As simple as it is, the music streaming platform holds many secrets. Here’s everything you need to know to master Spotify like the back of your hand.
After years of listening to your favorite tracks between commercial breaks, you finally gave in and opted for a Spotify Premium subscription. The Swedish music streaming platform, which has more than 100 million paying subscribers around the world and whose catalog is rich in more than 40 million titles, benefits from an interface and features that have contributed to improve its reputation.
Frequently updated, Spotify offers many features, sometimes unknown, which when mastered, allow you to get the most out of the service. Here’s everything you need to know to master Spotify like a pro.
1. Activate the crossfade
If you find the cutoff between each track played in Spotify a little too violent, you can enable playback of the tracks in crossfade.
To do this, enter Spotify’s Preferences, scroll through all the options and click on Show advanced settings.
Under the Play heading, choose to Enable song crossfading, and adjust the length of the fade by moving the slider.
2. Master the search engine
Spotify’s search engine is much more powerful than it looks. But to realize this, you must first learn some fairly simple rules.
The first, when looking for specific content, enter your search in quotes. Spotify will only display results that match exactly the search terms.
When looking for a specific song, it is possible to refine your search by adding different tags before the search terms. Use, for example, year: by mentioning a specific year or a range of years (separated by a hyphen), genre: followed by the desired genre, or label: if you know the label that produced a specific song.
It is also possible to refine your search by using operators between different keywords: AND (or +) to display the results including all the keywords, OR to display the results including one or the other of the words -keys, and NOT (or -) to exclude a specific term from the results.
Note that all these search operators can be combined with each other. On its support in French, Spotify indicates search tags written in French (year, genre, record company). We have tested them and, as of this writing, none of them work. Only tags written in English can filter searches.
3. Enjoy the best listening quality
Natively, Spotify sets the listening quality to Automatic. However, you can force the application to offer you only the best listening quality.
From the desktop application, access Preferences by deploying the main menu next to your Account, then in the Streaming quality line, select Very high.
From the mobile application, go to the Home tab, and access Preferences by pressing the icon representing a toothed wheel.
Enter the Sound Quality menu and set the quality level for streaming music (Loading), as well as locally downloaded music (Download section).
4. Control Spotify from the keyboard
If you are used to listening to Spotify from your PC, for example in the office, it is possible to take control of the playback without having to grab your mouse. To do this, you have to learn the following shortcuts (replace Ctrl by Cmd on macOS). Then you just have to use them in the Spotify interface.
Space: Play / Pause
Random play (of a playlist for example): Ctrl + S
Next / Previous song: Ctrl + right or left arrow
Increase / decrease volume: Ctrl + Up or Down arrow
You will find the complete list of Spotify keyboard shortcuts by clicking on this link.
5. Recover your deleted playlists
All playlists created on Spotify are backed up. Even if you happen to delete one accidentally, it is possible to recover it with a few clicks.
To do this, log into your Spotify account page from your web browser.
In the left column, click Restore playlists. A list of all playlists deleted from your account is displayed. Click Restore in front of each of the lists you want to recover to your account.
6. Find a song thanks to your history
Listened to a song that caught your attention a few hours ago, but you don’t remember the artist or the title of the song? You can probably find it by going to your listening history.
To find it, from the desktop application interface, click on the button to access the Queue, at the bottom right.
Then go to History to consult the list of songs you have listened to recently.
7. Listen to the songs stored on your hard drive in Spotify
Some tracks from one of your underground rock bands are not listed in Spotify and you would like to be able to listen to them without having to open another media player? Spotify can also play songs that you store locally on your hard drive.
To do this, open Spotify’s Preferences and scroll down to the section dedicated to Local Files.
Activate the option Show local files then, select the directories proposed by default (Downloads and Music library) if they contain songs, or click on Add a source to manually select a directory containing your songs.
You will then find all your local titles by clicking on Local files in your Spotify Library.
