Spotify is set to announce a "new direction" on November 30th at an event in New York City, and if a new report from the Wall Street Journal is true, that direction will involve a renewed effort to get third party app developers involved. Beginning tomorrow, Spotify may begin offering an "app finder" that will allow users to integrate third-party apps into the Spotify desktop experience in much the same way that apps work on Facebook. Examples supposedly include listening to music while reading a review of that same album, displaying lyrics, and searching for upcoming concerts.

This isn't Spotify's first attempt to woo developers as a way to extend its service. It has long offered the "libspotify" set of APIs to integrate Spotify's music into other apps, notably launching an iOS-specific effort this past August. Spotify also worked closely with Facebook to integrate its services into Facebook's new app APIs, with huge success. This report turns those efforts around 180-degrees by offering developers a chance to create apps that would work within Spotify itself. The WSJ notes that Spotify will curate an app "store" and vet submissions for quality, but the apps themselves are expected to be free.

If this is indeed what Spotify has up its sleeve it could bring a small advantage to the streaming music service in its battle with other services like Rdio and Mog. We imagine Spotify's dream would be to become the defacto platform for streaming music and music apps instead of just a music service. We will get our first idea whether that dream could become a reality when Spotify makes its official announcement in a few hours.