This section is fairly easy. There are three tabs at the bottom of the Spotify mobile app when it is opened: Home, Search, and Your Library. You may look for podcast titles, song titles, or artist names by tapping on Search. When you type in your initial search, you may specify which of those categories you’re looking for, but Spotify performs the most of the sorting for you. For instance, the album will appear first if you search “Dirty Computer,” which is also the name of a song from the album.
You don’t have to input a specific search word if you’re not looking for anything in particular. Simply tap on Search and choose one of the many categories and subcategories that correspond to your top four genres. You may discover playlists categorized by mood (“All the Feels”), occasion (“Workout”), and even TV program and movie soundtracks if you scroll down to “Browse All” (Bohemian Rhapsody). You should exit Search and click to the Your Library tab in the bottom right if you want to find playlists that you’ve carefully created or saved.
“Your Library”—what is it?
A good query! Everything you’ve saved on Spotify is located in Your Library, including your playlists, the streaming radio stations you’ve subscribed to, the songs you’ve downloaded, and the artists and albums that make up your saved content. It’s another way to access music you’ve recently played, however they will show up as tiny album thumbnails towards the bottom of the mobile page. Recently played albums are prominently displayed at the top of the Home page and are easy to miss.
However, there is a significant difference between your downloaded goods and stored stuff. By saving anything, you make it appear in Your Library and make it simple to locate later. However, it’s not a guarantee that your tracks have been downloaded and are ready for offline listening.
Playlist Creation Like a Pro
Spotify’s playlist feature is by far its most enticing. Numerous playlists tailored to a certain mood or genre are produced by the organization. Their effect on the music business has grown to the point that being featured on a well-liked Spotify playlist can make or break an artist’s career. They are both human- and algorithmically made. On Spotify, users spend around half their time listening to either playlists that have been carefully selected or ones they have made themselves. However, the most annoying aspect of the Spotify experience can sometimes be playlists.
Creating your own playlist is simple: Go to Your Library, Playlists, and then press the sizable green Create Playlist tab on the mobile app. Once a playlist has been named and made, you may tap on any song or album, look for the ellipses on the right, and simply add that material to an already existing playlist. On a PC, the procedure is similar; the desktop app’s bottom left side has the New Playlist button. Similarly, it’s quite easy to add an existing playlist to your favorites: When you find a playlist and click Follow, Playlists in Your Library will make it available to you.
Not all playlist features are as straightforward. If you want to stack albums on top of each other in a playlist, for instance, you can do so outside of the playlist itself, but Spotify will urge you to search for individual songs inside the playlist. Instead, you’ll need to do a search for the album you want to include, press the “more choices” ellipses in the top right corner, and then select to include the album in a playlist.
How to Find Playlists, Albums, and Songs
This section is fairly easy. There are three tabs at the bottom of the Spotify mobile app when it is opened: Home, Search, and Your Library. You may look for podcast titles, song titles, or artist names by tapping on Search. When you type in your initial search, you may specify which of those categories you’re looking for, but Spotify performs the most of the sorting for you. For instance, the album will appear first if you search “Dirty Computer,” which is also the name of a song from the album.
You don’t have to input a specific search word if you’re not looking for anything in particular. Simply tap on Search and choose one of the many categories and subcategories that correspond to your top four genres. You may discover playlists categorized by mood (“All the Feels”), occasion (“Workout”), and even TV program and movie soundtracks if you scroll down to “Browse All” (Bohemian Rhapsody). You should exit Search and click to the Your Library tab in the bottom right if you want to find playlists that you’ve carefully created or saved.
“Your Library”—what is it?
A good query! Everything you’ve saved on Spotify is located in Your Library, including your playlists, the streaming radio stations you’ve subscribed to, the songs you’ve downloaded, and the artists and albums that make up your saved content. It’s another way to access music you’ve recently played, however they will show up as tiny album thumbnails towards the bottom of the mobile page. Recently played albums are prominently displayed at the top of the Home page and are easy to miss.
However, there is a significant difference between your downloaded goods and stored stuff. By saving anything, you make it appear in Your Library and make it simple to locate later. However, it’s not a guarantee that your tracks have been downloaded and are ready for offline listening.
Playlist Creation Like a Pro
Spotify’s playlist feature is by far its most enticing. Numerous playlists tailored to a certain mood or genre are produced by the organization. Their effect on the music business has grown to the point that being featured on a well-liked Spotify playlist can make or break an artist’s career. They are both human- and algorithmically made. On Spotify, users spend around half their time listening to either playlists that have been carefully selected or ones they have made themselves. However, the most annoying aspect of the Spotify experience can sometimes be playlists.