8. Change the save location of downloaded songs
Besides listening to high quality music without ads, one of the perks of having a Spotify Premium account is that you can download your favorite tracks locally to make sure you can play them even away from any internet connection.
However, if you are using the offline function from a Mac or PC, the many songs stored on your hard drive may end up taking up too much space. Never mind, it is quite possible to tell Spotify to store the downloaded titles in another location.
To do this, go to the application’s Preferences, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Show advanced settings.
In the Offline title storage row, click Change location to select another media, partition, or backup directory on your hard drive.
9. Create collaborative playlists
Creating playlists on Spotify and publishing them is good. Creating collaborative playlists to find your favorite songs, but also the favorite songs of your close friends, it’s even better.
To ensure the sound atmosphere of your next party, start by Create a playlist by clicking on the appropriate button, give it a name and a description and click on Create.
Then right-click on your playlist or click directly on the playlist option button, and declare it as a Collaborative Playlist. Then all you have to do is invite your friends to subscribe to your playlist and add their favorite tracks.
10. Organize your playlists in folders
The multiplication of playlists in the side column can quickly become unmanageable. To help you find your way around, you can organize your playlists in folders. Right click on any of the playlists to Create Folder.
Then indicate the name of the folder and drag and drop your playlists directly into the folder to group them together.
11. Control the PC player from your smartphone
If you use the desktop player to stream your music at home, you don’t have to stand in front of your PC to change the song. Even running on your computer, Spotify can be controlled remotely, from your smartphone as long as the two devices are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
Open Spotify on your smartphone and tap Continue on the pop-up indicating that you are already listening to music on your PC. You will then only have to display the player on your mobile to transform it into a Spotify remote control.
12. Personalize your queue
When you listen to a playlist suggested by Spotify, there is a great chance that you don’t like certain songs. Fortunately, it is possible to customize the queue of upcoming songs with a few clicks.
At the bottom right of the Spotify window, click the Queue icon to view the list of upcoming titles.
Then right-click on a song to Remove it from the queue. Repeat for any songs you don’t want to hear.
13. Listen to Spotify from your browser
Listening to music on Spotify does not necessarily require installing the dedicated application on your PC. While savvy users probably already know this, newcomers may not be aware that there is an online player, as Spotify’s login interface is not very clear on this.
To listen to Spotify directly from your browser, return to the home page once logged in, by clicking on the Spotify logo to see the Open web player button.
You can also enter directly https://open.spotify.com in the address bar of your browser to directly access the player.
Note that if you are using the web player from Google Chrome, it is possible to install Spotify’s Progressive Web App on your machine. To do this, open the main menu of Chrome, and click on the Install Spotify option.
Validate the installation by clicking on the Install button again. Here is a great way to install the Spotify player on your working machine when an administrator has locked everything.
14. Listen to your music in a private session
One of the advantages of Spotify is being able to follow your friends and see the songs they are listening to. Ideal for making new discoveries, this function can in some cases prove to be annoying, especially if you are listening to songs that you are not very proud of.
Fortunately, you can continue to listen to the complete Johnny in secret without your friends knowing it. This requires opening a private session of Spotify.
To do this, click on the drop-down menu next to your profile, and go to Private listening session. Once activated, the feature should display a small blue padlock on your profile picture.
15. Share a link to play a song on a specific passage
Are you looking for a way to share a track with a loved one by starting the track on a specific passage? It’s entirely possible. To do this, right-click on the song, go to Share and click Copy Spotify URL.
Paste the URL in your email, chat window or any other place where you want to share the song, and add at the end of the URL #X: XX where the Xs represent the passage in minutes and seconds where the playback should start .
Example: spotify: track: 1hY60LJWE6B9gHV1Oi9kE5 # 0: 59 will start playing the song at 59e second.
Note that this option only works with the Spotify URL which, once entered in the address bar of the web browser, will automatically start playing the song in the application installed on the machine, and not in the web player .