the acquisition, Yahoo explained that it envisioned using Aviate’s technology to deliver content in ways that are “smarter and more personalized” to end users. The new “Listening Space” falls under that same general paradigm of wanting to make a particular experience more info-rich and contextual, but the new feature in and of itself is something which competes with other standalone mobile apps like Shazam or Soundhound.

However, what’s really interesting about the new “Listening Space” is something that’s glossed over in the announcement: it’s also serving as an app discovery service which will drive traffic to the Google Play store by encouraging new app downloads. App recommendations are something Aviate had in the works already, and in this particular case, it seems that Aviate will work to recommend “related music apps” to end users who don’t already have other popular music apps installed on their Android phone.

Though Aviate’s user base is today relatively small (Google Play says between 500,000 and 1 million downloads), over time, these sorts of recommendations could really impact an app’s user base size and rankings.

The update is live on Google Play now, but Aviate remains in private beta. However, users can click here to download, using the code “MUSIC” to get in.