11 More Great Spotify Tips and Tricks You Probably Don’t Use
Even if you listen to Spotify every day, there are tons of features you might not be aware of. Whether you want to show off the songs you’re listening to, hide your listening activity entirely, or get the most out of new add-ons like Discover Weekly, here are some great Spotify features right under your nose.
Listen (and archive) the weekly Spotify Discover playlist
Spotify made a splash with its Discover Weekly playlist last year . Every Monday morning, a playlist of songs automatically appears in your playlist, tailored to your listening preferences, without registration or additional steps. Basically, it’s like a friend who knows your tastes in music, taking the time to do you a mixtape every week. Its creator, Matthew Ogle, recently explained to Stuff how it all works :
This has two parts. First, we’re looking at all the music you’ve played on Spotify, but we’re focusing more on what you’ve been playing on lately. What you played yesterday is probably more interesting to you than what you played six months ago. But the real gist of it is to look at the relationship between songs based on what other users compose playlists around the songs you’ve listened to, and essentially find the missing ones – the ones you haven’t heard yet, or maybe have they are not. ” I’ve heard a lot.
Spotify’s interactive Running playlists or their sort of Year In Music gimmick, but Discover Weekly is really worth looking into. Many people, myself included, have been amazed at how well this works. According to Spotify, over 1 billion songs have been streamed through Discover Weekly playlists, and over 70% of listeners have saved at least one track to their playlists in the past 10 weeks. If you haven’t given it a chance yet, you should definitely do it.
However, there is a small catch. Every Monday, your Discover Weekly playlist is erased and updated with new songs. If you’ve had a busy week or forgot to check it out, you might be missing out on the opportunity to hear your new favorite song. Luckily, this IFTTT recipe from user xxnu will automatically move your Discover Weekly songs every week to a separate playlist, so you never miss a single melody.
Review your story and add great songs you missed
Have you ever bounced to a good radio station or someone’s playlist, heard a cool song, got distracted and completely forgot what it was? So do I. No big deal, we don’t have to be sad because we missed adding this to our own playlists.
Open the Spotify desktop app, then click on the hamburger icon in the bottom right corner to open the play queue. Once there, you can see which songs will play next, and more importantly, each song you’ve already listened to . Your game history is synced across your account, so it even includes songs you’ve listened to on your phone, in your browser at work, or on your game console. If you’re having a hard time finding a cool song you’ve heard before, this is a great place to start.
Add Tracks to Spotify Instantly from Shazam for iPhone or Android
The Shazam app is great for spotting that hilarious fresh song playing too loudly at Urban Outfitters or Forever 21. Better yet, you connect your Spotify account to Shazam. Once they’re in sync and Shazam has identified the song you’re listening to, hit the tiny arrow next to the play button. You will see a dropdown menu with the Spotify option listed. When you start playing it on Spotify, you can add it to your own library with just a few taps.
Drag and drop song links anywhere
Spotify allows you to share tracks using URL links and embedded HTML, but you can also share track links by simply dragging and dropping them from your desktop app. Click and drag the song you want to share into any text box and Spotify will automatically create a link to the song with the song title and the recording artist. This makes sharing songs with someone via email or posting to Facebook as easy as shelling pears, and it looks good too.
Use private listening sessions to hide your activity
The Spotify community mentality is great for sharing music, but sometimes it would be nice to listen without even knowing that all your Spotify and Facebook friends are. We talked about how you can completely hide your activity and playlists before, but what if you’re active in the Spotify community and just want a temporary smoke screen? All you have to do is start a private session.
Go to the File menu, then click Private Session from the drop-down menu. Now you can listen to whatever you want without anyone knowing until you restart the client or turn off private listening. Now you can practice a karaoke cover of the Backstreet Boys’ song “I Want It That Way” without showing the world that you’ve played the song 38 times in a row. If you want to permanently hide all your activities from your Spotify and Facebook friends, open the desktop app, go to Edit, then click Settings. In the “Social” section, turn off whatever you see there and turn off your Facebook profile if it is connected.
Click to view albums and playlists on iOS
If you have the Spotify app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, you don’t have to open the playlist just to see what songs it has. Press and hold the title of a playlist and you will see the album art of the first five songs on that list. Holding your finger and swiping over each image will give you a quick preview of each song.
You can do the same with albums or your own pre-made Spotify playlists. This might not seem like a huge time saver, but when you have multiple playlists with the same name, like “New Tunes 3” (like mine), it helps you quickly find and decide what to listen to.
Master Spotify Keyboard Shortcuts
You might not know this, but Spotify can be completely controlled with keyboard shortcuts . For example, you can skip and play previous tracks by using CTRL + Right Arrow and CTRL + Left Arrow in Windows, or CTRL + CMD + Right Arrow and CTRL + CMD + Right Arrow in OS X. Or you can maximize the volume in your application with CTRL + Shift + Up Arrow on Windows or CMD + Shift + Up Arrow on OS X.
Recover Deleted Playlist
If you can’t find one of your playlists, accidentally deleted it, or just want to bring an old friend back from the dead, Spotify keeps deleted playlists for a long time. To recover a deleted playlist , go to the page of their account in a Web browser and locate the left option “Restore list playback.” Once there, find the playlist you want to resurrect and click the “Restore” button. Like magic, it will reappear in your Spotify apps.
Find “clean” or “explicit” versions of specific albums
It can be annoyingly difficult to keep track of “explicit” or “clean” versions of songs and albums, which means you’re stuck listening to the radio version of your favorite track when you really want the original, unedited one. It looks like Spotify considers one version “popular,” which makes finding another version a bit like chasing a wild goose. Here’s what to do instead: The next time you land on the album page in the desktop app and look for an alternate version — clear or explicit — scroll down and look for the “1 More Issue” button. When you click on it, you will see an alternate version so you can choose the one you like.
Listen to Spotify Music While Riding Uber
Starting this November, Spotify and Uber have teamed up so you can listen to your playlists through your driver’s sound system. To set it up, open the Uber app on your phone and go to your profile settings. Scroll down and click Connect Spotify. Enter your Spotify credentials and you’re ready to ride. When you are assigned a Spotify-enabled driver, you will see a small icon next to its profile in the Uber app. From there, you can decide which playlist to listen to after you start your ride.
However, keep in mind that not all drivers have Spotify and the service is only available to premium Spotify users. Additionally, after its release, the option was only available in London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Nashville, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Stockholm, Toronto and Sydney, but the service has rolled out to other cities in the past few months. … The only way to know if it’s available to you is to check the Uber app.
Turn your Spotify desktop app into a karaoke machine
Spotify can also turn any computer into karaoke with the click of a button. Start playing the song you want to sing, then find the Text button in the lower right corner of the window. Once you click on it, you will have scrolling lyrics for almost every song in Spotify’s huge library. You can also adjust the text size or choose to view all of the lyrics at once.
Displaying lyrics used to require a third-party app, but Spotify ditched apps and built this functionality into the service. The lyrics section also allows you to search for other songs by their lyrics in the upper right corner. Instead of jumping from Google to Spotify looking for “that song like this,” you can do it all through the desktop app.