Making playlists to feature on one’s blog has always been a dicey issue. Most of the time, folks seem to resort to nabbing a bunch of YouTube videos and plopping them into a post, legal issues be damned. Music subscription service Spotify recently launched a new product in order to alleviate playlisting pain: Spotify Play.

Spotify Play is basically a widget maker that allows you to embed tracks, albums and playlists on blogs and websites. Simply choose your tunes, grab the URL and head to a dedicated page where you will be asked to enter that URL. You’ll then get a customizable embed code that will yield whatever songs you wish to showcase directly on your blog. Your readers will have to have Spotify (Premium or Free) in order to listen to said tunes, and if they don’t, they’ll be prompted to download it. This move is sure to net Spotify a lot of signups — Spotify apparently added 2 million users about a month after integrating with Facebook.

Tumblr has integrated directly with Spotify, letting bloggers search for tunes in their audio dashboards and automatically insert players into posts — sans embed code.

Granted, there are some limitations to playlisting on Spotify; some artists like the Black Keys and Tom Waits have declined to add new albums to the service, and even though it boasts more than 15 million songs, there are definitely some bands Spotify lacks. (Hence the need for indie-focused services like the still-in-alpha DISTRO). Therefore, services like Soundcloud shouldn’t fret too much. Soundcloud is much-beloved by music bloggers and bands looking to premiere new tracks, as it provides easy-to-embed streams that bar downloading — an important feature when you want to tease a release without giving it away wholesale.

Hive tested out Spotify’s new feature below with a pretty rad playlist featuring (nearly) all the bands who have ever graced the Live in NYC stage. Check it out!