Computers/General
g Easier! Making Everythin
Ready for the easiest way to enjoy music wherever you are? Read on!
• How it works – see how to get started with Spotify, what different versions offer, and how to mix tracks on your computer with those in the Spotify library
• Where to find playlists you may enjoy • Tips for organizing your tracks • How to keep Spotify Social secure • Third-party sites to explore • Why paying to play can be a good plan • Some free Spotify offers • Solutions to common Spotify problems
y f i t o Sp
®
• Seek and find – track down your favorite artists and discover new ones with Spotify’s recommendations
• Ideas for discovering new music
Spotify
Spotify is spot on! Here’s everything you need to know about signing up and using this superb streaming music service. Whether you’re opting for the free version or one of the premium upgrades, you’ll find what you need in this book. Learn how to sign up, find your favorite tracks and discover new ones, share with your friends, and enjoy!
Open the book and find:
™
• Play it your way – create playlists you can share with your friends • Music is social – connect your Spotify account with Facebook and Twitter and collaborate on playlists with those who share your tastes • When you’re ready to upgrade – compare the Spotify Open, Unlimited, and Premium plans
Learn to:
• Take your tunes along – download the app to your iPhone, iPad, Android device, or iPod touch so you can search and stream from your mobile
• Set up Spotify and start listening to your favorite music
• Sync it up – sync Spotify tracks for offline listening on your mobile device or local tracks to your iPod
Go to Dummies.com® for videos, step-by-step examples, how-to articles or to shop!
• Listen to Spotify on your computer, iPhone®, iPod touch®, or Android™ device • Use Spotify with iTunes® or Last.fm and even import your music library • Discover and share new music through Facebook®, Twitter®, and other sites
£16.99 UK / $21.99 US / $25.99 CN
Kim Gilmour is a journalist and author specializing in technology and the Internet. She has been writing about technology since 1998 and regularly contributes to Which? Computing magazine. Kim is the author of Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser and co-author of eBay.co.uk Business All-in-One For Dummies.
ISBN 978-1-119-95234-3
Gilmour
Kim Gilmour
®
Get More and Do More at Dummies.com ® Start with FREE Cheat Sheets Cheat Sheets include • Checklists • Charts • Common Instructions • And Other Good Stuff!
To access the Cheat Sheet created specifically for this book, go to
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/spotify
s p p A e l i Mob
Get Smart at Dummies.com Dummies.com makes your life easier with 1,000s of answers on everything from removing wallpaper to using the latest version of Windows. Check out our • Videos • Illustrated Articles • Step-by-Step Instructions Plus, each month you can win valuable prizes by entering our Dummies.com sweepstakes. * Want a weekly dose of Dummies? Sign up for Newsletters on • Digital Photography • Microsoft Windows & Office • Personal Finance & Investing • Health & Wellness • Computing, iPods & Cell Phones • eBay • Internet • Food, Home & Garden
Find out “HOW” at Dummies.com *Sweepstakes not currently available in all countries; visit Dummies.com for official rules.
There’s a Dummies App for This and That With more than 200 million books in print and over 1,600 unique titles, Dummies is a global leader in how-to information. Now you can get the same great Dummies information in an App. With topics such as Wine, Spanish, Digital Photography, Certification, and more, you’ll have instant access to the topics you need to know in a format you can trust. To get information on all our Dummies apps, visit the following: www.Dummies.com/go/mobile from your computer. www.Dummies.com/go/iphone/apps from your phone.
Spotify
®
FOR
DUMmIES
‰
Spotify
®
FOR
DUMmIES by Kim Gilmour
A John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, Publication
‰
Spotify® For Dummies® Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The Atrium Southern Gate Chichester West Sussex PO19 8SQ England Email (for orders and customer service enquires):
[email protected] Visit our home page on www.wiley.com Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex, England Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, West Sussex All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, England, or emailed to
[email protected], or faxed to (44) 1243 770620. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. The Spotify logo is the registered trademark of the Spotify group of companies and screenshots are © Spotify Ltd 2011. All rights reserved. iPhone, iPad and iPod are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This book is not endorsed by Apple Computer, Inc. Spotify product screenshots reprinted with permission from Spotify. LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER, THE AUTHOR, AND ANYONE ELSE IN PREPARING THIS WORK MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE IS REQUIRED, THE SERVICES OF A COMPETENT PROFESSIONAL PERSON SHOULD BE SOUGHT. NEITHER THE PUBLISHER NOR THE AUTHOR SHALL BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES ARISING HEREFROM. THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER INFORMATION DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE AUTHOR OR THE PUBLISHER ENDORSES THE INFORMATION THE ORGANIZATION OR WEBSITE MAY PROVIDE OR RECOMMENDATIONS IT MAY MAKE. FURTHER, READERS SHOULD BE AWARE THAT INTERNET WEBSITES LISTED IN THIS WORK MAY HAVE CHANGED OR DISAPPEARED BETWEEN WHEN THIS WORK WAS WRITTEN AND WHEN IT IS READ. For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit us at www.wiley.com. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-119-95234-3 (paperback); ISBN 978-1-119-96150-5 (ebook); 978-1-119-96148-2 (ebook); 978-1-119-96149-9 (ebook) Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Author Kim Gilmour is a freelance journalist and author with more than 13 years of experience. As senior researcher/writer at Which? Computing, the U.K.’s biggest computing magazine, she conducted high-profile news investigations, product reviews, and tutorials; and she is still a regular contributor. She was also features editor at Internet Magazine, where she extensively covered early developments in the digital music revolution. Prior to this, she was assistant editor at an Australian business technology title. Kim’s articles have appeared in the U.K.’s Web User, PC Pro, and Computer Shopper, among others. She is the author of Digital Photography for the Older and Wiser (Wiley) and co-author of eBay.co.uk for Business All-in-One For Dummies and Starting and Running an Online Business For Dummies (U.K. edition).
Dedication For Audrey, who loves music.
Author’s Acknowledgments Writing this book from Australia — a country that doesn’t even have Spotify yet — was far from the lonely task I thought it might be. I’ve had countless advice from the Spotify community all around the world; and despite the late nights and time differences, it worked! This book would not exist without you all. Thank you so much; I hope our paths cross one day. Massive thanks to my patient project editor Laura Miller, who was an absolute pleasure to work with. Laura knows the For Dummies style inside-out, and I’m grateful for her expert eye. Thank you also to my technical editor, Jer White. Few people on Earth know Spotify and the Spotify community as well as Jer. He was always there to give my words a sense-check and answer my random Android-related questions! Spotify For Dummies has been an epic process, so thanks to Chris Webb at Wiley, who had faith in the project from the very beginning (even before Spotify finally arrived in the States) and the rest of the editorial team at Wiley, including Jodi Jensen, Ellie Scott, and Sara Shlaer. Thank you to my agent, Isabel Atherton, for her dedication and support. And thanks to the folks at Spotify who were totally behind the project, including James Duffett-Smith for suggesting the idea; and Carl-Axel Larsen, Andres Sehr, and Angela Watts for being on hand to answer my queries. Last — but by no means least — I can’t thank my lovely parents enough for all their support, motivation, and encouragement; and my daughter Audrey for being such an inspiration.
Publisher’s Acknowledgments We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax 317-572-4002. Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following: Acquisitions, Editorial
Composition Services
Project Editor: Laura K. Miller
Senior Project Coordinator: Kristie Rees
Associate Publisher: Chris Webb
Layout and Graphics: Joyce Haughey, Corrie Socolovitch, Kim Tabor
Assistant Editor: Ellie Scott
Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Melissa D. Buddendeck
Copy Editor: Laura K. Miller Technical Editor: Jer White Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen Senior Project Editor: Sara Shlaer
Indexer: BIM Indexing & Proofreading Services UK Tech Publishing
Editorial Assistant: Leslie Saxman
VP Consumer and Technology Publishing Director: Michelle Leete
Cover Photo: © iStockphoto.com / Cary Westfall
Associate Director–Book Content Management: Martin Tribe
Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)
Associate Publisher: Chris Webb
Marketing Associate Marketing Director: Louise Breinholt Marketing Executive: Kate Parrett
Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director Publishing for Consumer Dummies Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher Composition Services Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services
Contents at a Glance Introduction................................................................. 1 Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify........................... 7 Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify.......................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify.......................................................................... 27 Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window............................................................ 47
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience................... 69 Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music................................................................................. 71 Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes........................................................................................ 85 Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On................................................. 101 Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips................................................. 117 Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify............................................................. 139
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends..................................................... 149 Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social............................................................ 151 Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music....................................................... 167 Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community......................................................... 185
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify..... 211 Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services............................................... 213 Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices................................................ 235 Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device...................................................... 249 Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices......................................... 279 Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium.............................................. 293
Part V: The Part of Tens............................................ 307 Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems.......................................... 309 Chapter 18: Ten Innovative Spotify Tools................................................................... 321 Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify................................................................ 329
Index....................................................................... 341
Table of Contents Introduction.................................................................. 1 About This Book............................................................................................... 2 Conventions Used in This Book...................................................................... 2 Foolish Assumptions........................................................................................ 3 Added Extras..................................................................................................... 4 How This Book Is Organized........................................................................... 4 Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify................................................. 5 Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience.......................................... 5 Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends................... 5 Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify........................... 5 Part V: The Part of Tens......................................................................... 6 Icons Used in This Book.................................................................................. 6 Where to Go from Here.................................................................................... 6
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify............................ 7 Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Peeking at Some Snazzy Spotify Features.................................................... 10 Getting instant music........................................................................... 10 Creating playlists.................................................................................. 10 Listening on other devices.................................................................. 11 Playing local files.................................................................................. 11 Sharing new music discoveries........................................................... 12 Branching out with third-party resources......................................... 12 Deciding to Go for Spotify............................................................................. 12 Technology............................................................................................ 13 Sound quality and efficiency............................................................... 14 Music sharing by using links............................................................... 14 Merging your music.............................................................................. 14 Catalogue selection.............................................................................. 14 Transatlantic reach.............................................................................. 15 Examining the Business of Spotify............................................................... 16 Convincing you to pay......................................................................... 16 The answer to piracy?.......................................................................... 16 Shifting music ownership.................................................................... 17 Valuable listening data......................................................................... 18 Tasting the Many Flavors of Spotify............................................................. 19 Spotify Open: A nice appetizer............................................................ 19 Spotify Free: A gourmet sample.......................................................... 20 Spotify Unlimited: A hearty main course........................................... 20 Spotify Premium: A four-course meal................................................ 20
xii
Spotify For Dummies Figuring out Terms of Use............................................................................. 21 Country differences.............................................................................. 21 Basic things to agree to........................................................................ 22 Local files............................................................................................... 23 Advertising and use of computational resources............................. 23 Use of your data.................................................................................... 24 Knowing Me, Knowing Spotify...................................................................... 24 Making sure artists get paid................................................................ 25 Keeping the service afloat................................................................... 25 Helping you discover new music........................................................ 25 Conducting market analysis................................................................ 26 Targeted advertising............................................................................ 26 Using Spotify Social.............................................................................. 26
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Understanding How Spotify Works.............................................................. 27 Keeping your music in a cache........................................................... 28 Considering Spotify’s data usage........................................................ 29 Running Spotify on Your Computer............................................................. 29 Compatible systems............................................................................. 29 Necessary specifications..................................................................... 30 Security software.................................................................................. 31 Sounding Out Digital Audio on Spotify........................................................ 32 A bit about bitrates............................................................................... 32 Hooking up speakers............................................................................ 33 Getting Started with Spotify.......................................................................... 34 Signing Up for Spotify........................................................................... 34 Downloading Spotify............................................................................ 37 Logging into Spotify.............................................................................. 41 Finding Music to Play on Spotify.................................................................. 42 Updating the Spotify Software...................................................................... 44
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Navigating the Spotify Window..................................................................... 47 Understanding Spotify’s Main Features....................................................... 48 Search bar.............................................................................................. 49 What’s New............................................................................................ 51 Radio....................................................................................................... 51 Play Queue............................................................................................. 51 Inbox....................................................................................................... 52 Devices................................................................................................... 52 Library.................................................................................................... 53 Local Files.............................................................................................. 53 Downloads............................................................................................. 53 Starred.................................................................................................... 55 Playlists.................................................................................................. 55 People list.............................................................................................. 55
Table of Contents Viewing Your Account Details...................................................................... 56 Playing Tracks................................................................................................. 57 Playing, skipping, and pausing............................................................ 57 Pumping up the volume....................................................................... 59 Randomizing the experience............................................................... 59 Repeating the music............................................................................. 59 Using Share buttons............................................................................. 60 Fine-Tuning Your Setup in Preferences....................................................... 61 Last.fm.................................................................................................... 62 Language................................................................................................ 62 Local Files.............................................................................................. 63 Sound...................................................................................................... 63 Purchases.............................................................................................. 65 Cache...................................................................................................... 65 Proxy...................................................................................................... 66
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience.................... 69 Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Knowing Who’s Available on Spotify (and Who Isn’t)............................... 71 Notable missing artists and albums................................................... 72 Country restrictions............................................................................. 74 Understanding the Play Queue and History................................................ 75 Letting Spotify do the work................................................................. 76 Manually adding tracks to the Queue................................................ 77 The History tab..................................................................................... 77 Searching through Spotify’s Offerings......................................................... 78 The genres of Spotify............................................................................ 78 Special searches.................................................................................... 79 Combining searches............................................................................. 81 Walking on the wild side...................................................................... 83 Auto-correct heaven............................................................................. 83 Filtering the easy way........................................................................... 83
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 Reading Artist Profiles................................................................................... 85 Checking Out Artist Biographies.................................................................. 86 Discovering Artist Radio................................................................................ 87 Exploring What’s New.................................................................................... 89 Listening to Spotify Radio............................................................................. 90 Getting Started with Last.fm......................................................................... 93 Signing up for Last.fm........................................................................... 94 Discovering Last.fm recommendations............................................. 96 More ways to find new music.............................................................. 97 Adjusting Last.fm privacy.................................................................... 99 Deleting tracks from the Library......................................................... 99
xiii
xiv
Spotify For Dummies Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Knowing How Playlists Work...................................................................... 102 Creating Playlists.......................................................................................... 103 Mixing your own playlist.................................................................... 104 Making an album into a playlist........................................................ 106 Organizing Playlists...................................................................................... 107 Creating playlist folders..................................................................... 108 Viewing playlist folders...................................................................... 108 Reordering playlist folders................................................................ 109 Reordering and moving playlists...................................................... 110 Rearranging playlist tracks................................................................ 110 Renaming playlists.............................................................................. 111 Deleting playlist tracks....................................................................... 113 Deleting playlists and playlist folders.............................................. 113 Sorting Playlists............................................................................................ 113 Examining a Playlist’s Anatomy.................................................................. 115
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Importing Your Local Files in an Instant................................................... 117 Dealing with pesky Windows Media Player files............................. 119 Tagging your tracks............................................................................ 120 Gracing your Library with Gracenote.............................................. 122 Recognizing Some Spotify Icons................................................................. 125 Making Life Easier with Shortcuts.............................................................. 126 Organizing Your Tracks............................................................................... 128 Using Library view.............................................................................. 128 Managing the music in your Library................................................ 128 Managing Spotify and iTunes playlists............................................ 129 Sorting out your tracks...................................................................... 130 Filtering the music.............................................................................. 131 Viewing album cover art (or loving Ctrl+G).................................... 133 Starry, starry tracks............................................................................ 134 Creating shortcuts to access the music........................................... 135
Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Introducing Spotify Downloads.................................................................. 139 Buying Download Bundles........................................................................... 140 Using Your Bundle before It Expires.......................................................... 141 Payment Methods......................................................................................... 141 Buying Tracks from Spotify......................................................................... 142 Buying Missing Tracks................................................................................. 145 Privileges with Purchased Tracks.............................................................. 147
Table of Contents
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends...................................................... 149 Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Understanding Spotify Social...................................................................... 151 Enabling Spotify Social................................................................................. 153 Connecting to your Facebook friends.............................................. 154 Viewing a profile page........................................................................ 155 Adding extra profiles.......................................................................... 156 Dealing with connection issues........................................................ 157 Telling the world about your Spotify profile................................... 158 Editing Your Profile Privacy........................................................................ 159 Publishing Activity to Facebook................................................................. 161 Enabling posts to Facebook.............................................................. 161 Disabling posts to Facebook............................................................. 162 Limiting access to Facebook information........................................ 163 Disconnecting from Facebook (but why?)....................................... 164
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Using Spotify Links to Share Music............................................................ 168 The Share button................................................................................ 169 Linking to just about anything.......................................................... 172 Knowing which links to use............................................................... 174 Subscribing to Playlists............................................................................... 176 Looking at playlists............................................................................. 176 Seeing who’s subscribed to a playlist.............................................. 177 Collaborating on Playlists............................................................................ 178 Discovering Your Inbox............................................................................... 179 Sending a track.................................................................................... 180 Reading Inbox messages.................................................................... 181 Marking and starring Inbox tracks................................................... 182 Blocking unwanted messages........................................................... 182 Checking Out the Top Lists......................................................................... 182
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 Playing with Special Spotify Toys............................................................... 186 BRITify.................................................................................................. 186 Last.ify.................................................................................................. 187 Pitchify................................................................................................. 188 Gigero................................................................................................... 189 Tubufy.................................................................................................. 190 Topsify................................................................................................. 190 Overhere.............................................................................................. 191 Equalify................................................................................................ 192 truShuffle.............................................................................................. 193
xv
xvi
Spotify For Dummies Spotisquare.......................................................................................... 193 Viral Music List................................................................................... 193 Playlistify............................................................................................. 194 clinc...................................................................................................... 195 Discovering the Music with ShareMyPlaylists.com................................. 195 SMP site features................................................................................ 196 Registering on SMP............................................................................. 197 Submitting a playlist to SMP.............................................................. 197 App downloads, Twitter, and more.................................................. 198 Using Spotibot to Uncover Music............................................................... 200 Following Spotify Music Blogs.................................................................... 201 soundofus.com.................................................................................... 202 Spotify Classical.................................................................................. 202 Spotinews............................................................................................. 202 SpotiDJ................................................................................................. 203 Getting More Help with Spotify................................................................... 205 How Get Satisfaction works............................................................... 205 Submitting a Get Satisfaction query................................................. 205 Adding an image to your query......................................................... 207 Giving help to others.......................................................................... 208 Contacting Spotify Support............................................................... 208 Consulting Spotify’s official website................................................. 208
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify..... 211 Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Moving on to Bigger and Better Spotify Access....................................... 214 Spotify Open: A tantalizing experience............................................ 215 Spotify Unlimited: What it says on the tin....................................... 218 Spotify Premium: Music wherever you are..................................... 218 Comparing Products at a Glance................................................................ 221 Exploring Payment Options........................................................................ 222 Payment methods and charges......................................................... 222 Upgrading your account.................................................................... 224 Creating a Premium or Unlimited account from scratch............... 226 Giving the Gift of Spotify.............................................................................. 226 Using Spotify Invitations and Promotional Offers.................................... 230 Spotify Free.......................................................................................... 230 Free trials............................................................................................. 232 Contacting Customer Service...................................................................... 234
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Experiencing the Ultimate Freedom with Premium................................. 236 Using the Spotify Mobile Service with a Non-Premium Account............ 237
Table of Contents Uncovering Spotify Mobile’s Features....................................................... 238 Search................................................................................................... 238 What’s New.......................................................................................... 238 Playlists................................................................................................ 239 Now Playing......................................................................................... 239 Settings................................................................................................. 240 Investigating Compatible Handsets............................................................ 241 Downloading the app to your phone................................................ 243 Manually entering a handset............................................................. 244 Downloading Spotify Mobile Using a Computer....................................... 245 iTunes Store......................................................................................... 245 Android Market................................................................................... 246 Using Spotify Mobile for the First Time..................................................... 247 Viewing playlists................................................................................. 247 Login restrictions................................................................................ 248 Using accessories............................................................................... 248
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Using Spotify on Your Mobile..................................................................... 249 Connecting to Spotify Mobile............................................................ 250 Searching for Spotify tracks.............................................................. 251 Using playlists..................................................................................... 252 Playing back your tracks.................................................................... 253 Shuffling playlists................................................................................ 255 Finding out What’s New..................................................................... 255 Controlling volume............................................................................. 256 What’s currently playing.................................................................... 257 Finding more track information........................................................ 258 Sharing Tracks and Playlists....................................................................... 260 Sharing tracks on the iPhone............................................................ 260 Sharing tracks on Android................................................................. 262 Performing Key Actions, Quickly................................................................ 263 Swiping your iPhone........................................................................... 263 Pressing matters with Android......................................................... 264 Organizing Your Music Library................................................................... 265 Organizing playlists............................................................................ 265 Creating and editing playlists............................................................ 267 Filtering within playlists.................................................................... 268 Syncing Local Tracks over Wi-Fi................................................................. 269 Wi-Fi-ing a Stairway to Heaven.................................................................... 270 Step 1: Connect your phone to Wi-Fi................................................ 271 Step 2: Make playlists available offline............................................ 272 Step 3: Your tracks start syncing...................................................... 272 Troubleshooting Problems......................................................................... 274 Updating the Mobile apps.................................................................. 274 Streaming and syncing settings........................................................ 277 Expanding Your Spotify Capabilities.......................................................... 277
xvii
xviii
Spotify For Dummies Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices . . . . . . . . . 279 Marrying Your Music Device with Spotify................................................. 280 Welcoming the iPod..................................................................................... 281 Syncing music to your iPod............................................................... 281 Going back to iTunes.......................................................................... 284 Streaming with Spotify’s Hi-Fi Partners..................................................... 286 Logitech Squeezebox Touch (and Radio)........................................ 286 Onkyo................................................................................................... 287 Sonos.................................................................................................... 289 Wireless Streaming without Premium....................................................... 290 Using Your Mobile Device as a Remote..................................................... 291
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium . . . . . . . . . . . 293 Playing Tracks in Spotify without a Web Connection.............................. 294 Using Offline Mode on Your Computer...................................................... 294 Going Offline with Spotify Mobile .............................................................. 297 Syncing offline playlists from your computer with Wi-Fi............... 297 Syncing offline playlists directly from your mobile device........... 299 Forcing the mobile app offline.......................................................... 302 Dealing with Syncing Problems.................................................................. 303 Wi-Fi’s not working............................................................................. 303 Freeing up space for Android phones.............................................. 304 Dealing with iPhone storage limits................................................... 305 Syncing suddenly stops..................................................................... 305 Dealing with missing tracks............................................................... 305 Reaching mobile-device limits.......................................................... 306
Part V: The Part of Tens............................................. 307 Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems . . . . . . . . . . 309 Forgetting Your Username or Password................................................... 310 Fixing Constant Offline-Mode Problems.................................................... 311 Finding a Particular Album, Artist, or Track............................................. 312 Wondering Where Your Playlists Will Go.................................................. 313 Decoding Error Messages and Codes........................................................ 313 Dealing with Payment Problems................................................................. 314 Pausing for Thought: Why Has the Music Stopped?................................ 315 Figuring Out Why a Track Won’t Play........................................................ 316 Dealing with Sound-Card Issues................................................................. 317 Fixing Frustrations Once and for All.......................................................... 317
Chapter 18: Ten Innovative Spotify Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 ListDJ.............................................................................................................. 323 Cleanify Clipboard Filter.............................................................................. 323 Better Spotify Links...................................................................................... 324 FoxyTunes..................................................................................................... 324
Table of Contents Spotify Chrome Extension........................................................................... 325 Growl for Mac................................................................................................ 325 freshspotify................................................................................................... 326 Spotify Search for Firefox............................................................................ 327 Spotify Super Search.................................................................................... 327 Playlistify Anything Bookmarklet............................................................... 327
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329 Getting Your Unsigned Band onto Spotify................................................ 329 Finding a Job at Spotify................................................................................ 330 Making New Friends..................................................................................... 331 Burning a CD from Downloaded Songs...................................................... 332 Finding Hidden Audio Gems on Spotify..................................................... 333 Listening to Music from around the World............................................... 335 Starting Up Your Own Spotify Blog............................................................ 335 Developing a Spotify Service or App.......................................................... 336 Entering a Spotify Competition: Win Stuff!................................................ 338 Tidying Up Spotify’s Catalogue................................................................... 338
Index........................................................................ 341
xix
xx
Spotify For Dummies
Introduction
T
here’s no denying it: A revolution in how people consume music is well underway, and Spotify’s at the center of all the action. Just a decade ago, it was normal for people to wander into a music store and buy an artist’s CD after hearing a few catchy tracks on the radio or reading a few good newspaper reviews. Then, when music sharing over the Internet became mainstream around 2000, millions realized just how easy it was to store digital music on computers. Who needed a CD? Also around this time, portable music players became popular. You could copy thousands of your digital tracks onto matchbox-sized gadgets. Astonishing! Yet, for all the technical innovation, artists still weren’t being compensated fairly for their efforts because most digital music was being swapped on illegal networks. Then, iTunes came along and blew everyone away, introducing a simple click-and-buy mechanism to let people download music legally without guilt and sync tracks seamlessly to their iPods. And now? Prepare to get ready for an even bigger change. Music no longer takes up storage space on your computer or even your portable music devices. It’s floated off into the cloud (the term used to describe content or services hosted remotely over the Internet); streaming to you through services such as Spotify. Spotify is a Swedish company headquartered in London, U.K. It first launched in 2008 as an invite-only service in selected European countries, offering free streaming of millions of tracks in exchange for listening to a few advertisements in between. People thought of a track, and Spotify played it straightaway in high-quality audio, as if it were on a CD. Amazing! Eventually, Spotify opened up registration to everyone in its launch countries. Spotify has plenty of healthy competition these days — Apple’s iCloud and the long-running Napster and Rhapsody, for starters, and younger companies such as MOG, Deezer, We7, Rdio, Simfy, and Grooveshark. I personally like Spotify’s reputation for speed and stability. It has a superb, tried-and-tested way of streaming music to your computer, and its fast, fully featured desktop app lets you sync music to a range of mobile devices.
