Spotify Tips and Tricks By cdu827 [28 more lists]

After hearing your buddies across the pond bragging about the awesomeness that is Spotify, you finally get an invite to the music service, so now what? Time to learn a few of the best Spotify tips and tricks to make the most of your social listening experience. Move over Turntable.fm, Spotify the next new hip thing.

For those unfamiliar, Spotify has been earning rave reviews in Europe for a while now leading to its launch in the United States in July 2011. Spotify fans describe the platform as iTunes meets Last.fm meets Napster with a touch of the best social media sites sprinkled in. Users can find and listen to nearly any song they desire on demand, organize their own music and playlists and share their musical tastes with friends, and that's just on the free version. Yeah, it's pretty cool and these Spotify tips and tricks make it even better.

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Take Your Jams With You

Considering you probably already linked your devices to Spotify when you started the software for the first time, you likely already know that you can sync your music between Spotify and your iPod, iPhone or Android device using wired and WiFi methods, but that's not all you can do.

Using one of the paid upgrades available for Spotify users, you can take your online music from Spotify offline. For $9.99 a month on the premium plan, you can access offline mode which takes your music with you on a computer or cell phone wherever you are. Not a bad deal really, especially for those who find themselves bored and without a WiFi connection on a regular basis.
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Search Like A Pro

Let's face it, with millions and millions of tracks in the database, finding one specific song on Spotify can be slightly challenging. Fortunately, Spotify users can take advantage of advanced search commands to narrow down their search results. At the beginning of your search query, add in a qualifier like:

title:
album:
artist:
genre:
year:

Of course you'll need to type the title, album, artist, etc. immediately after the colon to make the command work. Bonus: You can add multiple search commands in a single query. No longer will you spend hours looking for that obscure blues song that you know is from 1982, but you cannot seem to find by simply searching 1982 blues.
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Learn Keyboard Shortcuts

Save time and mouse clicks by learning keyboard shortcuts that can be used with Spotify. For example, using the tab key can cycle through columns while the up and down arrows can cycle through the list of tracks. Press enter to play a track while it's selected and use the spacebar to pause or unpause the track.

Control the volume by holding "CTRL" and using the up and down arrows and even skip to the next song (or start a song over) by holding "CTRL" and using the right and left arrow buttons. Holding "ATL" can be helpful as well, especially in conjunction with the right and left arrow buttons which allow you to scroll through pages.
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Sharing is Caring

Don't be greedy, share your music with your friends, legally. Using the built-in social tools in Spotify, you can easily share your music, in individual tracks and playlists, with others. First connect your Spotify with your Facebook account and like magic your Facebook friends that also use Spotify will appear in a list in the right sidebar.

From there, you can create and share playlists with your buddies as well as send out individual tracks to friends on Facebook, Twitter, MSN and Spotify. Simply right click, select share and enter the name of your friend to share all your favorites. Of course, if you prefer to be greedy, you can also view and steal the public playlists of your friends by clicking on their name in the sidebar.
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Put Your Music on Blast

Open your preferences menu, click the box to enable scrobbling to Last.fm and enter your login information. Just like that your picks on Spotify will be sent to Last.fm automatically.

Mozilla Firefox users can also put their picks on blast using another method, FoxyTunes. By downloading and installing the Firefox plugin, you can manage what's playing in Spotify, and even Tweet your tracks, using the controls built into the browser.
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Work Link Magic

Since Spotify loves when people share links to songs and such, they provide their own URL format to make the process painless for the system. While the software understands the links like Spotify:track:... looking at that URL and the long number after it does little to tell others what you're trying to share. Eliminate any confusion by cleaning up and decoding Spotify URLs.

Visit Cleanify.net and paste in a Spotify URL to see a cleaned up link that shows the artist and track name right in the link. Cleanify also has a Clipboard Filter for Windows that can automatically Cleanify Spotify URLs automatically, like magic.
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Only Settle for the Best

Just like in the old days of Napster, once you find the song you are looking for, you have choices. Multiple versions of each track, each with a unique length, title, artist, popularity and other details, are available. Don't just settle for the first track that pops up, click the tiny little arrow to the left of the artist column to expand the listings.

From there, select the specific track you want from those available. Even better, pick a few and discover new versions of your favorite songs. Who knows, you may even find something completely amazing.
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Expand Your Horizons

You may think it's cool to listen to the same album over and over for hours, but you know what else is cool? Finding out about new and popular music using the tools available on Spotify that's what. Clicking the ""What's New"" category in the left column allows you to open up your mind and see what all the cool kids are listening to.

The ""What's New"" tab features new releases in the music world, the ""Top Lists"" shows the most popular tracks and albums from around the country, the world or even another country of your choice, and the ""Feed"" tab shows you what your friends are jamming to at the moment. Explore those tabs and find music, new and old, that you adore.