We don't have to tell you that Spotify is a handy and easy way to listen to music. Whether the music industry will ultimately be rendered a service is still the question. But do you actually use all the functions of Spotify? Here are 12 tips that can help you get even more out of Spotify.
Many Spotify users start the program, choose their favorite playlist and don't look back at the program anymore. A shame, because Spotify has much more functions than that. In fact, to some extent it is even a complete social network. Time to dive into the world of Spotify to see what else the program has to offer. Also read: Stream music in the highest quality.
Tip 1 - Radio station
When you listen to traditional radio, you naturally choose the station that plays the music you love. Now it is of course never possible for a radio station to only play music that makes you happy - at least, not when it comes to the 'old' way of making radio. Spotify also offers radio stations, but without DJs and in a way that adapts more and more to your taste the longer you use it.
Launch Spotify, sign in with your account and press . in the left pane Radio. A radio station is immediately selected for you to play. Under the heading Your radio stations you can select another radio station and at the top right you can create a new radio station by clicking New radio station and find an artist or song. All you have to do now is listen to music and indicate per song whether you like it or not. In the beginning, Spotify will be wrong more often than right, but the more often you indicate what you like, the better the system will work for you.
Tip 2 - Playlists
If you want to have a little more control over the music you listen to, you can of course use the playlists. There is of course nothing innovative about that, every music program works with playlists, but in Spotify you can do more with them than you might think. For example, it is very easy to copy someone else's playlist.
To do this, start a new playlist by clicking . in the left pane New playlist. Then search Spotify for the playlist whose content you like, select all the songs (hold down Shift) and drag them to the playlist you just created. The advantage of this is that you can of course adjust the playlist yourself afterwards. This is much faster than building it from scratch yourself! Also handy: you can organize your playlists in Spotify. When you right-click on an empty area under the heading Playlists and then click Create folder, then you can easily organize your lists into folders so that it doesn't become such a cluttered mess.
Tip 3 - Collaborative Playlists
Another nice option is the ability to create collaborative playlists. This means exactly what the name suggests. You share a playlist with one or more others. Anyone who has given you permission to do so can edit the playlist. Of course, that means you have less control, but it's also a lot of fun to see what happens to your playlist when you let it be managed by people with the same taste as you.
It's a perfect way to get to know new music. To create a collaborative playlist, first create a playlist as explained in the previous step. Then right click on the playlist and click Joint Playlist. You should now expect to be able to choose who you want to grant access to the playlist, but you'll have to do that manually. Right-click the playlist again and then Copy link to playlist. The link to the list is now in your clipboard, so you can share it with anyone you want to access.
Ads
The fact that Spotify offers you the possibility to listen to music for free, of course, has everything to do with the annoying advertisements that come in between. Is getting a paid account the only way to get rid of that? No, there are programs that suppress the ads, such as Blockify, which allows you to play an MP3 when an ad is triggered. You download Blockify here, but at your own risk. Although there are no known examples of people being blocked for that reason, it is not clear whether suppressing the ads is punishable or not.
Tip 4 - Add your own music
Although the range of music on Spotify is huge, you will occasionally run into artists who are completely missing from the music service (Taylor Swift is a good example of this). Of course you can then switch to another program to listen to the music of the artists you miss on Spotify, but luckily that is not necessary. For some time now it has also been possible to listen to your own music collection in Spotify. In the left pane you will see the heading your music, with at the very bottom Local files. When you click on that, you will initially see nothing, because you have to tell Spotify where those files are. You do this by clicking at the top Edit / Preferences and then, under the Local Files heading, click Add Source. Incidentally, you can also indicate here that the music you have purchased should be shown in iTunes. Now when you click in the left pane on Local files, you will find the music from the folders you have added as a source.
Tip 5 - Find music
The fact that you can use the search field in Spotify to find the song you are looking for is probably not news to you. But did you know that the search field offers all kinds of useful options so that you can search more efficiently? For example, you can search very specifically for pop music in the period between 2001 and 2006, just to name a few. The search function that comes with it is year:2001-2006 genre:pop. That is a wonderful search, because sometimes you are not looking for a specific song, but a specific feeling from a certain time. Are you looking for a specific user, then you search on user:username. Spotify's search engine suddenly becomes a lot more powerful!
Tip 6 - Discover music
One of the best features of Spotify is of course the opportunity to discover new music. We already touched on this in the step about radio stations, but there are many more ways to find new music. When you click in the left pane To leaf through, you can search for music by charts, but also by genres and moods. The tab New releases is gold, of course, because that's exactly what you used to do when you were browsing through the bin of new singles. When you've added friends (more on that in step 8), you can easily discover new music by clicking on their profile and see what kind of music they listen to and what's in their playlists. This way you sometimes come across fantastic music that you would never have discovered without your friends.