2
Spotify For Dummies
About This Book I’m glad my publishers recognize Spotify’s part in shaping the way people listen to music. I designed this book so that you can read it from beginning to end if you’re a complete newbie and want to understand what Spotify is and how it works before being gently guided through using the software. But if you’ve already signed up and installed the software, you can easily skip the bits you already know and dive straight into the parts that interest you, such as the wonderful add-ons and Spotify blogs, or the social networking features, all outlined in Part III. Like all For Dummies books, everything is cross-referenced, so if you come to a concept you’re unfamiliar with, you can flick to the appropriate section or chapter to read up on topics if you need to. While reading this book, please bear in mind that you may encounter some slight differences in how something looks or acts, when compared to how I describe it. Like the world of digital music, Spotify doesn’t keep still (and that’s a good thing). While I’ve been writing this book, Spotify introduced a raft of features, including its own download store (only available in Europe at the time of writing), iPod syncing, a U.S. launch, and a new subscription structure. (And right now, I’m holding out for a dedicated iPad app and an even stronger tie-in with social networking giant Facebook. Check out www.dummies.com/go/ spotify for bonus information about new Spotify features!) Most of the illustrations featured in this book are based on what a Spotify Premium subscriber sees. A free account looks slightly different and includes banner ads at the bottom and/or the side, along with a timer at the topright corner that indicates how much listening time you have left that week. However, functionality should still remain largely the same (apart from some Premium-only features such as Spotify Radio and offline syncing). Despite any new (and welcome) changes in Spotify’s world, rest assured that its core capabilities won’t stray off course. For up-to-date tips and news about new features, you can follow my Twitter account (@spotify4dummies) and get in touch with me if you have any questions.
Conventions Used in This Book There are certain conventions used in For Dummies books when talking about computers, and here are a few of them: ✓ Drag and drop, or click and drag: A way of moving elements around by using your mouse. When you see a description such as “drag the track onto your playlist” or “drag and drop the track to your playlist,” you click the name of the track with your mouse, hold down the mouse
Introduction button, and drag the track to the playlist before lifting the mouse button to release, or drop, it. ✓ Keyboard shortcuts: I explain the Windows way of doing things first (because it’s most popular), followed by the Mac version, but I always explain which is which. When you see “Ctrl+C,” you hold down the Ctrl button while pressing the C button. Mac keyboard users see references to the Command (Ô) key instead. ✓ Web addresses, Spotify links, and so on: I include web addresses and Spotify links in special typeface, such as www.spotify.com or spotify:user:jasminetea. Twitter usernames are also in this font for easy reference, such as @spotify4dummies. (To view this Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com/spotify4dummies.) ✓ Numbered lists: When you see a numbered list, you need to follow the steps in order. The bold text explains what the step involves. For a fuller explanation, you can read the non-bold text below the numbered step. ✓ Accessing menus: When I say something like “Go to File➪New Playlist Folder,” I’m referring to clicking the File menu at the top of the display, and then selecting New Playlist Folder from the menu that appears. If I talk about clicking a series of links on a website, I spell out what you need to do. ✓ Scrolling, touching, sliding, and flicking on a phone: In the mobile device chapters, I refer to touch-screen smartphones. Scrolling on a phone (as opposed to using a mouse) involves sliding your finger on a screen to navigate a menu up and down (or side to side). Touching or tapping means selecting an option with the touch of your finger. Sliding is like clicking and dragging with your mouse, but using your finger instead. ✓ Pop-up: In Spotify, you sometimes see a small pop-up alert (a yellow bar) at the top of your screen, which I refer to as such. You also see pop-up windows (boxes overlaying the Spotify screen) that appear when certain actions are performed, such as downloading a track. Also, I call the small windows that pop up for you to do a simple task (such as locate a file or confirm a selection) dialog boxes.
Foolish Assumptions You don’t need to know anything about Spotify or even digital music to start using this book. I don’t assume that you’ve ever owned a digital music player or even used music-management software such as iTunes, although this experience can help when you import local files. But I do assume that you have some basic computer knowledge and some essential computer equipment:
3
4
Spotify For Dummies ✓ A computer and a broadband Internet connection: Spotify relies on a broadband connection to work its magic because it streams music from the Internet to your computer, and a dial-up connection would simply be too slow. Spotify is optimized for Windows or Mac setups (and so is this book!), but Spotify can work on other systems, such as Linux. For full details on recommended computer specifications, see Chapter 2. ✓ Familiarity with selecting menus and applications: I assume you have experience with selecting an application in Windows or on a Mac and launching it, and that you know how to complete tasks (such as saving a file) by selecting menu choices from the top of your display. ✓ Familiarity with the concept of files and folders: I assume you have experience with saving files on your computer and storing them in folders or a media library. ✓ Some web-browsing experience: You don’t need to be an Internet whizkid, but I assume you have an e-mail address and a fair deal of experience with browsing websites and using search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. Some experience with signing up to a website, as well as downloading and installing a program, can also help you during the Spotify registration and setup process. ✓ An interest in discovering music: Spotify is all about the music, so this is definitely a must-have attribute! Being open-minded about broadening your musical horizons can help you get the most out of this great tool.
Added Extras Spotify is available in free and paid-for flavors. Being a Spotify Premium subscriber gives you a huge number of benefits, including ad-free, unlimited listening from Spotify’s music library and the ability to sync any Spotify track to your phone. Much of Part IV assumes you have a Spotify Premium subscription, but I always mention upfront whether you need a Premium subscription to use an offering in order to avoid disappointment or confusion. This book also contains chapters dedicated to using your iPod or mobile device with Spotify if you have these devices. You can easily skip these bits if they don’t apply to you.
How This Book Is Organized This book is organized into five parts. Each part relates to a different part of your Spotify experience. You don’t have to read the whole book in order; you can choose the parts that interest you. But even if you’ve already spent some time using Spotify, I recommend scanning the early chapters, at the very least, in case you pick up any fresh tips.
Introduction
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify In Part I, I introduce Spotify and give you a quick rundown about why it’s so great, how it works, and what subscription levels are available. I then outline the equipment you need before guiding you through the setup process. Rounding off this section are detailed descriptions of all the Spotify features.
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience This part is all about getting stuck into Spotify and experiencing the music. You can discover how to organize your musical library, find new music, and create playlists to share with the world.
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Spotify has some strong social networking elements that help you share music with your friends through tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Discover how to collaborate on playlists, connect your Spotify account to Facebook, and send tracks to your friends. You also can find one of my favorite chapters, all about the great third-party tools that have been developed by the creative and enthusiastic Spotify community.
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Much, but not all, of the chapters in Part IV refer to special features that are available only to paying subscribers, such as streaming music to a Logitech Squeezebox speaker or syncing Spotify tracks for offline listening on a mobile device. However, some features everyone can enjoy (such as syncing your local tracks to an iPod). I start off this section by explaining which elements of Spotify are free and which aren’t, and the differences between the subscription levels. At the time of writing, Spotify was still announcing final price points and features for its entry into the U.S. market, and there may be some differences between the European and the U.S. versions of Spotify. Please check the official Spotify website (www.spotify.com) for the latest prices and features.
5
6
Spotify For Dummies
Part V: The Part of Tens Filled with troubleshooting tips, great web resources, and excellent ways to get more involved with Spotify’s community, consult this catch-all section for all kinds of useful information.
Icons Used in This Book Spotify For Dummies uses special symbols called icons to alert you to important or interesting sections. Look out for these:
This icon highlights handy information that can help you speed up a task or fix a problem you might encounter, and it’s the most common icon I use in the book.
Ignore the information here at your risk: This icon alerts you to potential pitfalls and shouldn’t be ignored.
When you see this icon, I highlight something you need to bear in mind before you proceed with a particular task. Information here may appeal to anyone interested in knowing exactly how something works. If you want just the basic info, skip anything marked with this icon.
Where to Go from Here Just check out the Table of Contents and dip into the part that interests you. For example, if you have no idea what Spotify is, Chapter 1 is the perfect place to start. For tips on searching, turn to Chapter 4. Premium subscribers can get the most from the chapters in Part IV. Now, hold onto your seats — you’re going to be amazed at what Spotify can do. I’m sure you’ll enjoy your experience!
Part I
Becoming Buddies with Spotify
W
In this part . . .
hat is this thing called Spotify, anyway? Well, you’ve come to the right place. In this part, I introduce you to Spotify and explain how this innovative service is changing the way we interact with, discover, and listen to music. In this part, you can also find all the information you need to get up and running with a minimum of fuss. I provide you with crucial information on setting up an account, installing the software, playing tracks, and conducting a simple search. I describe all the main elements you see when you start up Spotify so that you can start playing with this source of endless fun right away.
Chapter 1
Introducing Spotify In This Chapter ▶ Considering what Spotify can offer you ▶ Understanding how Spotify works as a business ▶ Discovering the types of service you can get ▶ Going through the Spotify terms of use ▶ Figuring out the information Spotify collects about you
W
elcome, ladies and gentlemen, to my magic act. Now, for my first trick: to pull my music collection out of thin air for your enjoyment! Without a CD or a portable music player in sight! I can play my friends’ music, too, and check out what other tracks people choose to share. I’ve eavesdropped on Britney Spears’s favorite ’80s tracks — I’m sure she didn’t mind because she posted them on Twitter. And my second trick? Pick an act, any act. I’ll search for them and play their tracks for you almost instantly, even if I’ve never heard of them before. Yes, the way we access music is changing, and Spotify is helping drive this shift. Spotify is a piece of software that lets you search for music and hear it streamed to you from the Internet. You don’t need to download the song to your computer before listening to it, and the song plays almost instantly. But that’s not all Spotify does. In this chapter, I explain what Spotify can do and how it signals a move away from more traditional ways of listening to music. I also discuss how Spotify works as a company — how it pays artists, as well as its terms of use, subscription levels, and privacy issues.
10
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Peeking at Some Snazzy Spotify Features Spotify is helping to make universal, instant accessibility to all music possible, whether you’re on your mobile device or desktop computer. Facebook helped people reconnect with old friends and make new ones, and Spotify’s helping people rediscover songs from their youth and discover fresh music through friends and search. But what exactly is Spotify? What does it do? How does it operate? I answer all these questions in the following sections.
Getting instant music You can start playing Spotify tracks almost straightaway, as if you were playing a CD — even though the music’s coming from the Internet. Spotify’s technical boffins have worked hard to make the listening process immediate. Who needs a digital file for every single thing you listen to, when Spotify can help free up precious space on your computer’s hard drive by serving up your tunes instead? I’ve rarely run into any jumps or skips when listening to Spotify music this way. That’s not to say the streaming is flawless every time, but it is very impressive. And you can so easily forget that you aren’t listening to music you have on your computer or on a disc.
Creating playlists At the center of the Spotify universe is the playlist, which is like the mixtape of old, letting you create a group of your favorite tracks dedicated to a certain theme, era, genre, artist, or whatever you want. On Spotify, you’re encouraged to turn albums into playlists so that you can listen to tracks as the artist originally intended. Creating playlists is simple after you get the hang of it — there are a few quirks, but to become a pro in no time, just turn to Chapter 6. Playlists can also be created to complement a piece of news. For example, when the coveted Mercury Music Prize 2011 nominees were announced, a member of the popular Spotify community site ShareMyPlaylists.com posted a link containing all tracks from the nominees’ albums in one convenient list. With one click, I could load the albums into Spotify right away and start playing them (see Figure 1-1). Even though I’ve been using Spotify for more than two years, this simple and obvious process still impresses me.
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify
Figure 1-1: Sharing playlists makes the world of Spotify go round.
Listening on other devices Premium subscribers (I discuss the different types of Spotify subscriptions in the section “Tasting the Many Flavors of Spotify,” later in this chapter) have the ultimate Spotify experience because they can listen to any Spotify music on their compatible mobile devices. Spotify supports offline syncing, so you can save tracks to your phone and listen to them in Offline mode without incurring huge data charges. Premium subscribers can also listen to Spotify in hi-fi through sound systems made by manufacturers such as Sonos, Onkyo, and Logitech by logging into Spotify through these devices. And anyone can stream music to existing speakers if they have the right connections. I discuss all these options in Chapter 15.
Playing local files The future may be all about renting your music collection, but there are still plenty of us who have stored our favorite digital files on our computers. Spotify indexes the local files on your computer and displays them in a convenient list. Most common file formats are supported, and you need never open another music player again. You can create playlists that contain a combination of local
11
12
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify files on your computer and tracks from Spotify’s own library, giving you the best of both worlds. Spotify lets you listen to music without hearing a distinction between the local track and the streaming track.
Sharing new music discoveries Music is such a personal thing — everyone has a particular taste. But we all like to share it — it’s one of the most social things you’re ever going to do. Sharing helps you discover new acts. When you hear something exciting and new, your friends are usually the first people you tell — Spotify lets you do that easily. You can actively share links, or you can passively publish your playlists to your public Spotify profile and leave it to your mates to dig around in your listening library. Spotify is closely tied into Facebook, thanks to Spotify Social, so you don’t need to put in much effort building yet another social network — all your Spotify friends on Facebook are listed there for you. See Chapters 9 and 10 for more on the social aspects of Spotify. And if you’re an unsigned act who’s put your music onto Spotify (see Chapter 19 if you want to know how to do this), then you can easily promote yourself by using a music-distribution service that has partnered up with Spotify.
Branching out with third-party resources Spotify has a committed, dedicated fan base. A huge number of Spotify blogs, services, and apps can help you make the most of Spotify while Spotify itself is busy concentrating on what it does best: delivering music to you. The main aim with most of these resources is to make it easy for you to discover new kinds of music. Turn to Chapter 11 for a rundown of the most popular sites, as well as Chapters 18 and 19 for some more suggestions and add-ons. Throughout the book, I also give you occasional tips mentioning the odd app or website.
Deciding to Go for Spotify For a decade I have waited for a music service that could rekindle my excitement about music by enabling music to be shared freely across the world. . . . Spotify is the service I have been waiting for. –Sean Parker, Napster co-founder turned Spotify advisor
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify
Comparing Spotify with YouTube? YouTube, owned by Google, is a big way for people to discover new music these days. YouTube is free and absolutely chock-a-block with music, and it also provides revenue and promotional opportunities for artists. Despite it being a video-based medium, it actually has many similarities to Spotify. I’ve discovered tons of new music thanks to YouTube — and continue to do so. If you’re in a band, you’ve probably relished the exposure YouTube can bring to you — just like the old days of MySpace, when acts like Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys found fame on the back of uploading some tracks onto their MySpace pages.
But because anyone can upload stuff, music quality on YouTube is hugely variable, depending on who’s uploaded it. The playback on YouTube isn’t quite as instant as Spotify, either, and you can’t easily create or share a lot of playlists. If I find an act I like on YouTube, I sometimes go to Spotify to see whether Spotify offers their music so that I can hear a far better audio version of the clip. (I also get to avoid the childish comments and spam that tend to plague popular YouTube clips!) Spotify is kind of like YouTube’s nerdy brother — a bit more mature, a bit wiser, but underneath it all, he knows how to have a fun time.
Obviously, you’re reading this book because you’re interested in using Spotify and finding new music with it. But you can find other music-streaming services out there that also offer this sort of on-demand streaming. Some of them have been operating for years in the U.S. without as much fanfare as Spotify has received. When Spotify finally launched in the U.S. in mid-2011, I noticed plenty of people on Twitter asking, “What’s the big deal?” The following sections talk about a few features that Spotify has going for it.
Technology Spotify’s focus really is on engineering and helping you experience music more efficiently — that way, you spend more time using it. Google is a good example of a company that takes a similar approach. After you search for something on Google, you see a little note on the search results page that tells you how many results it found, as well as how many milliseconds the search took. Google is constantly trying to shorten the time between you searching for something and the results being displayed (it even has instant search, where it predicts your search query and delivers results to you while you type). Spotify’s obsessed with speed, too, and wants to eliminate any discernible delay between selecting a track and that track being streamed to you. According to CEO Daniel Ek, 200 milliseconds
13
14
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify between pressing play and hearing the music start to stream is the magic number where the brain doesn’t perceive a lag. For more about the technology behind Spotify, check out Chapter 2.
Sound quality and efficiency Spotify uses the efficient (and oddly named) Ogg Vorbis format for tracks it streams to you. This format results in a high-quality file that doesn’t require much bandwidth, or network capacity, to stream to your computer or mobile device. Premium users can enjoy even higher quality for many tracks (see the sidebar “Streaming at premium quality,” in this chapter).
Music sharing by using links Virtually everything on Spotify, from albums to search results, has its own address, or URL, which you can link to on social networks, in e-mails, or on websites. It also weaves seamlessly with Facebook, giving you an instant buddy list of friends who’ve connected their Spotify accounts with Facebook — and you can also publish your playlists there.
Merging your music When you import a list of your locally stored files into Spotify, you can play these tracks alongside the tracks that you stream, essentially merging them into one big, happy library. You probably can’t tell the difference between which tracks are on your computer and which are coming from Spotify. Playlists can contain a mixture of local and streaming tracks, which makes things even more seamless.
Catalogue selection There are at least 15 million tracks in Spotify’s library (or catalogue), which dwarfs the selection found on many other streaming offerings. And the number is growing by around 10,000 every day. There are a few glaring omissions; read more about those in Chapter 4. When I was showing off Spotify to my friend Anne, I asked her to name a band I could look up. Immediately she suggested, “The Beatles.” I then had to explain, “Well . . . anyone but them.” I now have to preempt every conversation I have with a Spotify newbie by saying, “Except the Beatles! Or Pink Floyd, or Led Zeppelin, or Arcade Fire.” That’s not to say you can’t listen to these bands, though: I have plenty of albums that aren’t on Spotify saved to
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify my computer, and because Spotify can index the files on my computer, I can happily play them from within Spotify — as long as I’m on my local computer or have copied the files to my mobile device.
Spotify has a licensing deal with Merlin, the consortium that represents thousands of independent record labels. It also streams unsigned bands through partnerships with music distribution agencies. So, Spotify helps make the road to discovering musical gems easy.
Transatlantic reach Spotify has a huge audience; operating in seven European countries and in the U.S. To discover what music is most popular right now, you can look up Top lists in your region or in a particular country. You can even view what people are listening to in all the countries where Spotify has a presence.
The tunes, they are a-changin’ “Spotify promises to get people excited about music again, and the result will be a new golden age of music — more people discovering and listening to more music than ever before.” Those are the influential words of Sean Parker, co-founder of the infamous yet pioneering music-sharing service Napster, which let people swap the music on their computers with anyone who wanted it. Unlimited songs, for free, at people’s fingertips and on a scale never seen before. Sounds familiar, right? But with the original Napster, artists weren’t compensated for their work. And all the while, record labels had no idea how to embrace the service. They sued it from all angles, forcing it to shut down and reopen in a stripped-down form. Sean was unable to realize his vision for the company as a revolutionary way to swap music with friends (Napster has since relaunched completely and is owned by U.S. retail giant Best Buy). Now, a decade later, Sean can rest easy at night: Spotify is here. As an investor and advisor
to the Swedish startup, Sean has spent much of his time trying to build up buzz around Spotify. When it finally launched in the States in July 2011, he took to his Facebook Wall and started raving about how it was going to change everything. Daniel Ek, Spotify’s CEO, has revealed that he was a big user of Napster back in the day, and there’s no doubting its influence on where Spotify is today. During a live interview with Fortune magazine at the Brainstorm Tech conference in Colorado, he said, “The most interesting part of Napster was the fact that when I started downloading music, I could discover all these people, and I right-clicked on them and it said ‘browse this person’s collection’ and I got everything else that they had. That got me on Led Zeppelin, it got me on all these bands who I probably wouldn’t have heard about otherwise. And that’s exactly the kind of feeling we want to now re-create but make it even simpler.” (And legal, I’m guessing.)
15
16
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Examining the Business of Spotify This book is a guide to Spotify, not an economics lesson, but I think it’s well worth examining how Spotify can manage to deliver all this music to you without most of its users paying a cent. It was certainly a revelation to me when researching this book!
Convincing you to pay Spotify has a solid free, ad-supported offering that a lot of people use — but this free option does come with restrictions that become more limiting after six months of using the service. The company knows that after people on the free plan have built up a heap of playlists, established a group of friends, and ditched whatever they were using before Spotify to discover and play music, they’ll be hooked and happy to shell out for an even better version of a service they’ve been getting — without ads or time restrictions and, for the top-tier service, access to all the great stuff on their mobile devices. I have to admit, it’s a cunning plan. Actually, Spotify doesn’t have to do a lot of convincing most of the time — when Spotify launched in the U.S. as an invite-only service, the media and blogs created so much hype around it that the Spotify invitations were a much sought-after thing. So, what did Spotify do? It encouraged people to jump the queue (as they say in Europe) and start using Spotify straightaway — as long as they paid first (see Figure 1-2). It also got celebrities — particularly musicians such as Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Trent Reznor, and Billy Corgan — to dish out free invites to their Twitter followers.
