If you’ve been looking for a way to stream Spotify tracks without having to use the standalone app, that day may come sooner than later: Spotify has confirmed with us that they have begun testing the feature with a small audience.

A web-based version of Spotify has been a rumour for awhile now, and rumblings of the beta rollout first popped up on the Verge this morning, who cited an unnamed source close to the company. Spotify’s Graham James then provided the following confirmation to Gizmodo:

Yes. I can confirm that we’ve launched a beta version of a Spotify web player that we’re testing with a small number of users. Potentially it’s a great additional feature for times you can’t play music through the desktop app, like at work or at a friend’s house. We’ll have more detail on the web player next year.

Web-based access is something the Spotify app has needed for a long time, and its addition will make the service even more flexible as it competes against smaller services such as Rdio. Hopefully we’ll see this early next year and not later in the year.