Half-a-dozen new Spotify-related sites have appeared over the last few days, and it’s refreshing to see serveral that offer something different from the usual playlist-tracking site.

• freshspotify – richardkeen’s new site is similar to Last.fm-Spotify Find-New in that it tracks newly released music on Spotify and compares it with your favourite artists on Last.fm. freshspotify also lets you login with your gmail account so that you can setup “artist alert” emails to mail you whenever Spotify add tracks by your favourite bands. This works really well: I signed up and shortly afterwards received an email alert telling me about several newly added tracks from artists I’d ticked. Check the site’s blog or twitter page for updates and more info.

• Spotwitfy – This site lists all Spotify playlists posted on Twitter, presented in an easy-to-read format like Twitter’s real-time search. You can also search the playlists and add your own tags (which are then clickable). A tagcloud feature is coming soon.

• ShareMyPlaylists – Aimed at UK users, ShareMyPlaylists is another playlist tracking site with most of the usual features (upload cover art, add comments, rate a playlist, add to pre-defined set of genres). You can’t bookmark a page of your own playlists just yet (unless you add your name to each playlist’s title) and the site seems to run very slow for me here in Scotland, but it’s only been online a few days and is bound to have a few teething problems. The guys that run ShareMyPlaylists are active Twitterers, and have been giving away some great prizes for those quick enough to respond.

• Listopify – A clean, easy-to-use site, similar to Spotylist but with extra features such as user avatars, comments, “tweet it” links, and add-friends. You can’t rate other user’s playlists, but I’m sure they will add this feature soon.
  

• Spotilinks – This site takes a fresh and unique approach to playlists, calling itself the “first musical social network for UK Spotify users.” Once registered, you “spot” genres, artists, “moods”, or other users that you like to create a custom network of links. The concept is fantastique: it’s just let down a little by a slightly confusing user interface. A lot of French words keep popping up too which again is a bit confusing to us ross-beefs. If this site (still in beta) gets a bit of a polish and a decent userbase then it could well be a site I’d use regularly.