The answer to piracy? Spotify’s been operating in parts of Europe since 2008 and has 10 million users, 1.6 million of whom are paying for the service. In its birthplace, Sweden, it’s already a household name. According to the Music Ally industry news site (www.musically.com), in 2010, Spotify made more money in Sweden for labels Sony and Universal Music Group than any other retailer, online or off, including iTunes. This is a country famous for creating the file-sharing software Kazaa and the Pirate Bay, which were used for exchanging copyrighted music illegally. In 2007, Swedes elected the Pirate Party to the European Parliament — a party whose manifesto was essentially based around pirating music and other content for noncommercial use.
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify
Figure 1-2: Hello, America — Spotify has arrived.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has repeatedly said he wants to create something that’s “better than piracy,” now that people are listening to more music than ever. Actually, the Pirate Bay and Spotify have something big in common. Spotify cleverly adapts the efficient technology traditionally used for pirating music and manages to do pretty much the same thing, completely legally. The difference is that Spotify has acquired licenses to stream those tracks from the record labels, composers, artists, publishers, agencies distributing the tracks, and so on. Getting the labels on board is hard work, and the big names have a part ownership in Spotify as a result of the deal. Spotify’s managed to convince record labels that royalties received from streaming music, although small initially, will build up over time. Licensing is a very complex process, and it took a couple of years for Spotify to finally crack the U.S., where traditionally the record industry has been slow to embrace new technology.
In an interview with Fortune magazine at the Brainstorm Tech Conference in Colorado, Ek revealed, “The vast majority of all revenues goes to rights holders. . . . We think that makes sense. They’re contributing the content; we’re basically the platform. A fair way of thinking about it is the Apple model, where Apple will give away 70 percent and keep 30 percent themselves.”
Shifting music ownership The shift from ripping CDs to putting them on your hard drive was a big one, but people managed it. Now, it’s all about streaming. With Spotify, you don’t actually download or own the music as digital files; you subscribe to Spotify
17
18
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify and access the tracks remotely, like you would if you were watching a video on YouTube. Convenient, eh? Spotify offers four types of accounts, two of which are free and supported by advertising. The others are subscription based. See the section “Tasting the Many Flavors of Spotify,” later in this chapter, as well as Chapter 12, for details on subscriptions. Renting your music, rather than making a one-time purchase, has another upside: Each time you stream a track, you contribute to royalties. So, although streaming a track means Spotify pays out only a small fraction of a cent (the exact figures vary), the music generates more income in the long run (a phenomenon called the long tail, popularized by Wired editor Chris Anderson). Get rich slowly, if you will.
In the parts of Europe where Spotify operates, it does have a download store if you want to download and keep those tracks. (I’m told a download store will launch in the U.S., as well, so it may be available by the time you read this.) The feature benefits free users who use Spotify as a discovery tool and buy music they like, without having to commit to a subscription. For more on using the store, turn to Chapter 8.
Valuable listening data These days, it’s going to take much longer for an artist to receive the same kind of income from streaming his music that he did with CD sales or conventional digital downloads, so he needs to know how well his tracks are doing. In a July 2011 Bloomberg Businessweek profile on Ek called “Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope,” it’s revealed that part of the deal between record labels and Spotify is that Spotify can gather intricate information about listening trends that record labels could only dream of a few years ago. Spotify knows your age, gender, and general location, as well as the tracks you’re listening to. Its privacy policy (see the section “Knowing Me, Knowing Spotify,” later in this chapter) states how it can then provide aggregated, or not personally identifiable, listening data to its partners and throws some light on how Spotify works as a business, beyond the basic music-delivery aspect. The Businessweek article explains that Jay-Z thought he was popular in London, but he’s actually a hit in Manchester. Spotify knows from its data that, on the weekend, more people are going to be playing Rihanna and Lady Gaga, and that radio airplay still drives streams on Spotify. So, when you’re having your 1990s party and load up the playlist full of tracks by Hole, the Offspring, Fun Lovin’ Criminals, and Soundgarden, Spotify might detect a similar spike with other 25- to 35-year-olds listening to the same retro tracks on a Friday night.
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify
Streaming at premium quality Are you tempted by Spotify’s top-tier service, Spotify Premium, mainly because of its top-quality audio offerings? Then you’re in luck because the desktop application on your computer gives you the option of streaming at a far higher quality, or bitrate, than standard accounts: 320 Kbps (kilobits per second), compared with 160 Kbps for non-Premium accounts. For more on bitrates, see Chapter 2. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that not all tracks on Spotify have been converted to 320 Kbps yet; it’s an ongoing process. There’s plenty of debate about whether the layperson can actually tell the difference — and with data caps on broadband usage becoming standard,
the premium bitrate can chip away at your monthly limit. Most people who use regular speakers or listen to music through a computer or earphones are unlikely to appreciate a distinct difference with the track quality. But plenty of audiophiles do care. You can’t currently tell before you play a track whether it’s available in higher-quality format. So, if top-quality sound through your hi-fi is your thing and this is a crucial issue for you, I recommend signing up for a free Spotify Premium trial first or committing yourself to only an initial one-month plan to make sure you’re happy with what you’re hearing.
Tasting the Many Flavors of Spotify From the reactions on Twitter after Spotify’s U.S. launch, Spotify’s arrival is truly exciting. But a few disconcerted people found not having permanent access to your music collection on your computer, and renting it instead, a difficult concept to grasp. Spotify recognizes the confusion, so it offers a free version that lets you play around with Spotify and use it to discover new music — with some limits. After building a few playlists, sharing tracks, and engaging with friends, you’re encouraged to upgrade to get rid of the ads, take your music with you, and remove any time limits. Spotify offers a range of different sign-up approaches and subscription levels. I don’t go into them in massive detail in the following sections — for that, turn to Chapter 12.
Spotify Open: A nice appetizer This is the open-to-all, basic version of Spotify that you can get when you sign up on the Spotify website (www.spotify.com). It’s supported by ads; you can track the amount of listening time left on your account with a timer at the top-right of the screen. An Open account gives you an initial 20 free listening
19
20
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify hours a month. But this amount is cut back to 10 hours after six months, and you’re allowed to stream a track only five times before you’re asked to either purchase it as a digital download or upgrade your account.
Spotify Free: A gourmet sample When Spotify launched in the U.S., it was an invite-only affair — this approach was to prevent a system meltdown, but it also generated a sense of exclusivity. The type of Spotify account users got with their invite codes was Spotify Free. It has no listening limitations for the first six months, and it then reverts to Open restrictions after that. How to get one of these accounts? Your friends may have some, or other people may have spares they’re willing to give away. Celebrities are also giving them away to fans. Unlike personal video recorders, you can’t fast-forward, skip, or even mute the ads on the free accounts. The ads aren’t as annoying as the ones you get on the radio or television (or as loud as what you hear in the cinema), but they are a distraction. Upgrading is the only way to get rid of them. Well, actually, people have tried workarounds — but I’m not sure they’re worth the trouble just to mute an occasional 30-second advertisement.
Spotify Unlimited: A hearty main course With an Unlimited account ($4.99/£4.99/€4.99 per month), you get to listen to music on your computer without the advertisements and with no listening limits or time restrictions. You also get to log in anywhere around the world. The major thing missing from an Unlimited subscription is mobile access.
Spotify Premium: A four-course meal A Premium account ($9.99/£9.99/€9.99) is the ultimate subscription that gives you unlimited streaming, exclusive listens to selected albums, and access to higher-quality audio streams (where available). Most important, you get portability and availability: You can stream music to your mobile device and sync albums for offline listening by using your computer or mobile device. For more on offline syncing, see Chapter 16.
Hopefully, you won’t ever want or need to leave Spotify; but if you do, you can still preserve what tracks you have in your playlists by selecting all the tracks in a playlist, and then dragging and dropping the listings into a Word document or similar. I discuss how to back up your playlists in this way in Chapter 8. You can then use sites such as Playlistify (www.playlistify. org) to try to convert the plain text into readable track listings for a range of other services, including iTunes, Grooveshark, Rhapsody, and so on. You
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify can also leave your account active — it just reverts to the free version after you cancel your subscription. Your playlists are still bookmarked at Spotify, so you can come back to them at any time or resume your subscription if you took a break from it.
Figuring out Terms of Use The world of music licensing is complicated enough, let alone the world of streaming digital music. Royalties need to be sorted out and licensing agreements regarding streaming music rights need to be struck in every country in which Spotify operates. Advertisers need to get on board, too. That’s why, although digital music is an immediate product with minimal overheads, it took years for Spotify to launch in the U.S. There are also legalities surrounding the use of the content that you listen to on Spotify — you, as a subscriber, need to stick to the Terms of Use. When you first register and install Spotify, you need to agree to the terms before you can start using it. Spotify’s terms are updated every now and again (usually when new features are introduced), and when this happens, you have to accept any significant changes to the terms when you log into the updated software. You can access the terms by clicking a link that appears on every Spotify page and, for the most part, the terms are written in normal language that mere mortals like us can understand. That’s great because you’re probably already busy enough and don’t want to be bogged down in legalese. You just want to start listening to the music. But a few sections need explaining in plain English because I’ve seen some confusion from customers who aren’t aware of how Spotify might be using their information and their computer’s resources. That’s what the following sections cover. If you’re using Spotify on your cellphone, you also need to read the Mobile Terms of Use. People on paid-for plans also need to read the Premium or Unlimited Terms of Use, depending on the plan they’re on. The conditions in these terms are pretty straightforward, so I leave them for you to read — like the other terms, you can find a link to them from every page of Spotify.
Country differences Spotify operates in the following countries: Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. You can
21
22
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify pay for Spotify only by using a credit card registered to one of these countries, which also must be the same country you’re in. It’s important to note that the Terms of Use vary, depending on the country you live in, which contrasts with sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which make users around the world agree to U.S. Terms of Service. The differences between countries are subtle, but they’re there. For example, European law requires Spotify to offer a cooling-off period for download bundles and subscriptions, which gives you the right to ask for a refund within a certain time period, provided you haven’t started using the services. And the U.S. version of Spotify doesn’t have a download store or the Spotify Open listening tier yet, so the U.S. terms don’t include those bits. Spotify should redirect you to the correct terms of use after recognizing the country you’re from, but just in case, make sure Spotify’s page is set to your country by scrolling down to the bottom of any Spotify web page and checking your location. To get a look at the terms for your region, you can check out this website: www.spotify.com/int/legal/end-user-agreement. (It should detect your location and direct you to the country-appropriate page.)
All Spotify pages have local versions of the same content, and you’re usually redirected to your local version. But if Spotify’s guessed your location incorrectly, you can substitute your country code in the address. For example, Sweden’s code is se, so you can find a Swedish version of the agreement at www.spotify.com/se/legal/end-user-agreement. For France substitute fr, Norway no, Finland fi, Netherlands nl, Spain es, United Kingdom uk, and the United States us. These country distinctions apply to information you find in all the Spotify pages, not just the terms and conditions.
Basic things to agree to So, what do you need to know and agree to before signing up to Spotify? Spotify asks you to agree to the following restrictions: ✓ Age: You need to be 18 years of age or older, or confirm that you’re 12 years of age or older (13 in the U.S.) and have parental or guardian consent. ✓ Residence: You must live in one of the countries in which Spotify operates. ✓ Accuracy: You need to enter correct registration information. ✓ Noncommercial, personal use only: If you run a shop or cafe, and are playing Spotify for your customers, that’s considered a commercial use and isn’t permitted. And if you play Spotify in a school, that’s also not personal use.
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify ✓ Subscription tiers: The differences between the listening options available to your region are listed here. ✓ Pricing: Spotify could change the prices at any time. But download bundles you’ve already bought are valid until their expiration date. Be aware that on Spotify, you can’t filter out tracks that contain explicit lyrics. In the U.S., tracks have Explicit warning labels next to them, which act as a guide to the songs’ content, but those tracks can’t be hidden from search results. Spotify should always be used under parental supervision — just make sure you’re within earshot! It’s also possible to block access to the application altogether by using your regular parental control settings built into Windows and Mac, or restrict access to a time when you know you’ll be around and ready to play your little ones those Sesame Street albums.
Local files Spotify makes a list of your computer’s local music files so that you can easily play them from within the application. You can turn music importing off in your Preferences (see Chapter 3). Spotify has to say in its terms that you’re allowed to import only files you’ve legally acquired and have the right to copy. “For instance, you may not use the Spotify Service to import or copy any music you have illegally downloaded off the Internet,” the terms clearly state. Bear in mind that Spotify imports everything it finds in your music library automatically, so if you have a few MP3s that you downloaded years ago from the Internet, Spotify still plays these tracks. Spotify doesn’t know where your files came from, but you can delete any not-necessarily-legally-obtained files after the list generation happens by clicking a file and pressing the Delete key. Strictly speaking, the terms say you shouldn’t be importing them in the first place, but in reality, I think it’s impractical if they’re in the same folder as all your other legit files.
Advertising and use of computational resources The “Advertising and Use of Computational Resources” headline in the Terms of Use sounds a little out of place given that all the other headlines are quite clear. Yet this section is one of the most important — I think Spotify could have explained this part of its terms a whole lot better.
23
24
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify Basically, this section says that Spotify uses file-sharing technology to run its service. It makes use of your computer’s resources and Internet connection to exchange music between other Spotify users. Spotify stores recently listened to tracks in a folder (or cache) on your hard drive and uses your computer to help deliver this content to anyone else looking for it. This setup is why Spotify is so fast and immediate: Your computer is fetching music from other users’ computers it finds nearby, and because one good turn deserves another, you are also helping deliver content to others. The main mechanism it uses is a technology called peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing. File-sharers who use tools such as BitTorrent have been doing peer-to-peer sharing for years — this just a commercial, encrypted, and quality-controlled version of it. If you’re interested in more information about how Spotify works, see Chapter 2. So, in summary, Spotify needs your resources to help deliver the service, and it says so right here.
Use of your data No data Spotify collects and aggregates is ever personally identifiable. All major online companies, such as Google and Facebook, do this kind of data collection — they all know stuff about us that probably we don’t know about ourselves. If you have one of those supermarket loyalty cards or do a lot of online shopping, companies can build up a picture of the kind of stuff your demographic is buying and could give this information to companies that want to know buying trends. They also know what you’re into on a personal level and can recommend stuff to you. Spotify does this kind of thing, only for music. For more about Spotify’s privacy policy when it comes to handling your information, see the following section.
Knowing Me, Knowing Spotify Privacy is a hot topic for Internet users everywhere who are concerned about revealing too much about their online habits. So, I think it’s important to know what Spotify can discover about our listening habits and how this information could be used. Please refer to Spotify’s privacy policy, shown in Figure 1-3, for the latest information. You can find the link to this policy on every page of the Spotify website. In the following sections, I outline why Spotify says it needs your data and how it uses that data.
Chapter 1: Introducing Spotify
Figure 1-3: Spotify’s Privacy Policy is quite clear.
Making sure artists get paid The most obvious and important reason of all is that Spotify needs to record what people are playing to ensure that record labels, publishers, and artists are paid the right amount for the amount of listens, or streams, they’ve received. Also, the agreements vary by region, so it needs to know from which part of the world you’re listening.
Keeping the service afloat Spotify records listening data for technical reasons, too — for example, it needs to recognize when its systems need to scale up to handle extra traffic (like when it launched in the U.S.) or down. And to make sure it delivers tracks to you smoothly, it needs to know how likely it is for people to listen to music passively or jump around from track to track, which could put extra strain on its database.
Helping you discover new music Spotify logs data to help enhance its service: It knows what music people are into and collates all this data in order to make music recommendations to you via its radio features. In the future, it could also use this information to provide a more personal experience on the site — sites such as Amazon.com are famous for giving New for You product recommendations, so Spotify may expand in this area later down the line by recommending new tracks for you. (Right now, though, Spotify offers plenty of other ways to discover new music, as I explain in Chapter 5.)
25
26
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Conducting market analysis As discussed in the section “Examining the Business of Spotify,” earlier in this chapter, the Privacy Policy says that the company uses certain information (which doesn’t identify you personally) to share with its business partners. This information includes search terms, the songs you play, playlists you create, and so on. Local files aren’t exempt from this data collection (iTunes does the same thing). Spotify elaborates on this policy in its FAQ: “We collect data on the files you import and play for top list purposes, statistics and to link tracks to our database for better sharing. As we state in our privacy policy, we won’t share an individual’s information regarding imported files to third parties.”
Targeted advertising For those users on free plans, Spotify can also target the right kind of advertisements to people who listen to certain genres of music. Advertisers know if and when you click an ad to visit their website and what kinds of people are responding to them.
Using Spotify Social As I explain in Chapters 9 and 10, Spotify has a deep association with Facebook, thanks to Spotify Social — this feature lets you check out what your friends are listening to and what playlists they’ve created or subscribed to. When you connect your Spotify profile to Facebook, any friends who’ve done the same appear in a People list or sidebar in the Spotify window. Spotify also stores your Facebook username. Your listening trends could be made public if you’ve set your Spotify profile to reveal the top tracks you’ve been listening to. And playlists you create are automatically published unless you turn the sharing function off — Spotify wants you to keep this stuff public, to get you sharing music and giving your musical experience a good airing. But you can hide away from the world, if you want. Turn to Chapter 9, where I discuss Spotify Social and Facebook’s privacy settings and how you can tweak them. In the future, I’m sure Spotify will introduce even more social features, such as the ability to see what your friends are listening to right this moment (a feature that’s long been available for other services, such as music-recommendation service Last.fm). At press time, Facebook was set to announce an even deeper tie-in with Spotify and music services like it. Check out www.dummies.com/ go/spotify for details.
Chapter 2
Getting Set Up with Spotify In This Chapter ▶ Figuring out how Spotify brings you music ▶ Determining whether Spotify can work on your computer ▶ Diving into Spotify’s digital music formats ▶ Registering, installing, and updating Spotify ▶ Listening to music through Spotify
S
potify is a desktop application – a program that runs on your computer, as opposed to a service you can access by using any web browser. I’ve heard various arguments for and against Spotify on the desktop. In this chapter, I explain how a desktop application can, in many ways, make your listening experience smooth and reliable. You can listen to high-quality songs with no breaks or delays because of the peer-to-peer technology that Spotify uses – an efficient way of listening to music by sharing content between computers. In this chapter, I also talk about what computer specifications you need to get started with Spotify and the music formats it uses. And I discuss how to register for Spotify, download the Spotify application (also known as the client), and start playing music.
Understanding How Spotify Works How Spotify works may have an impact on your computer’s hard-disk space, as well as your Internet connection. I promise not to bore you with the finer details about the whole process; I spent a lot of time reading a long, in-depth, and jargon-riddled paper from the engineering whizzes at Spotify so that you don’t have to.
28
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify Spotify works differently from many other online music services because it relies on several ways to smoothly deliver music to you with no delays. In computing-speak, the measure of delay between requesting a song and hearing it is called latency. Spotify wants to keep latency low to make sure there’s no massive delay between choosing a track and hearing it on your computer. So, how does music get to your computer in the first place? Spotify stores all its music on servers. When you begin playing a streaming track from Spotify, Spotify takes a few actions: ✓ It looks to see whether you already have that track in your cache, a folder on your computer used to temporarily store tracks you already listened to on Spotify. Having them in the cache saves you from having to redownload the content again. ✓ Starts to retrieve the track from its servers ✓ Searches for other nearby computers that use Spotify – run by other Spotify users like you – who may have local versions of the tracks (or fragments of the tracks) stored in their caches This approach is much faster and more efficient than millions of requests pummeling the Spotify servers. Essentially, your computer becomes an equal player in one big network of many other computers running Spotify. In this peer-to-peer network (P2P, for short), the computers communicate on an even footing, uploading (sending) and downloading (receiving) files. Spotify is also clever enough to start pre-fetching the beginning of the next song in the playlist or album you’re listening to a few seconds before the current song ends to ensure that you don’t have a lag between one song and the next. If you decide to go off course and suddenly choose another song that Spotify isn’t expecting, that’s not a big deal – Spotify still responds to your request almost instantaneously. I’ve jumped around Spotify many times, clicking here and there on songs I’d never heard before. Spotify copes surprisingly well with my erratic requests!
Keeping your music in a cache Spotify uses a cache on your computer’s hard drive (as well as on the hard drives of all Spotify users). A cache is a temporary holding area for tracks you’ve listened to – if you want to listen to a track again, Spotify draws upon the music stored in your cache so that it doesn’t have to re-download the track. When the cache is full, the old stuff gets overwritten.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
Considering Spotify’s data usage The amount that Spotify downloads and uploads is relatively small because it compresses tracks very efficiently, so those tracks don’t take up much room. Also, your data usage will be far less significant if you listen to the same songs regularly because Spotify pulls them from your cache, so it doesn’t have to access the Internet to get them. But Spotify also uses your cache to upload tracks to other users, which usually contributes (a bit) to your data usage, too. I don’t believe that the amount of data Spotify uploads via your Internet connection is a big deal because Spotify is smart enough to spread the music-sharing effort among many others; also, upload speeds are slower than download speeds for most home Internet connections. I’ve never actually had a problem with Spotify using too much of my allotted data usage, and I have Spotify running constantly while I write this book. Each country has different standard broadband speeds – my own Internet Service Provider (ISP) gives me around 50GB of data usage a month for peak times, and I probably just reach 10GB per month, even though I have Spotify on for hours on end.
Running Spotify on Your Computer If you want to stream your music through Spotify, you need to have the desktop application installed on your computer. People who don’t like the desktop app see the fact that you have to download a separate program in order to hear music as a limitation, especially considering you can find quite a few alternative web-based services out there that seem to have no problem streaming music (and video) through your browser. Spotify offers this official reason for employing a desktop program, as opposed to a web-based one: “By installing Spotify as a stand alone application you get a much better user experience and audio quality compared to web-based sites.” Also, the application helps you sync up your local files, your mobile devices, and your iPod from one place, which you can’t easily do over the web.
Compatible systems Spotify is officially available for Windows PCs and Apple Macs. The versions are virtually the same (apart from a few minor differences in the Preferences options, outlined in Chapter 3). You can also use a workaround to get the Windows version running on a Linux operating system by using Wine (a tool that lets you run Windows programs in Linux).
29
30
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Using Spotify away from home (or your computer) Even though Spotify is a desktop app, your Spotify profile travels with you wherever you go, which means that you can stream all your favorite tracks from any computer running Spotify. Just log in to see all your playlists reappear on the new computer and start streaming the songs you’ve saved to them (for more on creating playlists, see Chapter 6). If you’re in an office and aren’t allowed to download programs to your computer, you can
always use the Spotify Mobile app to listen to music on your phone, if you’re a Premium subscriber. You can also listen to playlists offline – download your favorite music to your phone over a local Wi-Fi connection before you head out of the house, and then you don’t have to stream the tracks over a mobile network and risk unnecessary data charges. I explain how to do this in Chapter 16.
