Digital music might not have the same allure as sitting down to listen to a record on your turntable, but what it lacks in atmosphere, it makes up for in convenience — especially when you aren't home with your collection.
With Spotify, you can listen to music and play millions of songs and podcasts for free. Stream music and podcasts you love and find music - or your next favorite song - from all over the world. Discover new music, albums, and podcasts. Search for your favorite song, artist, or podcast. Enjoy music playlists and an unique daily mix made just for you. Make and share your own.
It's been five years since Spotify publicly launched and shifted the music industry's focus toward streaming as a way to combat illegal downloading. While the streaming business model is far from perfect, even the most casual music fan should test out streaming while it's still growing.
See also: How Spotify Engineered the New Music Economy
If you're just dipping your toe into the stream, follow our beginner's guide and soon you'll be listening to Spotify's massive library without the worry of losing precious hard drive space.
Signing Up
As with most services, you can register for Spotify by connecting your Facebook account for optimal social features, or create an account with your email address.
Pick the subscription that suits your music habits. The prices are in USD, but the tiers are the same internationally: No cost will get you desktop listening interrupted by ads; $4.99 per month allows for unlimited desktop streaming; users who pay the premium $9.99 per month can listen on all desktop (via desktop app or web player) and mobile devices with offline syncing privileges on mobile (Spotify Radio is the only free mobile feature.)
Users at the premium tier can also listen to music at a higher bit rate, which is essential for anyone who has quality headphones or earbuds.
Image: Spotify
Before you start listening, check your preferences and privacy settings to make sure you are sharing as much or as little with the world as you'd like. If you connected your Spotify to Facebook but don't want to broadcast your tunes on your News Feed, uncheck the Facebook sharing option. Leave the Spotify sharing section checked to show up in your followers' feeds — this amplifies Spotify's social music discovery potential.
This page is important because you can choose whether or not to make your playlists viewable to the public as soon as you start, or make it public on your own terms. Also, you can opt-out of Spotify showing your top artists and tracks on your public profile, if you aren't one to brag about such things. Plus, you can connect your Spotify account to Last.fm so your scrobbles stay representative.
Organizing Your Music
Library and Local Files
In the left sidebar, you will find your Collection. Here, you can access local files (go to Preferences to manage the folders from which Spotify can import files) and music saved to playlists. The Library section puts all of this music in one place. By accessing the files found on your hard drive, Spotify acts as a one-stop shop for listening to all your music, meaning you don't have to open iTunes or another player.
Playlists
Playlists are Spotify's main draw. You can create your own by clicking the New Playlist button, or following and subscribing to other users' playlists. Bookmark an album by saving it as a playlist, too.
Image: Spotify
You can also set up a collaborative playlist among friends to prep for that that perfect road trip or party. Right click on a playlist to check off the collaborative option and share the playlist with your friends. This alt-menu also shows the option to change the privacy settings to 'Make Public' or 'Make Secret,' depending on your preferences.
See also: 11 Tips and Tricks for Spotify Power Users
Image: Spotify
If you want to stay up-to-date with a specific user's playlist, click the green 'Follow' button on the bottom of the top title bar, and it will save to your side bar. You'll get a notification when songs are added to the playlist.
Play Queue
This option is ideal for when you aren't listening to an album, since queuing up a song via the right-click menu will place it after the track you are currently listening to, and will interrupt a record.
Spotify App Does It Notify If You Are Followed The First
When listening to a playlist or playing music in the background, the queue is great for accommodating requests and spur of the moment sing-a-longs with friends.
Sharing and Discovering Tunes
In the last year, Spotify has significantly amped up its social and music discovery features to keep up with its competitor Rdio, which prioritizes social discovery.
See also: 7 Music Discovery Tools to Find New Tunes
Following
Image: Spotify
Spotify lets you follow friends, artists and organizations (follow Mashable's account here!) to see what your network is listening to. You will get a notification when artists you follow add music to their catalogues.
The social feed lives in the right sidebar, and at the top Spotify will make recommendations to follow, including Facebook friends or artists your friends enjoy. This feed will show what your friends are listening to right now, songs they've added to playlists, new playlists they've created, tracks they've starred, and playlists, songs and albums they've shared on Spotify.
If you didn't register your Spotify account through Facebook, you can still search for friends and organizations via the search bar.
Sending and Sharing Music
Image: Spotify
You can highlight your favorite music in Spotify's social feed by sharing via the button on artist, album or playlist pages, or the right-click menu. Write a message and check your connected social networks if you want to share to Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, too.
The Send tab on the right of the box allows you to send music to individual users in a private message.