Creating your own playlist is simple: Go to Your Library, Playlists, and then press the sizable green Create Playlist tab on the mobile app. Once a playlist has been named and made, you may tap on any song or album, look for the ellipses on the right, and simply add that material to an already existing playlist. On a PC, the procedure is similar; the desktop app’s bottom left side has the New Playlist button. Similarly, it’s quite easy to add an existing playlist to your favorites: When you find a playlist and click Follow, Playlists in Your Library will make it available to you.
Not all playlist features are as straightforward. If you want to stack albums on top of each other in a playlist, for instance, you can do so outside of the playlist itself, but Spotify will urge you to search for individual songs inside the playlist. Instead, you’ll need to do a search for the album you want to include, press the “more choices” ellipses in the top right corner, and then select to include the album in a playlist.
Additionally, you can create playlists that allow you and your friends to add music together, although this requires at least two steps. To make a playlist collaborative, first enter the choices by tapping the ellipsis next to the playlist you wish to invite your friends to join (which is somehow different from making it public). The playlist may then be shared with anybody you choose by opening the settings menu a second time and selecting Share. It’s a good idea to tell the folks you’re inviting that when I shared a playlist with a WIRED colleague, he had to save it to his personal library first before he could start adding songs. Additionally, it’s not always clear on mobile who is adding music to a collaborative playlist; the desktop Spotify client will let you know who added which tunes.
Use offline listening to your advantage
You may quickly download any song from Spotify’s enormous music collection to your phone. In this manner, you are able to enjoy music even when there is no data or Wi-Fi connection.
Recall how I said earlier that downloading stuff is different from storing it to your library? More often than I care to admit, before boarding a lengthy flight or setting off on a long road trip, I’ve saved tracks but neglected to use Spotify’s offline listening feature. The main distinction is that when you bookmark anything, it stays in the cloud rather than being deleted. When you go offline, you won’t be able to listen to anything that has been stored. You may learn from my errors by downloading your preferred playlists right away. right now. Do it now.
Go to a playlist, locate the Download option at the very top of the playlist (it is impossible to miss this), and turn it on. I’m done now. You’ve finished. Any playlist that may be listened to offline will have a green downward arrow icon next to it. Even though it will use some of your monthly cellular data, you may download playlists when you are not connected to a reliable Wi-Fi network by going to Settings, Music Quality, and selecting Download. You may quickly download a playlist with two bars of service right before takeoff if you choose to download using cellular (it should be the last option on the mobile page).
On Spotify, you may download almost anything, including playlists, albums, podcasts, and single songs.
Increase the streaming quality or decrease it
Speaking of sound quality, Settings also allows you to change the bitrate of your audio streams. Additionally, you may adjust things like the volume level and the treble and bass, however these choices are found under the Playback tab under settings rather than the Music Quality section.
From 24 kilobits per second to 320 kbps, there are many possibilities for audio quality. 96 kbps is regarded as a standard rate, and that degree of audio quality doesn’t sound great. Increasing this parameter will make Spotify sound better if you’re not happy with the audio quality.
You can alternatively choose to utilize something in Settings called Data Saver if sound quality isn’t that essential to you and streaming at a high bitrate isn’t a possibility due of your worries about cellular data consumption. This was only recently implemented by Spotify, and it plays your music at a low bit rate of 24 kbps when streaming via cellular is the sole choice. Your audio quality will return to normal once you are connected to a Wi-Fi network.
How to Announce That You’re Going Through a Breakup
You might be startled to hear that Spotify automatically makes your music listening habits public if you haven’t explored the social options. Although the service has a Private Session option, after six hours of inactivity, it reverts to public listening.
Unfortunately, there are no alternatives for preventing individuals from accessing your profile, even though there are some choices for keeping certain actions private. At a time when privacy issues are at the forefront of every discussion about prominent internet services and when users are really being harassed on its platform, this is a huge failure on Spotify’s side. However, there are a few methods to get around it. Turning on Private Session every time you start the program is the first and definitely least user-friendly strategy. The second is to make “private” playlists and just listen to those; however, any public playlists you’ve made or joined will still be viewable until you go in and alter the privacy settings for the playlists.
The third choice, which we won’t hold against you, is to completely decline to use Spotify. Even while not every streaming music service has a free tier, there are still alternative possibilities.
Allow Spotify to handle the work for you
Assuming you’re still addicted to Spotify, you should take advantage of the playlists it creates just for you because they could provide a richer experience than creating your own playlists. A part of Your Library called Made for You is the very first item. It has a weekly playlist, a list of new releases that Spotify believes you should be paying attention to, and a series of daily mixes that are highly impacted by the music you’ve already been listening to. The audio counterpart of “one year ago” applications, a yearly playlist of the top songs you listened to may be a fun journey down memory lane or a reminder to schedule your next therapy visit.
Nevertheless, these Spotify playlists generated by an algorithm are a fantastic way to venture a little bit outside of your musical comfort zone. And isn’t finding new beats, rather than merely moving to the beat of your own known drum, the purpose of paying $10 a month for a music service?