See the section “Downloading Spotify,” later in this chapter, for full instructions on how to download Spotify for Windows and the Mac, as well as signposts about how to run it on a Linux computer under the influence of Wine.
Necessary specifications Spotify is lean and responds quickly to requests. But for ease of listening, it does keep quite a lot of data in its cache – an area on your computer’s hard drive reserved for tracks and fragments of tracks, described in the section “Keeping your music in a cache,” earlier in this chapter. I recommend that you have around 50GB free disk space on your computer, at least, with Spotify’s cache taking up no more than 5GB – that’s already plenty of room to store your tracks. You can adjust your cache size based on how much disk space you have: My Mac has only 25GB of free space, so I’ve reduced the size of my Spotify cache to around 2GB. You can set the parameters of the cache in your preferences, as I explain in Chapter 3, but the cache is set by default to never exceed more than 10 percent of your free disk space. If you’re looking to get a new computer, get as much memory (RAM) as you can – at least 2GB. Memory acts as a kind of buffer zone that lets you open many programs at the same time without them slowing down. If your computer has enough memory, you can have Spotify open and running while you’re surfing the web, working with Word, organizing your photos, and using your e-mail. If your computer runs slowly, tracks in Spotify may start to stutter and skip. The official computer specifications you need to run Spotify for a Windows PC include
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify ✓ A PC running Windows XP, Vista, or 7 ✓ A broadband Internet connection For the Mac, your computer needs ✓ Either a PowerPC G4 or higher, or a system that runs an Intel processor. (The computer chips in older Macs are virtually obsolete; the vast majority of Mac programs designed these days run on Intel processors.) ✓ Mac OS X 10.4.0 or later. ✓ A broadband Internet connection.
Security software Any computer setup, regardless of what programs you’re using, needs to have protection from online threats. You need to make sure that your computer is up to date with the latest versions of security software including antivirus and antispyware software, and a firewall.
Security protection options for PCs Windows 7 comes with a suitable firewall, as well as Windows Defender, an antispyware tool that protects you in real-time from threats posed by software that can monitor your computer movements. You can also download the free Microsoft Security Essentials for all-around protection. See www.microsoft. com/security/pc-security/windows7.aspx for more. You could also consider several security suites from manufacturers including Symantec, AVG, Sophos, Kaspersky, McAfee, Trend Micro, BullGuard, ZoneAlarm, and many more.
Spotify and security Any computer setup, regardless of what programs you’re using, needs to be running upto-date security software (see the section “Security software,” in this chapter, for your options). Although the Spotify program doesn’t contain any malicious code, so it can’t harm your system, in early 2011, hackers hid a virus in the banner ads that Spotify delivered to its free customers. People didn’t even have to click the banner ads for the virus to spread to their
computers, and anyone who didn’t have antivirus software installed on their computers might have been infected. This was an embarrassing one-off incident for Spotify, but it reacted within a day, immediately pulling all third-party ads until it investigated the problem and apologizing to customers. And Spotify says it’s constantly monitoring the situation to prevent malicious advertising from jeopardizing customers’ security again.
31
32
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify Security protection options for Macs Macs seem relatively safe, compared to PCs, but it’s a false sense of security. Most hackers target Windows systems simply because they’re more popular. While Macs grow in popularity, the threats do, too. At the very least, make sure your firewall is on by following these steps:
1. Click the Apple logo at the top-left of your screen and, from the dropdown list that appears, select System Preferences.
The System Preferences dialog box appears.
2. In the Personal section, click Security to open the Security settings.
On the Firewall tab, check to see whether it’s on. If it is, simply close the dialog box by clicking the red button at the top-left. If it’s off, continue to Step 3.
3. Click the lock at the bottom-left of the dialog box.
4. If you’re not logged in as the administrator, type this username and password in the dialog box that appears and click Log In.
5. In the Firewall section, click the Start button.
6. Close the dialog box by clicking the red button at the top-left. Sophos has a free antivirus scanner for Macs, obtainable from www.sophos. com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-machome-edition.aspx.
Sounding Out Digital Audio on Spotify Digital audio comes in many flavors – there’s no standard format. Although .mp3 is the most popular format, some audio files may have extensions such as .mp4, .aac, .m4a, .ogg, .wma,.wav – the list goes on. None of these file extensions matter if you’re listening to streaming music that’s stored on Spotify’s servers. The music just comes to you when you request it. (Spotify’s also capable of playing music files you’ve already stored on your local hard drive, but they need to be compatible with the software. Turn to Chapter 7 for more on the file types Spotify can play.)
A bit about bitrates Digital audio quality is measured in bitrates. A bitrate is the amount of data transferred per second from one place to another. With music, bitrates are usually measured in kilobits per second (Kbps). (A bit is the smallest measure of digital information; a kilobit is 1,000 bits.)
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
What is Ogg Vorbis? Spotify uses a music format called Ogg Vorbis (www.vorbis.com), which sounds like something from outer space, to stream tracks to you. Ogg Vorbis is a free, open-source format that developers can use on a commercial or noncommercial basis. You can’t play them in anything other than Spotify because Spotify restricts them for copy-protection purposes. Ogg Vorbis has several benefits over MP3 – for the same level of audio quality, you get a far smaller file size than with an MP3 because Ogg is more efficient at compressing data, so you use less disk space on your computer.
Ogg has a variable bitrate, depending on the audio levels of the track – the file takes up only as much room as necessary to get the highest fidelity sound it can. For example, it knows that a few seconds of silence in a track can be compressed more than a section of song featuring vocals and instruments. But why the out-of-this-world name, Ogg Vorbis? It’s a combination of ogg, a move in the game Netrek, and Vorbis, a character from a Terry Pratchett book.
A standard Spotify track streams at around 160 Kbps, which provides excellent quality (well above what you’d find in a typical MP3 file), but Premium subscribers can listen to a large proportion of tracks with even better clarity – approximately 320 Kbps.
Hooking up speakers If you can happily listen to music through your laptop speakers, standard earphones, or plug-and-play computer speakers, then you’ll be satisfied with hearing music at 160 Kbps – after all, most MP3 files barely reach this level of clarity. But if you have a top-quality home stereo setup and want to connect this sound system to your computer, then you may want to consider getting a Premium subscription, which offers the higher 320 Kbps bitrate for truly excellent sound, particularly at relatively loud volumes. Spotify also has agreements with the hi-fi manufacturers Logitech, Sonos, and Onkyo that let Premium subscribers stream music through those manufacturers’ systems. I discuss these and other wireless streaming options in Chapter 15.
33
34
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Getting Started with Spotify I know what you’re thinking: Where’s the music? Where do I sign up? This section explains how to get Spotify going on your computer. Spotify can legally serve customers only within the countries where it operates because of complex licensing issues with record labels and local publishing rights societies. (Even between the countries where Spotify operates, you might encounter differences: Something in Finland might be unavailable to someone in the U.K.) At the time of writing, Spotify operates in the following European countries: Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. And in July 2011, after years of waiting, Spotify finally launched in the United States. Even if you happen to be from one of the countries in which Spotify operates, you can’t sign up to Spotify via its website if you aren’t physically in one of those countries. Spotify recognizes your computer’s IP (Internet Protocol) address, the numerical identifier that shows where your Internet connection is coming from. Any IP addresses that don’t come from a Spotify country are screened out, and you get a message saying Spotify Is Not Available in Your Country. You can use technical workarounds, such as logging in through a virtual private network (VPN) located in the U.K. or by using a proxy server (which I briefly discuss in Chapter 3). But after you start using Spotify, you can’t circumvent its geographical restrictions by using these kinds of tools – and this kind of workaround violates the Spotify Terms of Use. If you want to breathe easy and get unlimited international roaming, register for Spotify Premium – and naturally, you need a credit card or PayPal account based in one of the countries in which Spotify operates. For more information about signing up to a paid service and what it can offer, see Chapter 12.
Signing Up for Spotify Before I get into the sign-up instructions, here’s a slight disclaimer: The nature of the web means that Spotify could redesign its site at any moment, so the sign-up process may be slightly different than what I describe in this section. However, all the principles should be the same – if you’ve ever registered for a site before and downloaded a piece of software, you shouldn’t run into any issues.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify To register for Spotify, follow these steps:
1. Go to www.spotify.com and click Get Spotify.
A page appears (like the one shown in Figure 2-1), featuring the various subscription options available: Premium, Unlimited, and Open (the free option). I explain the differences between these plans in Chapter 12. You can upgrade from a free account at any time, so these steps show you how to sign up for the Open version.
2. Click Get Spotify Open.
A page appears that explains the main features of Spotify Open.
3. Click Get Spotify Open on this page to start entering your new account details.
On the Create Your Account page that appears, Spotify reckons you’re only 90 seconds away from a world of music. I didn’t time it, but I think it probably took me a little longer because I had to think up a username!
4. In the Create Your Account section, enter a username for your account in the Username text box.
You use this username to log in, so think about it carefully! It also appears on your public profile page.
5. In the Password text box, enter a password for your account.
Spotify tells you how strong it thinks your chosen password is by presenting Strength options in a bar next to the password while you’re typing it.
Figure 2-1: When you register for Spotify, you have some signup options.
35
36
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
6. In the Confirm Your Password text box, retype your password.
7. Click Go to the Next Step to enter more account details.
You get taken to a The Spotify Experience Is Better if We Know a Little about You page.
8. In the text box provided, enter your e-mail address.
Make sure you type it correctly!
9. Type your postal (zip) code in the appropriate text box. 10. Select your gender and enter your birthday in the Gender and Birthday drop-down lists.
The Country section is already selected for you. You can’t change it here because you need to register from the country from which you’re logging in.
11. (Optional) Enter your phone number in the text box provided and, from the drop-down lists below this text box, select your brand of phone and phone service provider.
12. Choose your marketing preferences by checking or unchecking the boxes next to the options provided.
Your options are
• Please Send Me Spotify News by E-Mail
• Please Send Me Spotify News by SMS
• Yes, Share My Information with Third Parties
Your communication preferences are up to you; by default, Spotify News is already checked.
13. At the bottom of this page, select the I Agree with the Spotify End User Agreement check box.
The agreement is linked here and opens in a new page when you click the link, so you can read it now; to familiarize yourself with Spotify’s Terms of Use, see Chapter 1.
14. Click Go to the Next Step to continue.
15. On the Choose your Product page that appears, select Open from the options provided.
You can always upgrade to a paid-for product later. If you want, you can choose a paid-for product here and now, which requires you to enter your credit card details. Please see Chapter 12 for more about upgrading.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
16. Click Continue.
You get a message saying that your account has been successfully created. The registration process is complete, but you need to download the Spotify software to actually get started. Click the Download button to go to the download page; then head to the following section for exactly how to download the software.
At the time of writing, the free version of Spotify in the U.S. was still inviteonly – requiring prospective account holders to enter a special invitation code on the Spotify website. Click the link in your invitation e-mail to begin the sign-up process. Otherwise, go to www.spotify.com/us/invitation, enter your code in the text box, and click the Continue button.
Downloading Spotify After you sign up (see the preceding section), you can download and install the Spotify software – a process that you’ll find familiar if you’ve ever downloaded and installed a program from the Internet. Spotify detects the kind of operating system on your computer or mobile device and tailors its download page accordingly. The following sections talk about the download process for both Windows and Mac users. I also touch on how to get Spotify running on Linux systems.
If you ever need to re-download Spotify (perhaps you got a new computer), you can go directly to the download page at www.spotify.com/int/ download/windows for Windows or www.spotify.com/int/download/ mac for the Mac.
Downloading Spotify for Windows After registering for an account and clicking Download (as described in the section “Signing up for Spotify,” earlier in this chapter), you get taken to the Download Spotify for Windows page (www.spotify.com/int/download/ windows), from which you can download the software. Follow these steps to download Spotify in Windows 7:
1. Click the Download Now button to begin the download process.
For security reasons, your browser may block this process initially. If this happens in Internet Explorer, a yellow bar appears at the top of the window informing you about what happened.
2. If the yellow bar appears, click the bar and select Download File from the drop-down list that appears.
The File Download – Security Warning dialog box appears, prompting you to download an installer file named SpotifyInstaller.exe, as shown in Figure 2-2. (This file isn’t the Spotify program itself; it’s a small program that helps initiate the download process.)
37
38
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
3. Click Run to download and run the installer file.
You may see a User Account Control dialog box asking whether you want the installer to make changes to your computer.
4. Click Yes if the User Account Control dialog box appears.
Figure 2-2: Download the installer file from Spotify’s website to start the setup process.
Used with permission from Microsoft
The Choose Install Location dialog box appears, prompting you to confirm the destination folder of your installation file, as shown in Figure 2-3.
5. (Optional) If you want to save the installation file somewhere other than the default Destination Folder, click Browse, navigate to the location, and then click OK.
Unless you have a specific reason to change it, you probably want to leave the default Destination Folder option, the Program Files folder, as is. Spotify recommends this location as the most logical place for the file.
6. (Optional) Deselect the Start Spotify when the Installation Is Complete check box if you aren’t quite ready to start playing with it right now.
7. (Optional) Deselect the Create Icons for Spotify on the Start Menu and on the Desktop check box if you don’t want to add these icons to your computer.
I recommend keeping these options checked. If you do, you can launch Spotify easily by selecting either the shortcut on your desktop or your Start menu. If you choose not to create icon shortcuts, each time you want to launch Spotify, you need to click the Start button, click All Programs, and then look for Spotify from the list of programs that appear.
8. Click the Install button.
If you’re not logged in as the administrator, Windows may prompt you for the administrator password in order to install the file. If so, just enter that info to start the installation.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
Figure 2-3: Spotify makes the installation process easy.
Downloading Spotify for Mac After registering for an account and clicking Download, which I describe in the section “Signing up for Spotify,” earlier in this chapter, you get taken to the Download Spotify for Mac OS X page (www.spotify.com/int/download/ mac), from which you can download the software by following these steps:
1. Click Download Now.
Your browser prompts you to save the Spotify.dmg file.
2. In the Firefox browser, click Save File to confirm the save.
You may get a slightly different message, depending on the browser you use. The file shortly appears in your Downloads folder.
3. Double-click the file to open it.
A window appears, like the one in Figure 2-4, prompting you to drag the Spotify icon to your Applications folder.
4. Click the icon in this window and drag it to the Applications folder shown next to it.
A dialog box may appear, saying that Spotify can’t be moved because Applications can’t be modified.
5. If the warning dialog box appears, click Authenticate, enter the administrator’s username and password in the text boxes provided, and then click Log In to approve the process and install the program.
A dialog box may appear, asking whether Spotify can access your keychain.
39
40
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Figure 2-4: Drag Spotify to your Applications folder to install it on a Mac.
6. (Recommended) Click Allow to give Spotify access to your keychain.
Your keychain can save you from having to enter the administrator password every time you open the program. But you may need to reenter it when the software gets updated every now and again. Spotify is now stored in your Applications folder. You can create a link to it in your Dock by clicking and dragging the icon.
Using Spotify on a Linux computer You may have one of a number of Linux distributions, which are versions of Linux (such as the Ubuntu operating system). At the time of writing, Spotify has a prerelease Linux version available to download at www.spotify.com/ int/download/previews, but it has no technical support, doesn’t run local files, and involves rocket-scientist tricks (well, a bit of computer coding) to install. You can much more easily add Spotify to your computer by using Wine. Wine is a tool that lets you run Windows programs. To download the latest version of Wine, go to www.winehq.org. After you install Wine on your computer, you need to adjust a few settings. Spotify recommends making the following changes on the Audio tab: ✓ Ensure that only the OSS Driver check box is selected. ✓ Below DirectSound, set Hardware Acceleration to Emulation, Default Sample Rate to 44100, and Default Bits Per Sample to 16. You can then download the Windows version of Spotify, as described in the section “Downloading Spotify for Windows,” earlier in this chapter.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
If you have any questions about using Wine for Spotify, you can hang out at the official Spotify Wine forum (http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/ products/spotify_spotify_wine). See Chapter 11 for more on registering and posting at the Spotify Help forums.
Logging into Spotify After you install Spotify (as described in the section “Downloading Spotify,” earlier in this chapter), double-click the Spotify icon to open the program (if it didn’t open automatically). A login dialog box, like the one in Figure 2-5, appears.
Figure 2-5: The Spotify login dialog box appears when you first start the program.
Enter the Spotify username and password you created when you signed up (see the section “Signing up for Spotify,” earlier in this chapter). If you’re going to be the main Spotify user on this computer, I recommend selecting the Remember Me check box so that you don’t have to type in your credentials every time. Click the Sign In button to log into your Spotify account and open the main Spotify window, where all the action happens!
After you log in, you can always log out by choosing File➪Log Out, and you can reenter your details or someone else’s.
You probably have a software firewall activated or installed on your computer – the firewall acts as a powerful force field against Internet nasties. Because Spotify’s a new program on your computer that sends and receives data, your firewall might complain about it at first. A warning dialog box, like the one shown in Figure 2-6, may appear. You can safely click the Allow Access button to let Spotify through; your firewall adds Spotify to its Exceptions list. (If the message ever appears again in the future, Spotify may have upgraded its software, so the firewall thinks it’s a new program.)
41
42
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Figure 2-6: Your computer firewall may try to block Spotify, so you need to allow access.
Also, if Spotify is blocked (which might happen if you’re using it in a workplace), ask the IT department whether they can allow you to access Spotify. After you log into Spotify, a welcome screen appears, encouraging you to start listening to music right away. It also starts scanning your computer for local files – you can see whether the scan is still going on by looking for the couple of spinning arrows next to Local Files, on the Spotify window’s left sidebar.
Finding Music to Play on Spotify You can use the Spotify Search text box, located at the top-left of the Spotify window, to conduct a simple search of your Spotify content. Type in the name of an artist, song, or album name, and then press Enter (or click the green arrow, which appears on the right side of the text box when you start typing). After a few seconds, the search results appear in a list in the main Spotify window. In the example shown in Figure 2-7, I’ve done a search for the British band Elbow. The main listings show Track, Artist, Time (the length of the track), Popularity (how frequently the track gets played on Spotify), and Album (the album the track comes from). Double-click a track name to start playing that particular track. Now, crank up your speakers! You can also get additional information about a track in the results screen: If you hover your mouse over the artist’s name in the Artist column, the name turns into a clickable link. Clicking this link takes you to the artist’s profile page (Figure 2-8 shows the profile page for Elbow).
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify
Figure 2-7: Conduct a basic search for an artist on Spotify.
Figure 2-8: Access an artist’s profile page from your search results.
On the Overview page that appears, you can see
✓ A preview of the artist’s biography. ✓ A list of related artists. ✓ The artist’s Top Hits (which aren’t necessarily their greatest hits, but the most listened-to songs on Spotify).
43
44
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify ✓ A discography – their albums and singles, and other compilation albums they’ve appeared on. Just scroll down to see the full discography listing. From this view, you can click an album’s name to go to its individual page. An individual album’s listing looks similar to Figure 2-9.
Figure 2-9: View album listings in Spotify.
You can start playing the entire album from its main Spotify page just by double-clicking the first song. Spotify plays the tracks in order.
Updating the Spotify Software Whenever Spotify launches an update to its software, it rolls out that update automatically – you don’t have to take any action, such as clicking an Update button. No longer do you have to deal with some pop-up message telling you that the latest version of such-and-such is available, and do you want to download it? However, those who don’t like change may find it a little disconcerting to see something new suddenly pop up with no warning. Thankfully, although the young and talented innovators at Spotify introduce new features and fix any bugs every few weeks, these tweaks usually don’t have any significant impact on your experience.
Chapter 2: Getting Set Up with Spotify In fact, I find that after people hear about any cool changes issued by the Spotify folk, those people start clamoring to find out why they don’t yet have the latest version. Spotify rolls out its automatic updates to listeners on a gradual basis to reduce the impact on its servers. If you desperately need to download the latest version, you can always go straight to the download page (mentioned in the section “Downloading Spotify,” earlier in this chapter) and reinstall the entire program. I reinstalled my version of Spotify when it launched iPod syncing. I was just too eager to wait – I had to see what it was all about! (Any previous settings should be retained, as long as you don’t uninstall your existing installation first.)
Keeping up to date with Spotify The Spotify newsletter comes out about once a month, and you can subscribe to it if you want to find out more about new and exclusive releases by mainstream acts. Admittedly, the newsletter is just the tip of the iceberg because Spotify adds an average of 10,000 tracks to its database every single day. (For more innovative ways to find out what’s new, see Chapters 5 and 10). I personally don’t find much in the newsletter that interests me a great deal – the What’s New page within Spotify highlights the same new acts that the newsletter covers, and the promotions and contests seem to be tailored for the younger crowd. But then again, I’ve been constantly following Spotify for this book, and less-frequent Spotify users would probably find the newsletter interesting. This figure shows the April 2011 newsletter, which highlights an exclusive radio show from the band Gorillaz. The newsy, chatty e-mails don’t bombard your inbox. Occasionally, the newsletter includes alerts about seven-day Spotify Premium trials and other promotions. Skimming through your newsletter doesn’t take more than half
a minute, and you might discover some great music that way! To unsubscribe from these alerts, just click Unsubscribe in one of the newsletters.
45
46
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Chapter 3
Understanding the Spotify Window In This Chapter ▶ Getting around in the Spotify window ▶ Viewing your Spotify account details ▶ Playing songs through Spotify ▶ Tweaking Spotify’s settings in the Preferences pane
O
ne thing that’s kept Spotify so popular is that it’s a very lean, straightforward piece of software: quick to load, offering access to everything with just a click or two of your mouse. Open it up, and almost instantly, you feel somehow familiar with the software — it has the recognizable column setup that you find when navigating folders in Windows, or sorting and selecting tracks in iTunes. Yet, like the search engine giant Google, Spotify offers some powerful features underneath its deceptive simplicity. This chapter covers exactly what functions you can find (and where to find them). I outline the main elements of the Spotify window in detail, and then move on to managing your play queue, playing tracks, and adjusting your Spotify preferences.
Navigating the Spotify Window The Spotify screens look virtually the same for both the Mac and a PC, apart from the menu bar running at the top — on the Mac, this menu bar runs at the top of your desktop screen, rather than in the application window. (You can run Spotify for Windows on Linux systems by using a workaround discussed in Chapter 2.)
48
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
The figures featured in this chapter look slightly different than what you see if you’re using Spotify Free or Spotify Open. These subscription types are ad supported, so you see banner ads at the bottom and the side of the screen. You also see a timer at the top-right of the screen, alerting you to how many listening hours you have left. See Chapter 12 for more about the different Spotify accounts available. Open the software to see that the Spotify window consists of several main elements:
✓ Search bar: Look up any track, artist, or album, and use advanced search parameters (see Chapter 4 for tips) to get extremely specific so that you can narrow down searches to parameters such as genre or record label. ✓ Left sidebar: Here, you can access most of Spotify’s main functions, such as your music library and playlists. ✓ Main pane: Where all the action takes place. Here, you can access the real heart of what Spotify is about: the music. ✓ Menu bar: A strip across the top of the Spotify window that lets you access its many functions. Like with many programs, you may have several ways to perform a particular action, but you can be sure that the menu lets you access the most common ones. ✓ The playback area: This section at the bottom of the Spotify screen lets you control the track you’re listening to. ✓ People list: This right sidebar contains a list of all your Spotify contacts, including ones imported from the social networking site Facebook. (You can read more about Spotify’s social aspects in Chapters 9 and 10.) Figure 3-1 shows how Spotify looks on a PC, and Figure 3-2 gives you the Mac version. In the following section, I explain the features you can find within these elements.