Discover
The Discover section is filled with custom recommendations based on your music history. If you are stuck picking out something new to listen to, you can get lost scrolling down this page.
Image: Spotify
In addition to suggestions of new artists deemed algorithmically similar to ones you already love, Spotify will remind you of albums and songs you haven't listened to in a while. Sometimes the recommendations don't feel right, but the algorithm can only improve the more you use it. Unfortunately, there is no option to reject or modify suggestions at this time.
If you are unsure you might like one of Spotify's suggestions, hover over the album art until a play button appears. Then click it and hold down to preview the song.
Spotify App Does It Notify If You Are Followed More Than
This will interrupt whatever you are currently listening to, but once you let go of the play button, your song will resume. It is not the smoothest listening feature, but it can come in handy, especially when browsing to make a playlist.
Apps
Spotify's unique apps can also help you find music when you aren't feeling inspired, or you'd like a change of scenery. Some apps will tell you the lyrics of the song you're listening to, others will provide you with a review, and a few will show you what is trending on the charts, web and social media.
We recommended the following apps: Pitchfork, This Is My Jam, Domino, Twitter #Music (formerly We Are Hunted), Any Decent Music?, Blue Note, TuneWiki and Billboard.
Radio
Spotify Radio functions like a typical Internet radio service. You can create stations by artist, song, album and genre, and upvote or downvote songs you love or hate. Spotify Radio is free to use on the mobile app, even if you aren't a Spotify Premium user.
Mobile
Image: Spotify
Spotify's mobile app is a pared-down version of the web player (tablet apps more closely resemble the web player), from which you can select playlists to download for offline listening, to save your data usage. This is only available for Premium users.
Another feature exclusive to the mobile app is Browse. This saves you the trouble of coming up with a playlist yourself, which is helpful when you're out and about while using Spotify on your smartphone.
Now that you've completed your crash course on Spotify, get streaming!
Mashable composite image: iStockphoto, akindo
26 February 2020, 11:59 | Updated: 27 February 2020, 12:57
Spotify have been telling people they're in the top 1% of fans for certain artists – but if you haven't got a notification yet, how do you find it?
Is there anything more exciting than receiving a notification from Spotify about your most listened to songs and most played artists? Actually, yes, there's a lot of things that are much more exciting than that but for the purpose of this article, we're going to pretend that Spotify's algorithm is the best thing since sliced bread.
Over the past week, Spotify has been sending out notifications to users and telling them that they are in the top 1% of fans for a certain artist.
READ MORE: Spotify Stats: How to find your Top Artists and Top Songs of all time
The feature isn't new – it's popped up on people's accounts before but now it's back and everyone is sharing their results on social media.
But if you haven't got your notification yet, how do you get one? Here's everything you need to know about Spotify's Top Fans feature...
Anyone who isn’t within the top 1% on @Spotify are all fake fans. pic.twitter.com/Jk4g6mkgxQ
Spotify App Does It Notify If You Are Followed To Be
— blink-182 (@blink182) February 25, 2020How to find and use Spotify's Top Fans feature:
If you're in the top 1% of listeners for a certain artist, you'll either receive an email notification, or you'll get a pop up notification on your phone screen. If your listening habits have earned you a place in that elite club of your favourite artist, then you can also open your app and a pop up should appear on your screen.
If you don't get an email or a pop up notification, you're probably not in the 1%. Sorry about it.
READ MORE: How to find your 2019 Spotify Wrapped and My Decade Wrapped
Unlike Spotify's infamous end of year Wrapped feature, there's no way to search for or trigger the pop up notification, it's all done using your listening data. So, all those hours you've spent listening to Bradley Cooper's tracks on the A Star Is Born soundtrack? Wasted... because ya clearly haven't been listening enough, have ya?!
People are feeling incredibly left out that their friends have made it into the 1% while they're still sitting there waiting for a 1% notification that they're never gonna get.
did not receive a “you’re one of the top 1% of ___ fans worldwide” spotify alert pic.twitter.com/EYsDpL0Gyv
Spotify App Does It Notify If You Are Followed Someone
— anja (@anjasonline) February 25, 2020Me patiently waiting for @Spotify to tell me I’m in the top percentage of someone’s fans pic.twitter.com/R5jyV7gerq
— Josh Harris (@mousepadmusic) February 24, 2020the fact i’m not in the top 1% of anyone’s spotify fans pic.twitter.com/dp2I3ouEjH
— 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐢 *⊹˚. (@moonwitchery) February 25, 2020Spotify App Does It Notify If You Are Followed Someone
Honestly, justice for those of us who have been so cruelly left out by Spotify.