Understanding Spotify’s Main Features Many people are so impressed with Spotify that they’ve decided to ditch their usual music-management software and play all their music through Spotify. You can even play your existing music files in Spotify (as long as they’re in a compatible format) and use the software to sync those tracks to your iPod — bypassing iTunes for this task altogether.
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window Left sidebar Menu bar
Search bar
People list
Figure 3-1: The main Spotify screen on a Windows PC.
Playback area
Main pane
The following sections talk about some of the many features you can find in Spotify.
Search bar You can easily search for music within Spotify. Just enter a few keywords into the search bar — say, Frank Sinatra — and then click the Search button (which looks like an arrow in a green circle) or press Enter to bring up a list of results gleaned from both the Spotify database and the music collection stored on your computer’s hard drive. In a search for Frank Sinatra, your results include songs sung by Frank Sinatra (the most popular songs being “New York, New York” and “My Way”), as well as the song called “Frank Sinatra” by the alternative band Cake.
49
50
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify This little search bar has the power to conduct advanced searches, such as ones restricted to a particular musical genre or songs sung by a particular artist, such as Ol’ Blue Eyes. You can find more information about advanced searching in Chapter 4. When viewing your search results, you can click links in those results to view different subcategories. For instance, click an artist’s name to see all songs for that artist; click the album name to view all tracks in that album.
On the search bar, a small down-pointing arrow appears next to the magnifying glass icon. Click this arrow to bring up a list of recent searches. And if you share your Spotify account with your other half (or your kids), you can click Clear Recent Searches if you don’t want them to know you were purposely seeking out Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.” Left sidebar Search bar
People list
Figure 3-2: The Mac version of the main Spotify screen.
Playback area
Main pane
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
What’s New Want to see the latest music that Spotify has added to its catalogue, which contains more than 15 million songs and counting? Well, you can’t find it all by clicking the What’s New option in the Spotify window’s left sidebar, but you can find highlights of new albums that Spotify has recently added.
You can choose from many third-party websites and web tools that do a better job of signposting what’s new on Spotify than Spotify itself does — I talk about these resources in Chapter 11. The What’s New option opens the What’s New tab in the main pane of Spotify. Other tabs appear at the top of the pane. Here’s what you can find in each:
✓ What’s New: Check out the latest album releases here — just click through to the album you’re interested in or click More to see additional selections. The Feed is also listed at the bottom of this page. ✓ Top Lists: Displays a list of the most popular or “top” tracks and albums that people are listening to in Spotify. You can even see what people have been listening to in any Spotify country, including yours, as well as view your own personalized chart. ✓ Feed: Contains information about all your friends’ latest Spotify activity, such as sharing a track on Facebook.
Radio Good morning, listeners! Spotify Radio is streaming to your home live from Spotify’s HQ — and you’re in control of the music! Click this left sidebar option to open the radio station in the main Spotify pane. In Spotify Radio, you can listen to random tracks from the last few decades (and even older ones). Don’t like a track? You can just skip it and go to the next one by clicking the next track in the lineup or by using the Next Track button on your keyboard, if you have one. And Spotify Radio provides you with a great way to discover new artists. Right now, Spotify Radio is available only for those subscribers who have an Unlimited or Premium subscription. I outline how to use Spotify Radio in Chapter 5.
Play Queue Click Play Queue to open a list of tracks in the main window that Spotify has scheduled to play. After a track ends, Spotify plays the next track in the Play Queue. How the Queue works is slightly quirky because it depends on whether you’ve added songs manually to the Queue, as well as the location from which Spotify plays queued results (such as a playlist or an album). But,
51
52
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify after you get the hang of it, the Queue can really help you manage a day’s listening, as it’s easy to browse around and add a bunch of new stuff to the Queue. See Chapter 4 for the details on understanding and managing the Play Queue. You can also see what you just listened to in your current session. Click the History tab, which appears at the top of the main pane when you select Play Queue in the left sidebar, to display that list.
Inbox Think of the Spotify Inbox as a combination of your e-mail inbox and a music box: full of new tracks waiting to be opened and discovered. You can send links to tracks, along with a short message, to a friend in your People list. These tracks (with messages) appear in your friends’ inboxes (unless they’ve specifically blocked you for some reason). I show you how it’s done in Chapter 10.
Devices If you select Devices in the left sidebar, two prompts appear: ✓ iPod: You can plug your iPod into your computer and use Spotify to sync your locally stored music files to it. You can sync music to your iPod classic, iPod nano, or iPod shuffle without having to use the iTunes music software. After you connect your iPod to your computer, it appears in the Spotify sidebar — just like it does in iTunes. For more on how to sync, see Chapter 15. ✓ iPhone and Android: Connecting your iPhone, iPod touch, or Android device to the same Wi-Fi (wireless Internet connection) as your computer lets you sync local tracks from your computer to your phone and play them through the Spotify Mobile app — all without cables. You need to have the Spotify Mobile app installed on to your device first — for how to download it, see Chapter 13. Premium subscribers can also use this option to sync tracks from Spotify’s streaming library for offline listening, as I describe in Chapter 16. When syncing to your iPod classic, shuffle, or nano, you can copy over only the local music files stored on your computer (just like you do in iTunes). If you want to listen to music from Spotify’s streaming library, you either need to buy the tracks as MP3 files first (discussed in Chapter 8) or upgrade to Spotify Premium and use a compatible mobile device running the Spotify Mobile app to sync files (Chapter 16).
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
Making sure you pay to play Each time you play a track that streams over the Internet from Spotify’s computers, Spotify pays royalties to the record label, which helps (in a small way) contribute to an artist’s income. This setup does mean that each time you play a local track on your computer, it doesn’t contribute to artists’ royalty payments. If you listen to a lot of independent music that’s on Spotify’s database and want to support these artists and record labels (songwriters
benefit, too, because Spotify also pays the collection agencies who represent composers), you can consider unlinking your local track. This forces Spotify to play the streaming version of the track, instead. Follow these steps: 1. Right-click the track (Ctrl-click on a Mac). 2. Choose Unlink Track from the pop-up menu that appears.
Library At the heart of Spotify’s music-management functions is the Library; by selecting the Library option, all your tracks are displayed in the main pane. These tracks include local files (see the following section) and all the tracks contained in your playlists. A filter mechanism lets you quickly search through these tracks; you can also find links to buy tracks from the Spotify store if you don’t own local copies of them. See Chapter 7 for more on the Library.
Local Files When you first install Spotify, it automatically scours the music folders on your hard drive, retrieving music files that are already stored on your computer. So, if you want to play your daughter “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Spotify’s catalogue, but you already have it on your computer, then you can save computer resources and data download limits because Spotify defaults to playing the local file. (You can read more about local files in Chapter 7.) When you select Local Files from the left sidebar, you see a list of your computer’s music files displayed in the main Spotify window. Don’t worry, these imported files are only links to the original files — not duplicates!
Downloads Listeners on Spotify Open accounts can stream a song only five times without being prompted to pay for it (this restriction kicks in after six months of
53
54
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify using the service). To encourage people to buy tracks, Spotify introduced its very own music store in May 2011 that lets you buy digital music and download it to your computer as MP3 music files. So, after you discover an artist you like by using Spotify, you can then buy the track (or upgrade to a Premium or Unlimited subscription for limitless play; in which case you don’t really need to worry about the Downloads pane unless you want to buy tracks to copy to a CD, iPod, or other MP3 player). When you click the Downloads option in the left sidebar, all your downloaded tracks appear in the main pane. Because the Downloads feature is integrated with your Spotify account, you can easily access downloaded songs from this area, as long as you keep them in your specified Spotify folder (you can change this setting in your Preferences, as described in the section “Fine-Tuning Your Setup in Preferences,” later in this chapter) and don’t move them around. To buy tracks, click the Get button next to a track or album listing to bring up a window that starts the purchasing process. From this window, you can buy bundles of credits, which last 30 days; the more credits, the cheaper the deal. Remember to use up your credits in the 30-day timeframe — otherwise, you lose them. Turn to Chapter 8 for more about Spotify’s MP3 store and the bundles available for purchase. While you’re syncing your iPod, you can also buy any tracks from your Spotify playlists that you don’t own as MP3s, as shown in Figure 3-3. Just click the Get Missing button next to a playlist during the syncing process to bring up a window displaying the tracks you can purchase. See Chapter 15 for more on syncing tracks to your iPod.
Figure 3-3: You can access Spotify’s MP3 store from the Downloads pane.
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
The downloads listed in Spotify’s Downloads pane refer only to tracks you’ve purchased from Spotify’s own store, not ones that you bought from other digital music retailers, such as iTunes or 7Digital.
Starred You may be familiar with the concept of marking a favorite website with a little star icon through a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. Spotify lets you mark your favorites, too, in a similar manner. Just click the little star outline next to a track or album that you enjoy. That track or album immediately goes into your Starred folder. You can display the contents of that folder in the main Spotify pane by clicking Starred on the left sidebar. You don’t have to mark just songs you like as favorites — you can use the function to bookmark a track you’re interested in so that you can easily come back to it later in the Starred pane. You can opt to make all your starred tracks public, too, by turning them on in your public profile (for more on creating and editing a public profile page that lets other people view selected playlists and starred tracks, see Chapter 9).
Playlists A playlist is a collection of songs you create, usually dedicated to an artist, genre, mood — whatever takes your fancy, really. It’s also very common for playlists to consist of entire albums. You can share your playlists and subscribe to other peoples’ playlists, too. All the playlists you create and subscribe to are displayed in the left sidebar below your Starred tracks. Click a playlist to display its tracks in the main pane. Playlists can also be rearranged and sorted into folders to make organization and navigation easier (it can become very hard to find a playlist if you have more than a couple dozen playlists to sift through, so you should adopt some kind of filing system). Click the right arrow next to a folder to display the playlists within it. For more on creating and organizing your playlists, turn to Chapter 6.
People list On the right side of the Spotify window, you can find Spotify’s foray into social networking (dubbed Spotify Social). I cover this social feature extensively in Part III. The People sidebar lists all the contacts you’ve added to Spotify, and you can browse their public profile pages to see playlists they’re sharing, as well as the top tracks and artists they’re listening to.
55
56
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
You don’t even have to manually import friends from Facebook to your People list — Facebook friends who are already using Spotify Social instantly appear in this list.
Viewing Your Account Details On the top-right of the Spotify window, your name appears. If you’ve connected your Spotify account to Facebook (see Chapter 9), your Facebook profile photo also appears next to your name. One of the options available when you click your name is View Account — this option is handy if you want to view your subscription status, change your details, or add a payment method to Spotify. To access it, follow these steps.
1. Click your name.
2. Select Account from the drop-down list that appears.
Your web browser automatically opens your account information page on Spotify’s website and displays your profile and subscription status.
3. Review your profile details.
On the page that appears, you can view the information you’ve provided to Spotify, including your username, e-mail address, date of birth, country, and postal (zip) code.
4. To update any of these details, click Edit Profile.
An Edit Your Profile page opens, where you can make changes to your information.
5. Click Save Profile to confirm these amendments. If you have a Premium or Unlimited subscription, you can also view your subscription status here and renew it, if you’re keen, by clicking Subscription near the top of the page. If you’re an Open user (or on an invite-only Spotify Free account), clicking Subscription leads you to a link from which you can upgrade. For more on upgrading, see Chapter 12. Spotify is officially available in only certain countries, so if Spotify detects that your connection is coming from a geographical location in which it isn’t available, you can’t change your location (until you return to a Spotify-friendly country). Check out how the upgrading and renewing process works in Chapter 12.
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
Playing Tracks Listening to tracks is very straightforward with Spotify. You’ll feel right at home if you’ve ever used any kind of digital music software before because the controls are very similar across programs. I’m also happy to report that the Play, Skip, Pause, and Volume controls on most modern computer keyboards can control Spotify in the vast majority of cases, too. In the following sections, I give you the lowdown on how to play your tracks. (I reveal even more keyboard shortcuts relating to pretty much everything you can do on Spotify in Chapter 7.) Figure 3-4 shows how the playback area within Spotify looks.
Figure 3-4: The playback functions in Spotify are very straightforward.
Playing, skipping, and pausing Playback buttons appear at the bottom of your Spotify screen to help you play, pause, jump back to the previous track, and skip to the next track. You also get a timeline that tells you how far into a song you are and lets you drag your mouse along it to listen to a specific part of a song. After you find a track that you want to listen to, you can play it from within Spotify in a couple of ways: ✓ Double-click the name of the track that you want to hear (the simplest way). ✓ Click the name of the track or browse to it by using your keyboard’s up or down arrow keys so that it becomes highlighted, and then press the Enter key. After a track starts playing, you can use Spotify’s controls:
57
58
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify ✓ Play/Pause button: Pause the playing track by clicking the Play button (which looks like a right-pointing arrow) at the bottom of the Spotify window. The Play button then turns into two vertical lines, indicating that it’s paused. Click this new Pause button to resume playing. You can also press the spacebar to pause and un-pause a track if you’re currently in Spotify. Or you can press the Play/Pause button on your keyboard, if it has that button, at any time to pause and unpause a track. ✓ Next Track button: To skip to the next track in the album or playlist you’re listening to, click the button that features two right-pointing arrows. You can also press the button on your keyboard featuring the same right-pointing arrows (if available) to perform the same action. ✓ Previous Track button: To go back to the previous track, click the button that features the two left-pointing arrows, or the button on your keyboard with the left-pointing arrows. ✓ Timeline: To jump forward or back in a track, click and drag the small indicator in the Timeline bar back and forth along the timeline. How far into the song the indicator is appears on the left of the Timeline bar; how much time remains appears on the right.
In Windows 7, you can control a track by using a set of mini controls that pop up above the Spotify symbol in the Windows menu bar. Just hover your mouse over the Spotify symbol to make those controls appear. The track name and artist currently playing also appear. Figure 3-5 shows you how it looks in Windows.
Figure 3-5: You can access cute mini playback controls in Windows without being in Spotify.
Mini controls
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
Pumping up the volume The volume control slider lets you manage the volume of the track you’re playing. Click and drag the small indicator right or left to make the sound louder or quieter, respectively. The volume settings here are separate from the volume settings of your overall computer or any speakers that have external volume control. Spotify sets its volume indicator to about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way up the slider by default, and for best sound quality, I recommend you keep it here and control the volume from your computer or speaker’s main settings whenever possible. (You can use your keyboard’s volume keys, if available, to easily turn volume up and down; they control the computer’s volume.)
Randomizing the experience Like the shuffle function on iTunes (or a CD player), Spotify can play tracks in a random order. (My friends have also noted that sometimes the tracks Spotify plays are eerily reminiscent of the mood you’re in or perhaps remind you of a certain person in your life, but that’s a phenomenon I’m unable to explain for this book!) To turn on the Shuffle function for Spotify (if it isn’t already on), just click the Shuffle button, indicated by two interwoven arrows, near the bottom-right corner. When you turn on Shuffle, the button turns green; click the button again to go back to boring old linear listening (and the Shuffle button goes from green to black). Click Play Queue in the left sidebar to view the order of shuffled songs (for more on the Play Queue and how it works, see Chapter 4).
Repeating the music To have your music play in an infinite loop (maybe you’re having a big, never-ending party and don’t have time to switch playlists), just click the Repeat button, indicated by a circular arrow. (You may recognize this logo from your CD player or from music software.) When Repeat is on, the button appears green; when it’s off, the button’s a boring black on gray. If you have Repeat turned on, the list of tracks from whatever you’re listening to (an album, a playlist, or songs from a search result) repeat until you deselect the arrow again to turn the looping off.
59
60
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Closing the gap At the time of writing, Spotify still doesn’t support gapless playback, which means that no split-second of silence appears between tracks, and songs seamlessly go from one track to the next. Although the overwhelming majority of albums sound fine with slight gaps because they consist of standalone tracks, many classical albums (such as opera) and musical soundtracks are meant to be heard without gaps that might interrupt the flow of music. You may also want to listen to several gapless classics, such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and The Beatles’ Abbey Road (both of which don’t appear on Spotify’s database; but you might own them as local files on your computer). Apple’s iTunes features gapless playback, but it was only introduced in 2006 after a lengthy
campaign — five years after iTunes launched. Gapless playback remains one of the mostrequested features from Spotify’s outspoken music aficionados, as seen by the comments on the official support forum at www.get satisfaction.com/spotify. Spotify representatives say they are looking into introducing the feature, but they haven’t said when the company will actually do so. First, Spotify has to deal with the issue of how gapless playback would work logistically for people who have an Open subscription and therefore listen to ads every few songs. You would still need to have an occasional break in the music for the ads to be broadcast. So, if gapless playback is what you’re after, I guess you need to watch this space (geddit?)!
If, for some reason, you want to hear just one song over and over, Spotify doesn’t offer a Repeat One Song option. Instead, you can create a playlist that consists of that one song, and then have Spotify repeat that playlist over and over. Not a glamorous workaround, I admit, but it gets the job done. (For more on creating playlists, check out Chapter 6.)
Using Share buttons The prevalence of social networking sites means that sharing great finds from the Internet is extremely commonplace these days. Many news sites include Share buttons and little logos for common social networking sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. In keeping with this trend, every playlist, track, artist profile, album, search result, and profile page on Spotify has its own unique web link that you can
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window share online with just a couple of mouse clicks. In many cases, Spotify makes the job easier by including Share buttons next to songs, playlists, or artist pages. Clicking a Share button brings up a pop-up window in Spotify that contains the link and a text box where you can add a note (if you want), and then post it online. If you want to copy the link and paste it into an e-mail, you can do that, too. Chapter 10 has all the relevant information about sharing your Spotify finds.
Fine-Tuning Your Setup in Preferences Chapter 2 includes a quick-start guide for how to get up and running with Spotify — after you register and log in, you’re good to go. However, you can tweak a number of Spotify preferences to help enrich your experience. Think of when you bought your television set: It worked as soon as you turned it on and tuned it in, but you may have fiddled with other settings to adjust the picture ratio to suit your screen, control the volume, and change the screen’s color and brightness. In a similar way, Spotify has options to help you control how you listen to music. You probably don’t need to tinker with many of these preferences now, and I’ve personally never had huge issues with the default, out-of-thebox settings. But if you do need to make a few adjustments, you can do so easily — and you can’t really break Spotify by choosing the wrong kind of setting; you can return things to how they were by selecting or deselecting a few check boxes. The following sections explain what all the options are, how to access them, and how to tweak them. First, you need to go into Spotify and access the Preferences pane: ✓ In Windows: Choose Edit➪Preferences in the Spotify window. ✓ On the Mac: When in Spotify, choose Spotify➪Preferences. Figure 3-6 shows what the Preferences pane looks like on a Mac that’s running a Spotify Premium account. The PC version looks virtually the same (I explain the differences in the following sections).
61
62
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Figure 3-6: In the Preferences pane in Spotify, you can fine-tune settings.
Last.fm Among other things, Last.fm is a web-based music-recommendation service that figures out what you might like by comparing your listening habits with other people; your virtual Last.fm neighbors. Its massive musical databases help create a personalized radio station, just for you. The act of scrobbling is Last.fm’s automated process of adding a song you’re playing in Spotify (or practically any other music player, or even mobile device) to your Last.fm musical profile, thus helping to build up a picture of your musical tastes. You can enable this feature in Spotify by selecting the Scrobble to Last.fm check box and entering your Last.fm username and password in the appropriate text boxes. You can fast-forward to Chapter 5 to discover how to sign up and get started with Last.fm.
Language In the Language section of the Preferences pane, you can have Spotify automatically detect your language, or you can click the Language option shown and select another language from the drop-down list that appears — whether English, Spanish, or French. (Spotify hasn’t yet updated its software to include Swedish, Norwegian, or Dutch translations.)
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window
Local Files When Spotify scours your hard drive looking for music files, it goes to the most obvious places first: ✓ On a PC: The Windows Media Library, your Downloads folder, Windows Media Player, and iTunes (if you have it installed) ✓ On the Mac: The Music, Downloads, and iTunes folders You find these places listed in the Local Files section of your Spotify Preferences pane, in a list below Show Tracks from These Sources. A check next to the source confirms that Spotify will search for music in that particular folder and its subfolders. But you might be the type of person who goes against the flow and stores your music in completely different folders. If so, simply specify a different folder or folders that you want Spotify to inspect by following these steps:
1. Click Add Source.
2. In the Browse for Folder dialog box that appears (or the Choose a Directory dialog box on a Mac), browse to the folder that you want Spotify to search, and then click OK (Open on a Mac).
Your folders are now added to the list in the Preferences pane, and Spotify checks them automatically for new tracks. To stop Spotify from searching a particular folder, deselect the check box next to that folder’s name.
3. To add another folder, repeat Steps 1 and 2.
Sound The listening options available in the Preferences pane depend on what kind of Spotify subscription you have, as well as whether you have a Mac or PC. I let you know in the following sections whether the options explained apply to you.
Enabling hardware acceleration The Enable Hardware Acceleration option appears only if you’re using a PC, and it’s selected by default. Hardware acceleration is a process that uses your computer hardware, rather than the Spotify software alone, to optimize Spotify’s performance.
63
64
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
The downside to hardware acceleration is that your hardware simply may not be up to the task. Many people who use older computers complain of tracks jumping or fast-forwarding because hardware acceleration is turned on (Spotify isn’t the only program to have this problem). Deselect the check box if you ever run into such problems, and then reboot your computer.
Setting the sound level Many albums have different nuances to them: One track could be whispersoft, the next full of loud bangs. Some people like to listen to all music the way it was intended to be heard; others may be working in an office and want to have tracks play at generally the same volume (you don’t want your boss unexpectedly jumping out of his or her skin). The technical name for playing tracks at the same sound level is volume normalization. To keep a normal sound level for all tracks, keep the Set the Same Sound Level for All Tracks check box selected. To enjoy your music whether it’s tiptoe-quiet or crazy-loud, uncheck this option.
Streaming in a high-quality format The High-Quality Streaming option is grayed out if you don’t have a Premium subscription. But if you’re on a Premium plan, you can listen to a significant proportion of streaming music in a top-quality, 360-Kbps (kilobits per second) format. For more on bitrates and the music quality levels that Spotify uses, see Chapter 2. By default, the option to listen at higher quality is turned off to make songs stream to you more quickly and to save on resources. With the option turned off, Spotify streams music at around 160 Kbps, which is perfectly ideal for everyday listening. And because you’re streaming smaller music files, it’s also a good way to help keep the data usage low (which is important if you’re on a data plan that has limits or using mobile broadband). I find that the quality of the streaming music on Spotify is still fantastic, even with lower bitrates — but then, most of the time, I have the music coming out of my laptop speakers or through my earphones, rather than a fancy speaker system. Audiophiles who listen to streaming music through quality sound systems may want a higher-quality sound. If you want better-sounding music and have a Premium subscription, make sure the High Quality Streaming check box is selected. Modern-day broadband connections should be suitable for this type of streaming — but if songs start jumping around or the web responds slowly, you probably either need to upgrade your connection speed or uncheck the High Quality Streaming option. Spotify’s most popular tracks should be available in high quality because these tracks tend to take priority when the company converts its raw source files to 320 Kbps. As for the others, Spotify offers a huge proportion in high quality but hasn’t specifically indicated how many are available in a higherquality format. Spotify doesn’t tell you whether a song is offered at 320 Kbps,
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window so you have no way of telling (apart from with your ears) whether a track you’re listening to is in high-quality streaming format.
Purchases Spotify’s MP3 download store keeps all your purchases in a specified folder on your computer. By default, the store uses these folders: ✓ On a PC: C:\Users\yourusername\Music\Spotify ✓ On a Mac: /Users/yourusername/Music/Spotify To change the download folder, follow these steps:
1. Click Location in the Purchases section of the Preferences pane.
2. In the Browse for Folder dialog box that appears (the Choose a Directory dialog box on a Mac), browse to the folder in which you want to keep your purchases, and then click OK (Open on a Mac).
The location you just selected appears in the Location text box. In the Purchases section of the Preferences pane, you can also choose to save your Spotify password so that you don’t need to type it in every time you want to make a purchase. Select the Remember My Spotify Password check box only if you’re sure that no one else will be using your computer while you’re logged on. If you select this check box, a dialog box appears, warning you that anyone who has access to your computer while it’s logged into Spotify can access its music store and potentially make downloads by using your account.
Cache I talk about the Spotify cache in Chapter 2 — the cache is an area on your computer that stores temporary versions of your tracks, as well as fragments of tracks. Spotify draws on the music in your cache, delivering it not only to you on your computer, but also to other users who want to listen to the same data. The cache also relieves pressure on Spotify’s servers and your Internet Service Provider because it stores tracks you’ve played before and may listen to again. In the Preferences pane, you can change the size of the cache that Spotify uses. Spotify’s default setting specifies that the cache size can never be larger than 10 percent of free disk space, which gives you plenty of room to store tracks without eating into your remaining hard drive space. You can manually adjust the size of the cache from between 1GB and 100GB by clicking the Use at Most button, and then clicking and dragging the slider indicator next to it. The bigger the cache, the more tracks and track fragments Spotify can
65
66
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify store on your computer, which means less downloading for you and less use of network resources for Spotify (1GB holds around 200 tracks). You don’t need to worry about the cache becoming full: If it reaches maximum capacity, the least-listened-to tracks automatically get ejected from the cache and replaced with the newest tracks.
For those using Spotify Premium, the cache also stores tracks that you want to listen to in Offline mode (which I talk about in Chapter 16), so you may want to keep your Spotify cache fairly large if you have loads of tracks you want to hear regularly and enough storage space to accommodate it.
The cache location doesn’t have to be on your local hard drive (although it works much faster if it is). If you want to move your cache to an external hard drive plugged into your computer (or even a memory card plugged into the computer), follow these steps:
1. In the Spotify menu, click File➪Preferences (or Spotify➪Preferences on a Mac) to reach your Spotify Preferences screen.
2. Below Location, click Browse.
A Browse dialog box appears.
3. Navigate to your external hard drive or storage device (E:/, for instance), and then select a folder in which you want to store your cache file.
4. Click Open to confirm your selection. If you disconnect your drive, Spotify displays an alert bar on the top of the main Spotify window, saying it’s run into a problem storing temporary tracks to your hard drive. It’s smart enough to revert to the original (default) setting of your local drive the next time you start it up, though.
Proxy When you connect to the Internet, you may sometimes need to go through a proxy server — a computer system that sits between you and the Internet. Proxies are commonplace in schools, colleges, and workplaces, and can limit and control access to the Internet. Proxies can also cache content in a way similar to a local cache (see the preceding section); therefore, proxies can help speed up access to web pages and other resources. If your Internet connection requires a proxy, you need to enter the details in the Proxy section of the Preferences pane. Ask your school or workplace’s IT department, or your Internet Service Provider helpdesk, for the credentials. There are a number of settings displayed in the Proxy Settings section of the Preferences pane that you need to know:
Chapter 3: Understanding the Spotify Window ✓ The host proxy name: Usually either a numerical IP address or a web address. ✓ The proxy type: A drop-down list below Proxy includes several options; leave the default option, Auto-Detect, selected if you’re unsure. ✓ Your username and password: If you have to log into your proxy to use it, enter this information in the appropriate text boxes. ✓ The port number: Like a channel frequency that the proxy server needs to know so that it can initiate a connection. People also can use proxy servers to keep their web movements anonymous. The proxy acts as a go-between and masks a person’s real location. Some shady people have used proxies to bypass the Spotify location requirement and make Spotify think they are in say, Sweden, when they’re actually in Canada. It’s against Spotify’s rules to use it in a restricted country, and Spotify is quite on the ball when it comes to blocking proxies used to hide a user’s real location.
67
68
Part I: Becoming Buddies with Spotify
Part II
Managing Your Spotify Experience
C
In this part . . .
ome on in! After setting up Spotify and having a bit of a play, you must be ready to discover some new music by now. In this part, I talk about how you can use Spotify and related tools to go off on musical tangents you never knew existed. Armed with a load of new favorite artists, you can find out how to create playlists and keep them filed in a tidy manner — before you start amassing hundreds of them, which can be hard to manage. But wait, there’s more! In this part, you also can discover how to import your existing music collection into Spotify so that Spotify’s streaming music coexists with your local files. I also explain how to buy tracks from Spotify’s inhouse music store so that you can keep them forever. By having your whole music library under Spotify’s roof, you may never need to use another piece of software to listen to music again!
Chapter 4
Experiencing the Music In This Chapter ▶ Figuring out what music Spotify offers (and what it doesn’t) ▶ Understanding how the Play Queue and History tools work ▶ Using search techniques to home in on the music you want to hear
C
hapter 3 tells you how to conduct a basic search on Spotify by tapping a few relevant keywords into the Search text box and pressing the Enter key. This is the easiest, quickest, and most obvious way to find what you’re looking for — and start listening to music instantly. Thanks to a few extra tweaks, you can optimize your listening experience. For instance, after conducting a particular search or searches, you can also queue up a selection of tracks to listen to during your Spotify session or browse what you’ve recently listened to if, say, you wanted to know the name of a particular track you just heard. This is where Spotify’s Play Queue and History tools come in. They take a little getting used to, so I spend some time explaining how they work in this chapter. When searching, the results you get from a search sometimes aren’t what you’re after — perhaps an artist isn’t in the Spotify database, that particular query has too many results, or you may simply be searching for the wrong thing. I uncover the somewhat hidden advanced search options, which can help you on your way.
Knowing Who’s Available on Spotify (and Who Isn’t) Spotify has 15 million tracks in its library and counting. You can’t spend your whole life listening to them all because Spotify adds more than 10,000 tracks to its database every day! After just one year of operating in the Netherlands, Dutch Spotify users alone notched up 2,000 years’ worth of streaming music.
72
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Spotify has signed licensing deals with the big four music labels — Universal, Sony, EMI, and Warner. It also has an agreement with Merlin (www.merlin network.org), whose website is shown in Figure 4-1. Merlin is a nonprofit consortium that represents the rights of thousands of independent record labels worldwide and claims to cover 30 percent of the total music market. Thanks to Merlin, many of these labels can and do use Spotify as an additional revenue stream.
Figure 4-1: Merlin helps independent music companies around the world receive revenue from Spotify.
You can also find unsigned artists on Spotify thanks to companies known as music aggregators. Artists submit their music to these companies and, for a fee, the companies do all the administration work when it comes to getting the music onto Spotify. Popular aggregators include CD Baby (www.cdbaby. com) and TuneCore (www.tunecore.com).
Notable missing artists and albums Despite its sheer amount of music (I know people who haven’t sung in public for years, yet still have tunes in the database from obscure bands they were in years ago), some very high-profile artists and albums still aren’t on Spotify. Either they’ve chosen not to be included or the record labels have, for whatever reason, opted not to include their entire body of work in Spotify’s
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music streaming library. Here’s a (by no means comprehensive) rundown of some popular artists and what you won’t find from them on Spotify: ✓ AC/DC: The Aussie rockers are noticeably missing from the site — all that’s in their place is a raft of tribute albums and bands (Spotify says they’ve opted out of being included in the catalogue). Is this enough to satisfy your rock cravings? ✓ The Beatles: Digital tracks from the Fab Four are, after many years, now available to purchase from iTunes (the story of the dispute between the Beatles’ Apple Corps record label and Steve Jobs’s Apple Computer is well documented). But the Beatles haven’t inked a digital deal with anyone else, to date. Streaming the Beatles’ music, as well as purchasing downloads, are impossible through the Spotify store. Still, the iTunes deal was finalized only in November 2010, so who knows? You can also find music from individual band members in the catalogue — releases from John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr have a substantial presence. ✓ Led Zeppelin: Unfortunately, you can’t find any Led Zep songs in the catalogue because they’ve chosen not to release them on Spotify. (And it wasn’t until 2007 that their songs were made available on Apple iTunes.) Search for Led Zeppelin on Spotify, and you find only tribute bands and covers of their influential music. On the plus side, you can find latterday releases from Robert Plant on Spotify; in 2010, Premium users in selected countries were treated to a six-track EP exclusive from his album Band of Joy. ✓ Metallica: Where do I start with this American heavy metal band? One word: Napster. Originally a legally dubious, free digital music-swapping service, Napster changed the music industry forever. (Early employee Sean Parker, immortalized in the Hollywood flick The Social Network, is now one of Spotify’s stakeholders.) When Metallica discovered that an unreleased track had leaked onto Napster before it was available in the shops — as well as all their other work being made available — they promptly launched legal action. Cue much backlash from the band’s fans. An agreement was settled in July 2001 when Napster, being sued from all sides, was forced to close and become reborn as a subscriptionbased service. In 2006, Metallica agreed to start selling tracks on Apple iTunes. Drummer Lars Ulrich may be able to laugh about the Napster incident now, but the band hasn’t taken the Spotify plunge — yet. ✓ Pink Floyd: The pickings are slimmer than slim here. None of the iconic band’s albums are available on Spotify. The former band members had a long-running legal dispute with EMI over the presence of tracks on Apple iTunes. The spat was finally settled in 2011 in a five-year deal, which will see EMI continue to market and distribute Pink Floyd’s music through iTunes. They’ve made no official comment as to why they aren’t on Spotify, but after all the drama, I don’t expect Roger Waters and company to be rushing into distributing their music in streaming form on Spotify just yet — but their fans are patiently waiting.
73
74
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience ✓ Radiohead: All of Radiohead’s EMI label releases are available on Spotify, including the 2008 Best Of album. But the influential group didn’t renew its contract with EMI when it expired in 2007. It has chosen not to issue its two latest albums, In Rainbows and The King of Limbs, on Spotify’s streaming catalogue (you can buy them from other digital stores, though). Despite this partial absence, band members are known to use Spotify and have issued their own Spotify playlists via their website. Individual efforts from band members, including Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, and Philip Selway, are also available. (And listening to their back catalogue still earns them royalties!)
Country restrictions By country restrictions, I don’t mean that Spotify is devoid of country music! I mean some bands’ albums are available in certain Spotify countries and not in others. The complex agreements Spotify has with record labels restrict play of some songs in selected countries. Spotify says the restrictions hark back to the days of cassettes and CDs (what are those again?). Popular electropop band La Roux’s debut album isn’t available to play in full if your account is U.K.-registered (ironically, the band is British), but the eponymous album is accessible for subscribers in other Spotify countries, such as France. Figure 4-2 shows the warning message that shows up when you try to play it in a U.K. account: This Album Is Not Available in the United Kingdom. Only three tracks are available for me to listen to (the rest of the track listings are in gray), and even these tracks aren’t officially on the album — they’re linked to single releases (that are available in the U.K., as shown by the chain-link icon). This restriction is a shame because, prior to the rules being imposed, the album was fully available on Spotify UK. La Roux was even featured in an exclusive live-session recording (still accessible on the site). The same goes for Icelandic singer Björk. You can find most of her stuff on Spotify, but her 2004 album Medulla is unavailable on Spotify UK. There are two tracks available, but these tracks have a chain-link icon next to them, indicating they aren’t the original versions from the album (you can find the source of a substituted track by clicking the chain-link icon). Both the La Roux and Björk albums don’t even show up on a search if you’re logged into a U.K.-registered account like mine. I came across the links to the albums only after doing a Google search (for more on Spotify URLs, see Chapter 10).
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music
Figure 4-2: Licensing restrictions mean La Roux’s debut album isn’t for U.K. ears.
Thankfully, reports about music being pulled by record labels after that music has been hanging out on Spotify for a while are few and far between these days.
While you wait for artists to get with the 21st century and make their way to Spotify, you can find plenty of cover bands promoting their own versions through the site, which is probably a lucrative little side business. They cheekily label their tracks In the Style Of or a Tribute. To find these acts, either look for the band name or the name of a track you want to hear, and then marvel at the interesting search results.
Understanding the Play Queue and History The Play Queue, an option on the main sidebar, is a neat little feature that tells you what Spotify’s going to play next. Just click the Play Queue button to access the Play Queue page, which displays the track currently playing, followed by the tracks that are queued up to play next. The thing is, it can take a little bit of getting used to. I certainly found it a bit confusing when I first tried it. There are two main ways of making the Play Queue work:
75
76
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience ✓ Let Spotify logically decide what tracks it’s going to play (for example, if you select an album and start playing the first song, it’ll play you the rest of the tracks from that album). ✓ Manually add songs you want to hear to the Play Queue; a great way of managing the music you want to listen to during a Spotify session. When you quit Spotify, your Play Queue is wiped clean and ready for another day.
Letting Spotify do the work If you didn’t add any tracks to your Play Queue (or your Queue comes to an end), then Spotify uses a default play-queue mechanism to determine what it will play next in the list, based on a number of factors: ✓ The album you’ve selected: Spotify plays tracks from the album either in the order they were meant to be heard or shuffled if you have Shuffle mode selected by clicking the interwoven arrows at the bottom-right of the window. ✓ A playlist you selected: Spotify queues up tracks from a playlist in the order in which they were arranged or shuffled if you have Shuffle mode turned on. ✓ A list of your latest search results: When playing tracks from search results, Spotify plays tracks from this list. ✓ Radio: Whether you’re listening in Spotify Radio or a related artist’s radio mode (I describe how these modes work in Chapter 5), Spotify lets you know what tracks it’ll play next. Most of the time, these tracks are a fairly random selection. ✓ Local files: If you’ve just started playing tracks from your Local File index, then Spotify plays these tracks in the order they’re currently displayed (if you’ve sorted them by artist, for instance, they play in that order). Songs are shuffled if you select Shuffle mode. To see why Spotify is playing what it’s playing, click the Play Queue button to display, at the top of the actual Queue, Playing from: Source. For example, when I start playing songs from my local file folder, Spotify displays Playing from: Local Files. However, the moment you manually add tracks to the Queue, as explained below, these added tracks take priority. For example, say you’re listening to Track 3 of an album, but then you add to the Queue a song from a completely different place. The next song Spotify plays isn’t Track 4 of the album you’re listening to; it’s the song you just added to the Queue. Understanding how the Play Queue works is a little confusing at first, it must be said — but it’s quite useful after you get the hang of it.
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music Spotify has also finally added play-queue functionality to its mobile application. I explain more about the Spotify mobile app in Chapter 13.
Manually adding tracks to the Queue You can manually add songs to the Play Queue and bypass Spotify’s default queue. One way to do this is to click and drag a track to the Play Queue button in the sidebar (you can also right-click a song and select Queue). You can choose to add several songs at a time, for instance, by clicking and dragging an entire album or playlist to the Queue. Songs are added to the Play Queue in the order you drag them. Go to the Play Queue page to view the tracks that have been queued. Songs you add are always marked yellow for easy reference; to delete a track you’ve added from the Queue, highlight it by clicking it, and then press Delete on your keyboard. This process doesn’t delete the track from your computer or from a playlist; just from the Queue. Note that you can’t delete songs from your Play Queue that you haven’t added yourself (and aren’t marked in yellow), but you can move them around. Drag the track farther down the Queue and release the mouse button when the white line below the last track you want to hear is highlighted, thus pushing the unwanted track down to the bottom. And you can rearrange the songs you’ve manually added in this way, too.
Songs you add to the Queue always take priority — you can always doubleclick a track that isn’t in the Queue to make Spotify play it, but if you also add a load of tracks to the Play Queue, then these songs play after the current track that you double-clicked ends.
The History tab The History tab, which appears below the Play Queue page, is particularly useful if you’re listening to someone’s playlist in Random mode and want to know the track that just played, or you’re listening to Spotify radio where the tracks you’re hearing are quite random (and you heard something that sounds good but didn’t quite catch who it was by because you were making tea at the time). Those who have free accounts can also hear advertisements again — if that’s what floats your boat. The Play History is active only for your current session and gets wiped when you quit Spotify. So, if there’s a track you really liked but you aren’t sure what it was (only that it went “na-na, na-na-na-na, boom”), but you quit Spotify, then you might have missed it. One way to avoid this catastrophe is to go to your Preferences and enable scrobbling to your Last.fm account so that
77
78
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Last.fm retains your Play History (for more on Last.fm and instructions on how to sign up, see Chapter 5). For the uninitiated, scrobbling is a way of logging what you’ve played to your Last.fm account.
Searching through Spotify’s Offerings Spotify’s Search text box lets you type in a few keywords and press Enter to receive a load of relevant results. But sometimes, you might need to search a narrower range of music. For example, you’re having a 1980s-themed party, and you want to play only music from 1980 through 1989. You can do that. In fact, you can narrow it down even further — for example, by including only Madonna and Michael Jackson songs from that era. In the following sections, I explain how to use advanced search parameters to discover even more great music.
The genres of Spotify Whether it’s hard rock, techno, pop, jazz, industrial, indie pop, folk, classical, heavy metal, waltz, or whatever else takes your fancy, Spotify has the genre, or type of music, covered. You can search common genres from within Spotify. Although Spotify has released a list of nearly 1,000 known genres, not all of them will deliver results. The most obvious genres, such as classical, are covered, but even then, you may not necessarily find everything you’re after listed in a particular genre. Experimenting with the advanced genre search is fun, even if it does have its quirks. To help you on your way, this address takes you to a page that includes Spotify’s list of known genres, ranging from 2-Step/British Garage to Zydeco: www.spotify.com/int/about/features/advanced-search-syntax/ genre-list Give a search a shot (if no results come up, that’s because Spotify doesn’t have that keyword associated with any songs in its database or the results aren’t available in your country). For example, to search for pop songs on Spotify, just type genre:pop in the Search text box and press Enter. Whenever a search term consists of more than one word or includes special characters, include the type of genre in quotation marks. So, to search for the aforementioned 2 Step/British Garage at the top of Spotify’s genre list, type genre:“2-Step/British Garage”.
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music After you press Enter, Spotify whizzes through its database and delivers a listing of the most popular songs tagged with that genre. If you get too many results, you can narrow down the search even more by adding keywords after the genre — for example, genre:classical chopin.
Special searches Apart from genre, Spotify also lets you search other parameters to help you narrow down your results from more than 15 million to just a few handfuls. These parameters are (in order of importance) ✓ Artist: Use this parameter if you want to make sure you get results that include only songs by a particular artist. When you type Queen into the Search text box on its own, you get songs by the band Queen, but also “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. To limit your search to Freddie Mercury’s band, type artist:queen, instead. (To be doubly sure, enter artist:“queen” in double quotes because without the quotes, you also get the odd result for Queen Latifah.) ✓ Track: Ensures you’re searching only for songs with that word (or those words) in the title. Feeling on edge? Type track:paranoid to uncover a lot of tracks that have paranoid in the title. The most popular result, Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” is listed first. You also see “Paranoid Android” by Radiohead, “Paranoid” by the Jonas Brothers, and farther down the list, “I Think I’m Paranoid” by Garbage. ✓ Year: Just type year:1997 to find all songs from that year, with the most popular listed first. You can also search a range of years. For a soundtrack that defines my university life, I can type year:1995-1997 and be taken back to a time when Prodigy and Smashing Pumpkins ruled the airwaves (alongside the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys). ✓ Record label: Spotify isn’t all about the big four record labels. There are countless smaller, independent labels in its library. Remember, if a label consists of more than one word, you can put it in quotes. So, to search for artists signed to Domino Records, search for label:“Domino Records”. Sometimes, however, I find you get more results if you search for only the first word in the label’s name — a search for XL Recordings doesn’t give you nearly as many results as a search for just XL, so a little trial and error may be necessary here. Figure 4-3 shows what the search results for label:“xl” look like. Above the main list of search results, you can actually click through to the most popular related artists and albums of the moment.
79
80
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 4-3: You can search for tracks released by record label.
✓ Album: Type in album:Grace to bring up Jeff Buckley’s classic, as well as other albums containing the word grace. Enter the name in quotes if it consists of more than one word, such as album:“Teenage Dream”. ✓ New tracks: Spotify is always adding new tracks to its database — thousands per day. This book’s technical editor, Jer White, has devised a special tool that lists the new tracks on Spotify. (I profile this tool in Chapter 5.) Otherwise, use the parameter tag:new to view the mostrecently added albums (listed at the top of a page of blank search results). This isn’t an exhaustive list — Spotify adds thousands of tracks every day that aren’t listed in this category. ✓ International Standard Recording Code (ISRC): One best suited to the music nerds, I think. The ISRC is the musical equivalent of the ISBN number on the back of books — a unique code that identifies a piece of media. The everyday Spotify user isn’t going to look up a track by its ISRC code because she doesn’t know what it is. Codes apply to all tracks, not just albums, and are mainly used as a way to easily monitor and distribute royalty payments. If you do happen to know the ISRC of a track, type isrc: followed by the code — so isrc:GBCVT0100005 brings up the track “Bliss,” by Muse. ✓ Universal Product Code (UPC): The barcode you usually find at the back of a CD. Type in upc: followed by the numbers under the barcode to bring up the album, if Spotify has it in the database.
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music
Combining searches You can further refine your results by including different types of queries in one single search. Spotify recognizes common advanced search syntaxes, including AND, OR, and NOT. These terms must be entered in capital letters for Spotify to understand them. The following sections give you a rundown of what these terms mean and how to use them.
The plus symbol (+) in front of a word can be substituted for the word AND, and a minus symbol (–) can be substituted for the word NOT. Don’t include spaces before the keyword or search parameter when you use either of these symbols.
AND Including AND to join up two sets of terms means the search must include both of the words (or quotes) on either side of the AND. Spotify most likely gives you results that include both words or quotes anyway, but if you want to be extra sure, always include the AND. To search for tracks by the Foo Fighters that only include Live in the song or album title, you can search for artist:“Foo Fighters” AND live. Or to search for tracks released by the band only during 2001 through 2011, search for artist:“Foo Fighters” AND year:2001-2011.
NOT The search results for artist:“Foo Fighters” AND year:2001-2011 shows that the Foo Fighters also brought out a Greatest Hits album during the 2000s that includes songs released in the 1990s. To ditch that album from the results, I can refine the search by searching for artist:“Foo Fighters” AND year:20012011 NOT album:“Greatest Hits”. I can then easily select all the results and drag them into a new playlist, if I want (for more on playlists, see Chapter 6). Considering the last album I bought by the band was back in 1999, this playlist might help me catch up from where I left off — and I won’t have to order a heap of physical CDs to do it!
OR Use OR when you want to find a match for any term you list — don’t get it confused with AND, which is a more limiting search term and requires both search terms to be present. For example, to search for songs by either Michael Jackson or Jackson 5, type “Michael Jackson” OR “Jackson 5”. (If you’re a stickler for detail, you can search for artist:“Michael Jackson” OR artist:“Jackson 5”, but the results are good enough without using the artist: parameter.)
81
82
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Multiple search strings You can add more ANDs, NOTs or ORs to your searches — you aren’t restricted to using each term just once. Keep adding ORs if you want to feature multiple results. For example, Supergrass OR Blur OR Elastica OR Verve OR Pulp brings up results for all of these five Britpop artists. Here’s another example. Say you want to discover some old American jazz and Broadway standards. When you do a search for great American songbook, the top results you get are a whole load of recent Rod Stewart covers because he’s released several volumes of music under the name The Great American Songbook. You also see many results from Aretha Franklin’s similar tribute. But — although you’re sure that Rod and Aretha do the songs justice — you’re really after some earlier or more original versions. You can find plenty of other albums called Great American Songbook. All you have to do is search for album:“great American songbook” NOT stewart NOT aretha (making sure that the word NOT is in capital letters) or, if you’re using the minus symbol, “great American songbook” -stewart -aretha. (You don’t always have to use the album: parameter — the keywords “great American songbook” should be enough in this case.) Figure 4-4 shows the results of a search for album:“great American songbook” NOT Stewart NOT aretha. You still get the occasional modern tribute, but the results are far more manageable than the dozens of Rod songs that appear in a search for simply great American songbook.
Figure 4-4: Refine search results by omitting search terms.
Chapter 4: Experiencing the Music The NOT term is very versatile. Anyone who had a heart broken in 1973 and wants to avoid listening to all songs released that year can type year:1970-1979 NOT year:1973. That means Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road remains firmly out of the picture. You can use the AND, NOT, and OR search terms in all major search engines, such as Google or Bing. These search-engine searches, and others like it, are known as Boolean searches. For the latest on Spotify’s advanced search features, see www.spotify.com/int/about/features/advancedsearch-syntax.
Walking on the wild side You can use the asterisk symbol (*) to do wild-card searches. These searches match queries that start or end with a particular word or phrase. So, artist:beethoven AND great* brings up albums relating to Greatest Hits, as well as albums titled Great Composers. If you leave out the asterisk, you get matches for only the word great, not greatest.
Auto-correct heaven Search engines usually know if you misspell a keyword. Search results relating to the correctly spelled search are offered up instead, saving you both time and spell-check angst (although if you really want to search for the wrong version, you can do that, too). I have no idea how to spell “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” that famous song from Mary Poppins, off the top of my head, but when I try to hunt for it, Spotify knows that’s what I’m trying to search for. Spotify politely asks me whether I actually mean the correctly spelled word and provides a link to it. At the moment, Spotify has no official magic auto-complete tool like you find on major search engines, which predict what you’re trying to type and throw up suggestions without you having to enter the full query. If you want to check out an unofficial tool, technical whiz Andy Smith (of Spotibot; profiled in Chapter 11) has developed Spotify Instant, which you can find at http:// andysmith.co.uk/spotifyinstant.
Filtering the easy way You can narrow down the search results that are displayed even further by pressing Ctrl+F (Ô+F on a Mac), which brings up an additional Search text box in which you enter some keywords, such as an album or track title. In real time, you see the existing search results narrow until your desired result is displayed. I explain more about filtering in Chapter 7.
83
84
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Chapter 5
Finding New Tunes In This Chapter ▶ Checking out artist biographies and viewing related artists ▶ Exploring and sharing new music ▶ Listening to Artist Radio and Spotify Radio ▶ Using Last.fm to get new music recommendations
S
potify is perfect for exploring new musical horizons. You don’t need to constantly listen to the same stuff on an endless cycle. Perhaps you want to get around to hearing some of the classic albums that everyone calls “essential” listening, but you aren’t quite sure where to start. Or you might be going to a music festival this summer and want to read up on some of the acts playing and listen to a few tunes. Spotify offers loads of amazing starting points to help you discover new tunes and musical genres, and you can find some great ideas in this chapter, such as listening to Spotify’s Artist Radio. You can also follow recommendations from the networking site Last.fm. (Spotify Open subscribers, who use a free version of the service, may find the art of discovering new music particularly useful because of the five-play limit for each track.)
Reading Artist Profiles When you click an artist’s name on Spotify, her Artist page opens (PJ Harvey’s profile is shown in Figure 5-1). An Artist page is divided into several tabs: ✓ Overview: A top-level view of the artist, featuring a profile image, an abstract of her biography, and links to a selection of related artists (if available). For example, in Figure 5-1, you can see that artists related to PJ Harvey include Tricky, Sonic Youth, The Breeders, Cat Power, and Portishead. Below this information, you can find the artist’s discography, including her top hits on Spotify, followed by the albums she has released or has tracks featured on.
86
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience ✓ Biography: Most artists who have a significant presence on Spotify have a Biography tab. See more about checking out artist biographies in the following section. ✓ Related Artists: An expanded view of the links to similar-sounding artists who appear on the Overview page. On this tab, you can click through to their respective Artist pages and start listening to their music. Wonderful! ✓ Artist Radio: A virtual radio station dedicated to the artist’s music, as well as related artists’ music. See the section “Discovering Artist Radio,” later in this chapter, for more on how to use it.
Figure 5-1: An artist profile’s Overview tab includes a biography, related artists, top tracks, and a discography.
Checking Out Artist Biographies Whenever you open a biography, you can find out more about the artist’s background and influences. You can also click through to related artists, albums, collaborators, and so on, which adds a nice level of interactivity and helps you discover more music. Spotify focuses on what it does best — delivering the music to you — and uses content from third-party provider Rovi to populate these pages. You can go to the Rovi website (www.allrovi.com) to read much the same thing as Spotify shows you, but having the biography and its associated links accessible from
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes within Spotify means you can stream albums and related music without having to leave the application. Figure 5-2 shows Canadian singer Feist’s biography page.
Figure 5-2: Artist biographies often include links to related artists, albums, and the like.
Discovering Artist Radio Click the Artist Radio tab to bring up the Artist Radio page. Say you’re a fan of the Rolling Stones but want to listen to other similar stuff. No problem. Spotify can create a radio station just for you, on the fly. From the Rolling Stones’s Overview page, click the Artist Radio tab, and you’ll come to a page similar to the one in Figure 5-3. As you can see, the virtual radio station features artists who sound like the Rolling Stones, including The Who, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Chuck Berry, The Doors, and more. Below this list, your virtual radio station starts unfolding. Click the big Play button to start. All the chosen songs are random, so you won’t get the same combination every time. You can quickly skip a song you don’t want to listen to in a number of ways:
87
88
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience ✓ The Track Forward button on your keyboard (if you have one; it’s usually shown by two right-pointing arrows) ✓ The Forward button in Spotify’s own playback controls ✓ The keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+right arrow for a PC or Ô+right arrow for the Mac) ✓ The menu selection (Playback➪Next Track)
You can skip right ahead by several songs to see what Spotify’s lined up for you, and then scroll back again, if you want. Just keep skipping a track by using one of the methods described in the preceding list, and the list of queued songs continues to generate. (Don’t go too fast — be sure to wait a few seconds because these songs are all randomly generated on the fly, so you may have to wait for them to load.) How does Spotify know what kind of songs you’ll like? It cleverly analyzes everyone’s listening patterns and can cross-reference similarities between people’s favorite types of music.
Figure 5-3: Artist Radio is a personalized stream of music related to a particular artist.
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes
Zapping tracks with Shazam Shazam is a genius way to identify a song that’s playing using your mobile phone. Right now, I’m in a cafe. What better way to test Shazam than to see whether it knows what music is playing here? I certainly have no idea.
The fact it needs to hear only a few seconds of music makes it even more amazing. You can then choose to share your newly discovered track on Facebook or other social networking sites, or buy it from iTunes.
I whip out my phone, open the Shazam app, and touch the screen to start recording the chilledout electronic music that’s beating out of the speakers — a process that takes about ten seconds. Shazam — my app recognizes the music that’s playing and displays it on screen within a few seconds. It’s by an artist called Zeb, whom I’ve never heard of — but that’s the point of this magical, well-established app. Turns out that the track is part of a Chill Out Cafe compilation album released by an independent Italian label called Irma Records — all background, coffeedrinking kind of music. That’s something new I learned today!
So, where does Spotify come into this Shazam discussion? Apart from being a quick and clever way to discover new music, Shazam Encore (the paid app) also has a neat Play in Spotify feature that lets you go directly to the Spotify app and start streaming the music.
Shazam uses special digital fingerprinting wizardry to identify (or tag) the track from its impressively huge database. The free version of Shazam gives you five free tags a month.
At the moment, only those who’ve upgraded to a paid-for version of the app — such as Shazam Encore or the charity version, (Shazam)RED — can use this feature, but Spotify says it plans to eventually roll it out to the free version of Shazam. To stream the music in Spotify Mobile, you need a Premium subscription. But even if you can’t use the Play in Spotify feature, there’s nothing stopping you from using Shazam to note the name of the track you liked, which you can use to look it up on Spotify when you’re back at your computer.
Exploring What’s New Condensing tens of thousands of newly added tracks each week into a concise snapshot would make any editor’s head ache. Spotify tries to do this with its What’s New page, and it’s a decent attempt to highlight the newest releases from mainstream acts. However, the featured albums barely scratch the surface of what’s constantly being added to Spotify’s catalogue. This page tends to focus on big names or rereleases of older albums. Figure 5-4 shows the What’s New page in Spotify. But if you’re looking for your mate Dave’s new album, which he released through an independent music distributor and only a hundred people have listened to so far, it’s fair to say that it probably won’t be highlighted on Spotify’s What’s New page. But who’s to say that Dave’s album is any less good than one produced by an artist with millions of fans?
89
90
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 5-4: Spotify’s What’s New page is useful but only lists the latest mainstream releases.
That’s why several people — including this book’s technical editor, Jer White — have taken the initiative and attempted to create a more accurate picture of Spotify’s latest albums. New on Spotify, found on Jer’s website (www.pansentient.com/new-on-spotify), lists all the new songs added to Spotify in the past week. New on Spotify works by pulling data from Spotify that’s been tagged as New. Popular albums are listed first, but you can mine deeper and look for specific genres, for example. Genre information comes from Last.fm, not Spotify (see the section “Getting Started with Last.fm,” later in this chapter, for more), and Jer thinks Last.fm’s information helps categorize the music better than Spotify’s own genres. (New on Spotify is just a small part of Jer’s overall website — turn to Chapter 11 to for more about the Pansentient League.)
Listening to Spotify Radio Spotify Radio is a useful feature for Unlimited and Premium subscribers that lets you listen to a range of music from different genres and eras. (At the time of writing, this feature wasn’t yet available to American users, but I’m told it’s just a matter of time before it appears.) You can choose from a selection of music genres you want to hear, although even within these genres, the difference in music styles is massive. This variety within genres isn’t necessarily a
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes problem because the whole point of Spotify Radio is to make a special discovery and find some interesting music that you may never have heard previously. You can be taken on a bit of a musical tangent, but that’s okay. And if you don’t like the sound of a track, you can always skip it and go to the next one. Spotify Radio lets you choose to listen to music from each decade, going back to the 1950s. (Music from before 1950 is all lumped into an Older category.) You can also select music that spans a range of decades (the 1960s to the 1970s, say), and it’s possible to listen to music from multiple genres. Genres are quite standard — alternative, country, pop, jazz, and so on — but there’s no classical category! To access Spotify Radio, click the Radio option in the left sidebar (if you don’t have a paid-for subscription, the option doesn’t show up for you, with the exception of invite-only European Spotify Free account holders). You then come to a screen like the one in Figure 5-5. You can select music from just one decade by clicking the one you want from the menu bar at the top of the screen. If you want to expand your selection to include more than one era, simply click one of the dividers and drag it left or right, as appropriate, until all chosen decades are highlighted. (To select pre1950 tracks, the catch-all Older option is located at the left end of this bar.) In Figure 5-5, I’ve chosen the 1980s.
Figure 5-5: You can choose to listen to tracks from the 1980s in Spotify Radio.
91
92
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Using Playlists to discover music I talk in detail about creating and sharing playlists in Chapter 6 — it’s a brilliant way of discovering new genres and artists. Just by looking at someone’s playlist, you can go on a musical adventure and discover new acts or genres. When NME Magazine put together a Spotify playlist of Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke’s secret DJ session at Glastonbury, I knew absolutely nothing about any of the electronic dance acts featured, which mostly came under the dubstep genre. But by listening to a few tracks, I began to understand how that kind of music has been influencing the band’s later electronic sounds and discovered some new music as a result.
There was also a very cool playlist that Spotify highlighted called Originals That Are Less Famous Than the Cover Versions (look up the subscriber named auxbla). This playlist contains 387 tracks and counting, and features everything from “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton to “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. Anyone interested in the original artist could click on her name to find more tracks by her or the song title to find all the cover versions that were subsequently released — resulting in virtually endless musical fun!
In Figure 5-5, no music genres have been chosen. That’s fine; you don’t have to choose a genre if you just feel like listening to any ’80s stuff. But bear in mind that limiting music only by decade means music in your Radio stream could come from any genre, and perhaps you don’t feel like listening to country music or hip-hop right now. To narrow the selection of music by genre, just click the genre or genres you want to listen to. Selected genres turn red; click again to deselect. You can add as many genres as you want — so, if you want to listen to 1970s heavy metal alongside some jazz, that’s quite possible (odd, but possible). As you can see in Figure 5-6, Spotify Radio shows Ella Fitzgerald followed by Black Sabbath! Each time you make a change to your musical selection, the tracks that are about to play refresh. Missed a song? You can just go back a track (by selecting the Previous button on the Spotify playback controls or on your keyboard, for example) to find out who it was by. Alternatively, you can access the Play History, which appears as a tab on the Play Queue page. Although Radio mode is a great little extra for Premium and Unlimited users, it does suffer from a lack of direction when delivering tracks. (Artist Radio, described in the section “Discovering Artist Radio,” earlier in this chapter, is a much more refined feature.) I’m all for expanding your horizons, but the standard Radio feature could be a little more tweak-able — for example, if you really hate a particular artist, there’s no way to omit him from the results. I’ve also seen people complain on forums about songs that seem to have nothing to do with the genre they’ve selected, which may happen because of an inaccuracy in the category information that Spotify has received from the label.
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes
Figure 5-6: A bit random, but you can listen to a mix of ’70s jazz and heavy metal, if you want.
One way to get around this lack of Spotify Radio flexibility is to, well, not use Spotify to find new musical recommendations. That’s where the musicrecommendation engine Last.fm comes in (which I talk about in the following section) or the third-party tool Spotibot (which I discuss in Chapter 11).
Getting Started with Last.fm Last.fm, shown in Figure 5-7, has been around since 2002 — an eternity in technology terms. At its heart, Last.fm is a music-recommendation engine that logs your tracks when you play them (whether it’s on your computer or on a portable music player) and suggests other music you might enjoy. Because it draws on the listening habits of some 40 million active users, it can paint a very accurate picture of people’s listening preferences. The process of sending tracks to Last.fm is called scrobbling. You can scrobble from within Spotify by entering your Last.fm username and password on your Preferences page and selecting the Scrobble to Last.fm check box. (For scrobbling with iTunes and Windows Media Player, you download a special Last.fm application available from the Last.fm website; you can also find dozens of other third-party scrobblers that work with more obscure media players. All scrobbles are logged to the same specified account.) After you send a track to Last.fm, that track gets added to your Last.fm Library — essentially a database of tracks you’ve listened to. These tracks are all accessible from your Profile page, and you can make your listened-to tracks public or private.
93
94
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience In the following sections, I provide an overview of Last.fm: signing up, starting up a profile, and finding new music. Last.fm has loads of other features, apart from recommendations, and the site makes it easy to explore these features. It acts as a social networking site where you can discuss your musical experiences online or find out about gigs and festivals in your area. You also have the ability to listen to your very own personalized radio station (for free in the U.S., U.K., and Germany; outside these countries, it’s $3/€3 a month). You can even access a song description from Last.fm and play it in Spotify, if you’re within one of Spotify’s recognized territories — just click the Play in Spotify link on the page.
Figure 5-7: Last.fm gives you music recommendations and shows what’s popular in your area.
Last.fm, Ltd, 2011
Signing up for Last.fm To register with Last.fm, follow these steps:
1. Go to www.last.fm and click Start Your Profile.
The registration page appears.
2. Fill in the registration fields, including a username of your choosing, your e-mail address, and a password.
Because so many people are already using Last.fm, you may need to try a few times before you find a username that hasn’t been taken — try adding numbers after your name.
3. Type the auto-generated letters you see near the bottom of the registration page into the text box to prove you’re a human and not a spam robot.
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes
4. Select the check box that says you’ve read the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Links to these documents appear here, so you can read them first.
5. Click Create My Profile.
You receive an activation link in your e-mail Inbox (this went into my Junk Mail folder, so double-check if you don’t receive it right away).
6. Click the link in the e-mail to complete your registration. As an easy way to get started, when you first log in, you’ll be prompted to begin filling in a list of artists who interest you, as shown in Figure 5-8. That way, Last.fm can begin making recommendations before you’ve even started scrobbling. Just type in the artists’ names, separated by commas, and click Save. Try adding a range of different artists to receive a broader range of suggestions. For real-time scrobbling, go into your Spotify Preferences by selecting Edit➪ Preferences from the menu bar (Spotify➪Preferences on a Mac) and make sure you enter your new Last.fm username and password in the Last.fm section. When you want to start scrobbling, just select the Scrobble to Last.fm check box. Each time you listen to a track on Spotify, that track gets logged on Last. fm and added to your profile. If you want to listen to something you’d prefer not to count toward a recommendation, you can go into your Preferences and uncheck the Scrobble to Last.fm box at any time.
Figure 5-8: First-time users can get started quickly with Last.fm by entering the artists they like.
Last.fm, Ltd, 2011
95
96
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
You can also download the Last.fm Scrobbler tool if you still use iTunes or your iPod, and want to continue scrobbling from these players, as well as Spotify. Each time you plug your iPod into your computer, Last.fm can log the tracks you’ve listened to and transfer the listening history to your profile. To obtain the Scrobbler, go to www.last.fm/download.
Discovering Last.fm recommendations Last.fm can make amazing recommendations because it has 40 million active users, and more than 50 billion tracks have been scrobbled! With all this information, it can very precisely determine what kind of music you might like. It works in a similar way to the recommendations you receive from online stores such as Amazon.com, one of the pioneers of the recommendation engine. You can go straight to your Recommendations page by logging in and going to www.last.fm/home/recs. (Alternatively, click the Music tab, and then click Recommended for You.) On your Recommendations page, you can read artist biographies and click through to their most-played tracks. When viewing a track, you have the option to play it in Spotify (provided it’s in the database and you’re logged in from a country in which Spotify operates). Figure 5-9 shows what the Recommendations page looks like. Another reason the recommendations work is because Last.fm relies heavily on its community to categorize (or tag) music — for example, male vocalists, indie, electronic, and so on. This method works in Last.fm’s favor because it paints an accurate picture of what the music is all about — it isn’t confined to just one or two potentially misleading tags. As I mention in the section “Listening to Spotify Radio,” earlier in this chapter, Spotify’s genres rely only on the data supplied by the artist or label — and sometimes no data is supplied or the data supplied isn’t accurate.
Those lucky enough to be in the U.S. or U.K. can listen to Last.fm radio for free via the website (you need to pay a bit extra to stream the track from its mobile app). Otherwise, you need to pay $3 a month (€3) for radio access from the web. When you access Last.fm radio, you can listen to music from your own Last.fm Library, completely new music, or a combination of the two. Spotify’s own Related Artists feature can do this job, too, although Last.fm recommendations let you easily ditch or ban acts that you have no interest in with a click of a button, and you never have to hear them again. However, unlike Spotify, you can’t choose songs you want to listen to on demand.
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes
Figure 5-9: Last.fm analyzes people’s listening habits to deliver accurate music recommendations.
Last.fm, Ltd, 2011
More ways to find new music Restricting yourself to listening to music that sounds like what you already like can be dull — if you want to break out of that mold, Spotify can help. When I use Last.fm with iTunes, I’m restricted to scrobbling music that’s already in my Library. But with Spotify, I can choose to scrobble any tracks from Spotify’s massive database, even if I’m hearing it for the first time. By scrobbling through Spotify, I’ve expanded my musical horizons just that little bit more, meaning Last.fm can find genres of music I normally wouldn’t listen to. Last.fm also lets you find new music and interact with like-minded listeners in a range of other ways: ✓ Similar artists: Go to an artist’s Last.fm profile and click the Similar Artists tab on the left sidebar to display a list of artists who are similar, ranked from Super Similarity down to Lower Similarity. Last.fm says that ageless American singer Cher has Super Similarity to Sonny and Cher (obviously). It also tells you that Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Kylie Minogue, and Celine Dion have Very High similarity to Cher. Slightly down a notch are Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, with High Similarity. Down at Lower Similarity, we see La Toya Jackson and Meat Loaf. Here’s another example: the band Coldplay has Super Similarity with Snow Patrol, Keane, The Killers, Travis, and The Fray. Down a notch (at Very High Similarity) are Kings of Leon, Radiohead, U2, and Oasis. Toward the bottom of the back are The Police and Alicia Keys. See Figure 5-10 for an example of the Similar Artists page.
97
98
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 5-10: Acts that sound similar to Coldplay are aptly listed in Coldplay’s Similar Artists tab.
Last.fm, Ltd, 2011
✓ Neighbors: Find other Last.fm users who have similar tastes by accessing your musical neighbors (who, ironically, could be on the other side of the world). From your Profile page, click the Neighbors tag to bring up a list of people who listen to the same artists that you do. View which artists overlap, and click through to the users’ profiles to find out whether there’s anything new you might want to hear. My highest match seems to have a virtually identical library to mine, though, so no massive surprises there! ✓ Events: Last.fm recognizes your location and suggests musical events happening in your area, if you feel like getting out into the real world! You can also mark concerts and festivals you’re planning to attend and see who else from Last.fm is also planning to go. ✓ Friends: Last.fm has a new Friend Finder feature that searches for your Facebook friends (or Contacts you’ve saved in Gmail or Yahoo! Mail) who’ve registered on Last.fm. You can then send friend requests to any matches. Access it at www.last.fm/findfriends. After your request has been approved, their activities then appear in your feed, like they do on Facebook and Spotify. Without this feature, you have to manually look up someone’s real name or username, and then send him a friend request, which can be a little frustrating because not everyone uses their real names and it can be hard to guess someone’s username (especially because so many usernames have already been taken).
Chapter 5: Finding New Tunes ✓ Forums and groups: Last.fm has a bustling community of groups and forums. You can talk about your favorite music with fans by posting to the online message boards at www.last.fm/forums or by joining a relevant group (you can also create your own group!). There are plenty of Spotify-specific groups, too — just do a search for Spotify in the Search text box at the top-right of the page. ✓ Shouts: People can leave shouts (or comments) below epic tracks that they enjoyed, and they can read what other people had to say about the same tracks. Your username (and picture, if you’ve uploaded one) appears next to your shout. Click a shouter’s username or picture to access her profile and find out more about that user and her musical likes.
Adjusting Last.fm privacy You can easily access some privacy tools from within the Last.fm dashboard. You can hide the tracks you’ve recently listened to or are listening to now, choose whether to appear in Friend Finder results, hide activity, block incoming messages, and ignore certain users. The whole idea behind Last.fm is to share music, so your most listened-to tracks or artists aren’t hidden — you have to manually delete this data. To edit your details, go to your Profile page at www.last.fm/user/your username and click Edit Profile Details, which appears as a link below your username. There are two main privacy-related tabs accessible from your profile details: ✓ Privacy: In this tab, you can choose to hide real-time listening information and recent activity, and prevent people from sending you messages. ✓ Data: In this tab, erase all recent listening data, if you want. This tab also offers an option to delete your account.
Deleting tracks from the Library It’s no big deal if you forgot to uncheck the scrobble box when you played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “The Wheels on the Bus” for your kid because you can go into Last.fm and delete unwanted tracks from your Last.fm Library. That way, Last.fm won’t keep telling you to listen to The Muppets albums all the time.
99
100
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Follow these steps to remove a track from your Last.fm Library:
1. Log into Last.fm, and then go to your Profile page by clicking your username at the top-right of the screen.
Alternatively, type www.last.fm/user/yourusername directly in your browser address bar.
2. In the Recently Listened Tracks section, hover your mouse pointer over the track that you want to delete.
A gray box with a cog icon on it appears next to the track.
3. Click this cog to display a drop-down list of editing choices.
4. Click Remove from Your Library to get rid of the track.
5. (Optional) If you want, repeat Steps 2 through 4 in the Top Artists and Top Tracks section, farther down the page. Don’t worry, deleting the track from Last.fm only deletes it from the listening history for your account, not your computer.
Chapter 6
Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On In This Chapter ▶ Understanding how playlists work in Spotify ▶ Mixing your own playlist or creating an album-based playlist ▶ Rearranging playlists and playlist folders ▶ Viewing and browsing your playlist collection
R
ecently, I unearthed a treasure box of old mixtape cassettes my friends made for me in my high school and university days. Making mixtapes back then was an art form, and thinking of what to include on one was often a harder job than actually copying the songs onto the cassette. When shiny, crisp-sounding CDs started to dominate, the weary, tangle-prone cassette became sidelined. Finally when digital music and portable music players came along, humble tapes seemed forgotten for good; buried in places like my old treasure box or sitting in charity-shop bargain bins. So, where does the mixtape go from here? Apart from the time taken to choose what went into one, the whole charm behind them was how you could share them with friends, or have a handy pile of songs to listen to that match your mood or a certain time in your life. Well, thanks to Spotify, mixtapes live on. You can create playlists that feature your favorite tracks, which is something you’re probably familiar with if you’ve used iTunes or other music-management software to listen to tracks. You’ve probably put together a party mix or had a variety of tracks playing in your home office. The best thing about Spotify is that you can share playlists with friends or the greater public. You can also just keep them private, accessible for whenever you need them. And thanks to Spotify’s powerful social networking tools I describe in Part III, you can mix and match which ones you want to share and which ones you don’t. In this chapter, I show you how to create, rearrange, and view playlists. Turn to Chapter 9 to find out how to make your playlists public and check out
102
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Chapter 10 to discover how to share playlists and use collaborative playlists to work together with your friends on one.
Knowing How Playlists Work A playlist is a group of tracks that you can save and listen to at your leisure. Give your playlist a name, add a selection of tracks to it, and there you have it — your very own playlist. Okay, so there are a few tricks to creating a playlist; but essentially, that’s what it involves. Playlists appear on your left sidebar in Spotify, as shown in Figure 6-1. Click a playlist to view it in the main window. In the figure, I’m viewing Spotify in Offline mode, which means it’s not connected to the Internet, but I can still view and edit my playlists. Next time I go online, Spotify will access and store my latest playlist information. If you want, you can arrange your playlists in folders and put them in your desired order, as I explain in the section “Organizing Playlists,” later in this chapter. There’s no rule about what you can include in a playlist — your imagination is the only limit. You can add up to 10,000 tracks to a playlist, which I think is far more than enough — but the option is there if you want it!
Figure 6-1: Your playlists appear in the left sidebar and can be arranged into folders.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On I compare Spotify playlists to mixtapes, but actually that’s only part of the playlist story. According to Spotify, around 30 percent of playlists actually consist of whole albums, rather than a mix-and-match collection of songs. One limitation to Spotify at the moment is you can’t easily view songs you like by artist and album, like you can with an iTunes library. You need to put any tracks you want to save until later into a playlist (or, alternatively, star them — your folder of starred, or bookmarked, tracks acts like one giant playlist in itself, even though it isn’t strictly categorized as one and has its own special folder). After you have more than a few dozen playlists, you need to organize them in a meaningful way; otherwise, it can be hard to find the playlists you want. Another drawback is that you can’t automatically sort playlist titles and folders alphabetically for easy access; you need to manually shift them around in the order you want. When Spotify brought in folders and subfolders for playlists, organizing your playlists became a whole lot easier. Playlist folders were recently made available on the iPhone app after a long wait (previously, playlists could be viewed only in one long, relentless list). At the time of writing, playlist folders were not yet supported on other platforms (such as Android), but I’ve been told it’s just a matter of time. Turn to Chapter 13 for more on how to organize your playlists by using Spotify’s mobile apps. Syncing playlists to your iPod classic, shuffle, or nano music players is also possible (see Chapter 15), provided you own the playlist tracks as local files on your computer. Any tracks you don’t own can’t be copied onto an iPod. Use the mobile app if you want to listen to songs from Spotify’s streaming library when you’re out and about (you’ll need a Premium subscription; see Chapter 14 for more about syncing Spotify on your mobile).
Creating Playlists When creating a playlist, you might have a vague idea of the kind of playlist you want to put together, but part of a playlist’s appeal is to expect the unexpected. You never know exactly what songs you’ll add, and your whole playlist theme might change in the middle of creating one! And the best thing is that you can share your playlists with loved ones (or complete strangers). For inspiration, visit Sharemyplaylists.com, where you’ll find thousands of playlists categorized by genre. (Chapter 11 has a Q&A with Sharemyplaylists.com creator, Kieron Donoghue, as well as more listings of Spotify-related websites.)
103
104
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Oh, and maybe you could rifle through your drawers for those old mixtapes for some ideas! I’ve seen plenty of playlists that replicate old mixtapes, transporting those tapes to the 21st century. One valuable starting point is to use the advanced search tips I outline in Chapter 4 and the music-discovery tools described in Chapter 5 to begin hunting for tracks you want to add to your playlist. You can also include a whole album as a playlist; Spotify makes it exceedingly easy to do that. In the following sections, I explain how to create both a mixtape-style playlist that includes a selection of various tracks, as well as a playlist that consists of an entire album.
Mixing your own playlist A playlist’s theme is limited only by your own imagination. I wanted to put together a playlist that evoked memories of when I went backpacking throughout Europe in 2000 and then moved to London — music heard in hostels and pubs, albums I bought on CDs, and bands I saw live. To choose tracks, I browsed my local files to see whether anything I bought back then stood out, and then added tracks that brought back memories to the playlist. I also conducted a Spotify search on the most popular tracks from the years 1999 to 2001. I scanned the listings from most popular to least popular to see what tracks I remembered hearing a lot that reminded me of a particular place and time, and dragged them to my playlist. I could have narrowed the search further (as explained in Chapter 4) to a particular genre or artist, or removed all the references to Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out.” Figure 6-2 shows the playlist I created.
Figure 6-2: I created a playlist with songs to commemorate my 2000 backpacking trip.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On How you choose tracks for your playlist will probably be unique and depends on the theme of your playlist. Your creativity can really shine here! I’ve seen playlists that consist of any kind of songs as long as their titles have the word “Hello” in them, ones dedicated to contemporary classical music, Christmas playlists, playlists for girlfriends and boyfriends, personal top album picks of the year — you name it. Although your playlist-creation technique is different than someone else’s, you follow these basic steps to put together a playlist:
1. Click New Playlist, located at the bottom of Spotify’s left sidebar.
New Playlist turns into a text box.
2. Type the name for your playlist in the text box, and then press Enter to confirm your selection.
You can always change your title later (see the section “Renaming playlists,” later in this chapter).
3. After you come across a song that you want to add to your playlist, just drag and drop that track onto the playlist title.
Alternatively, right-click the track (Ctrl-click on a Mac) and select Add To from the pop-up menu that appears to bring up a list of your existing playlists. Select the playlist to which you want to add your track, as shown in Figure 6-3. (You can select New Playlist from this list if you want to add it to a completely fresh playlist; then, give the playlist a name later — see the section “Renaming playlists,” later in this chapter).
4. Click your playlist name on the left sidebar.
Your new playlist appears in Spotify’s main pane. A selection of albums from the track listings are displayed as the playlist’s artwork.
As I explain in more detail in Chapter 7, you can change a playlist view by going to View➪View as Album List or pressing Ctrl+G. This selection lets you view the album cover art next to all the playlist tracks. It looks very pretty but can take up a load of valuable screen space. To resize the album art, click and drag the right-hand side of this column to the left or right. You might want to keep your playlist private for now. But if you want to share your playlist, you have a number of ways to publicize your superb creation and get it noticed by the world. Check out Chapter 9 to connect your Spotify profile to Facebook and Chapter 10 for more on how to use the Spotify Share buttons. Now, you can play your favorite tracks and come back to them every time you start up Spotify!
105
106
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 6-3: You can add a track to a playlist by right-clicking the track and selecting Add To.
Making an album into a playlist About a third of Spotify playlists are actually entire albums. It’s painless to create a playlist dedicated to just one album. Why would you need to do this? On Spotify, you can’t bookmark an artist on the left sidebar and view all his albums at one go in the main pane, like you can with iTunes. Instead, you need to create playlists dedicated to his albums and perhaps file those playlists in a folder named after that artist. First, search for or browse to the album, such as Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York, shown in Figure 6-4. To select an album from a list of search results, click the album’s name. Alternatively, if you’re viewing an artist’s Profile page (as explained in Chapter 5), you should be able to scroll down to the album you want in the discography that’s displayed. After you select an album, drag and drop its title or album art onto New Playlist at the bottom of your left sidebar (see Figure 6-4).
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On
Figure 6-4: Drag an album to New Playlist, and it becomes a playlist!
After you drop the album on New Playlist, New Playlist changes into the name of the artist, followed by the album title. And all the tracks from that album automatically appear in that playlist. See, told you it was easy!
Organizing Playlists Having all your playlists on the left sidebar in no particular order can get a little messy, so creating folders to help you categorize your playlists can help. I personally haven’t amassed too many playlists, so my experience has been quite manageable — so far. But when you start talking about hundreds of playlists, you definitely need to have some kind of filing system in place. In the following sections, I outline how to create folders and place playlists into them, as well has how to rearrange the order of tracks in a playlist and rename a playlist. The way you organize your playlists is up to you — in Chapter 7, I give you tips for naming playlists and creating meaningful playlist folders.
107
108
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Creating playlist folders Instead of having one long, endless list of playlists on your screen, you can file them away into various folders. When it comes to managing your library, you can find loads of tips in Chapter 7, including ideas for folder names. To create a folder on your computer, follow these steps:
1. In the Spotify window, choose File➪New Playlist Folder.
A text box appears on the left sidebar.
2. Type your folder name in the text box and press Enter.
3. Drag and drop playlists into the folder to file them away. Essentially, if you’re already familiar with creating folders on a computer and dragging documents into them, you should feel right at home here. To create a subfolder that nests inside a folder, follow the same foldercreation technique, and then drag and drop your new folder into the parent folder (the folder that you want to contain your new folder). To add playlists to a subfolder, double-click the parent folder to display the subfolder, and then drag your playlist into the subfolder. You can also create sub-sub-subfolders — but going any deeper than that might get confusing and hard to navigate if you have to constantly click folders to get to what you want! If you have a complex folder structure, you can add playlists to any subfolders without having to keep clicking to open each folder. Drag your playlist over the parent folder, and after a couple of seconds, the folder springs open, displaying the subfolder ready for you to drop the playlist (repeat the process if you have a deeper folder structure). You can also drag and drop an existing folder, complete with playlists, into a parent folder to turn it into a subfolder.
Viewing playlist folders To view all playlists in a folder, hover your mouse over the folder’s name to display an arrow pointing to the right, and then click that arrow. Alternatively, double-click the folder name. The arrow now points downward, indicating that the folder has been opened (as shown in Figure 6-5). Subfolders can be opened and viewed in the same way (if you have any). After you move your mouse away from the left sidebar, the arrows turn into a sort of musical sheet symbol layered on another sheet, which indicates that they’re folders rather than individual playlists.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On Open folder
Closed folder
Figure 6-5: Arrows indicate that a folder is open or closed.
You can place playlists and playlist folders only below the Starred icon on the left sidebar of the Spotify window.
Reordering playlist folders After you have a few playlists folders in place, it’s good practice to rearrange them into some kind of sensible order. You might, for example, have several folders dedicated to different musical genres. Or you might have ones relating to different eras. If these folders are all mixed up, they can be hard to navigate. You can rearrange folders into alphabetical or numerical order so that they’re easier to browse, or perhaps keep your most interesting folders near the top of your list for quick access. The choice is up to you. To rearrange folders, use the drag-and-drop technique. Just click and hold the one you want to move and drag it up or down the list. A white line appears between any existing folders (or playlists, if they’re displayed), indicating where the playlist will appear after you drop it. You can also reorder playlists in the same way, even if they aren’t in folders. If I discover a playlist I like, I can drag it right to the top of my playlists and playlist folders.
109
110
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
In Chapter 9, I discuss how you can make your Spotify profile public and choose to share selected playlists with the folks who’ve added you to their People list. When people view your Profile page, all public playlists appear in the order you’ve arranged them (with starred tracks always listed first, if you’ve made starred tracks public). So, if you want to draw attention to a particular playlist, don’t bury it at the bottom of your list of playlists — drag it to the top of this list.
Reordering and moving playlists If you made a mistake and want to shift a playlist into a different folder (or just feel like a change), drag and drop the playlist into the correct folder. To take it out of a folder altogether, drag and drop it on the left sidebar to the area you want it relocated. A white line appears between the listings to help guide you to its new location.
Rearranging playlist tracks After you add tracks to a playlist, you can rearrange them in your chosen order. Just click a track listing and drag it up or down the list — you’ll see a white line appear between the playlist tracks, which indicates where you can drop the track you’ve selected. Let go of the mouse button, and the track moves into its new slot. Easy! You can rearrange with the drag-and-drop method only playlists you’ve created (unless you’ve subscribed to a collaborative playlist to which you have the right to edit, which is indicated with a green music note next to the playlist name). Any other playlist you subscribe to can’t be changed by anyone except their creators.
If you don’t seem to be able to rearrange your songs using this method and you’re sure it’s a playlist you’ve created, you probably clicked the top of one of the columns and sorted the tracks, perhaps inadvertently. Look for a small up or down arrow next to a column title (such as Album). Playlists can be rearranged only if they’re displayed in their original order, so you need to reset the playlist view. Just click the column that displays the arrow until the arrow disappears and the column is reset. For more on sorting, see the section “Sorting Playlists,” later in this chapter.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On
Renaming playlists If you make a mistake and want to correct a playlist title (or if you want to rename it at any time), follow these steps:
1. Select the playlist by clicking it, hover your mouse over the playlist title, and then click again.
Pressing the F2 key while clicking the playlist name also works. Alternatively, right-click the playlist, and then select Rename from the pop-up menu that appears. The entire title becomes highlighted, as shown in Figure 6-6.
2. Either press the Delete key to erase everything and then type the new title, or simply start typing to overwrite the current title.
If you made only a small typo, hover your mouse in the area you want to erase and click, which brings up a blinking cursor; you can press the Delete or Backspace key to erase incorrect letters one by one.
Figure 6-6: Rename a playlist at the click of a mouse.
Note that you can’t rename playlists you’ve subscribed to. Instead, you need to create your own playlists that contain those subscription playlists’ tracks and then give them your own names. Follow these steps:
111
112
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
1. Open the playlist, and then click any track within it.
2. Select all the tracks by pressing Ctrl+A (Ô+A on a Mac).
3. Drag and drop the higlighted selection onto the New Playlist title at the bottom of the left sidebar.
4. Right-click the playlist, select Rename from the pop-up menu that appears, and enter a name of your choice in the now-editable playlist title.
Alternatively, create the playlist name first, and then drag all selected tracks to it. In a way, copying someone else’s edited selections that they’ve carefully crafted into a playlist and giving it a new name seems a little like plagiarism, doesn’t it? But there are legitimate, practical reasons for renaming playlists your way, particularly if you already have your own system of organizing tracks down pat.
To select multiple tracks at the same time to drag into a playlist, Ctrl-click your desired tracks (Ô-click on a Mac). To select a range of tracks from a particular view that are listed one after the other, click the first track and, while holding the Shift key, click the last track. The entire range becomes highlighted, as shown in Figure 6-7.
Figure 6-7: Select a range of tracks by holding the Shift key and clicking the first and last tracks.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On
Deleting playlist tracks To delete a track from a playlist you’ve created, select it and press the Delete key, or right-click the track and select Delete from the pop-up menu that appears. To immediately reverse your decision, you can type Ctrl+Z (Ô+Z on a Mac) or choose Edit➪Undo.
Deleting playlists and playlist folders Deleting a playlist from the menu is a big step, so Spotify does give you an extra warning just to make sure that’s what you want. Follow these steps to delete a playlist:
1. Click the playlist to highlight it, and then press the Delete key.
Alternatively, you can right-click the playlist and select Delete from the pop-up menu that appears. A dialog box appears, asking Do You Really Want to Delete This Playlist?
2. Click Delete.
If you’re having second thoughts, click Keep. Deleting an entire folder is an even bigger step if you’re also planning to ditch any playlists stored within it. Like it does with playlists, Spotify prompts you, just to make sure you really want to delete that folder. Right-click the folder and, from the pop-up menu that appears, select Delete to delete only the folder or Delete Folder and Playlists to delete the folder and the playlists it contains. (When you delete only a folder, you don’t lose any of the playlists; they just appear as loose playlists in the left sidebar.) Oh, and you have another emergency recovery option — press Ctrl+Z (Ô+Z on a Mac) or choose Edit➪Undo to reinstate your playlists and folders, even after you press Delete. Don’t say Spotify didn’t give you a chance!
Sorting Playlists When you click a playlist folder’s name (as opposed to an individual playlist), all tracks filed in that folder appear in the main window. They aren’t categorized by the playlist they’re in. So, you can start to play all the tracks in that folder, no matter what playlist they’re from, as opposed to the tracks from an individual playlist. Figure 6-8 shows what it looks like when a whole folder is selected.
113
114
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 6-8: Selecting an entire folder lists all the tracks in that folder, regardless of the playlist they’re in.
Sort the tracks in a playlist or playlist folder by clicking the top of the column by which you want to sort. For example, you may want to view tracks alphabetically, so click Track to change the view to alphabetical order; click Track again to view them in reverse alphabetical order. Click a third time to go back to the original view. A small up or down arrow appears next to the column to show you which view you’ve selected; the arrow disappears when you’re viewing tracks in the order they were initially arranged. Other columns available for sorting include Artist, Time (track length), and Album.
When viewing individual playlists, you can additionally sort tracks by user and the date a track was added to the playlist, which is handy if you subscribe to a playlist that’s frequently updated by its creator and you want to see the new stuff she’s just added.
As I mention in the section “Rearranging playlist tracks,” earlier in this chapter, make sure you turn sorting off and go back to a playlist’s original view if you want to rearrange tracks! You can filter tracks to narrow down a track listing and confine it to, say, a particular artist or album. Press Ctrl+F (Ô+F on a Mac) when you’re viewing a playlist or playlist folder to bring up the Filter text box. Start typing the name of what you want to narrow your view to and watch your track view narrow down in real time, according to what you’re typing.
Chapter 6: Creating Playlists: The Mixtape Lives On
Examining a Playlist’s Anatomy Playlists you create are all stored in the fluffy Internet cloud, on Spotify’s servers — the large, always-connected computers that host content. So, if you log into a friend’s computer that’s running Spotify, you can access your playlists at any time (as long as your friend is in one of Spotify’s launch countries, or you’re a Spotify Premium customer and allowed to log in from anywhere in the world). Despite playlists being stored centrally in the cloud, your experience with them may differ slightly, depending on whether you’re online or offline, the country you’re in, or the computer or device you’re using. Here, I outline different playlist features and situations you may encounter: ✓ Synced playlists: Playlists I’ve already synced to my computer for offline listening (a Spotify Premium feature; see Chapter 16 for more on how to use it) have a symbol next to them shaped like a green circle with a white down arrow inside it. I know that when I don’t have an Internet connection, I’ll still be able to play tracks from these playlists from within Spotify. ✓ Viewing playlists when offline: Playlists I haven’t previously synced for offline listening, such as the one I selected in Figure 6-1, may have some tracks displayed in gray and others in white. The white tracks have a file symbol next to them, which means they’re local files stored on my computer, and I can still play them, even when I’m not online. The gray tracks are unplayable at the moment because I’m not connected to the Internet and can’t stream them from Spotify’s servers. If a playlist doesn’t contain any local files, then none of the tracks are playable. ✓ Regional differences: You may also see a gray track in a playlist when you’re online — it means the song isn’t in Spotify’s database or isn’t available to play in your region. But it’s still playable if the file is locally stored on your computer; you can tell whether you have a local copy of the track by seeing whether the file symbol is displayed next to the track listing. ✓ Reaching your limit: Those of you on a free, ad-supported Spotify Open plan can stream a track only five times before you have to buy it or upgrade your account to Unlimited or Premium. After you hit the five-play limit, an alert bar appears at the top of your Spotify window, informing you that you’ve reached the play limit. A pop-up window that includes links to either upgrade or buy the track also appears. ✓ Playlist authors: You can subscribe to other playlists created by other Spotify users, as I explain in Chapter 10. After you do, their usernames appear in gray next to the playlist names in the left sidebar. To access more playlists by a user, select his playlists and click his username, which appears at the top of the playlist. If he chose to enable Spotify’s social networking features (see Chapter 9 for more on Spotify Social), you see any other playlists he’s made public.
115
116
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience By the way, playlists you’ve created yourself don’t have your name next to them, so that’s how you can tell they’re yours. (Other people who’ve subscribed to your playlist — if you’ve made it public — see your username in their Spotify windows).
Chapter 7
Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips In This Chapter ▶ Viewing and sorting your local music files ▶ Figuring out what the Spotify symbols mean ▶ Creating shortcuts to your music ▶ Organizing your music Library
S
potify is brilliant at playing virtually any type of music you want — and, as I cover in Chapter 5, it’s very easy to discover new stuff to listen to. But it’s not all about the new tunes, of course: You probably already own a huge back catalogue of music that’s locally stored on your computer, as opposed to floating around in Spotify’s music-on-tap Internet cloud. This chapter aims to explain how to keep both these streams of music organized and accessible so that you experience a seamless flow between the two. So, you have to tidy up your music, making sure it’s all correctly labeled and sorted into meaningful folders and playlists. In this chapter, I also explain what all the little symbols (known as icons) you see in Spotify represent. Last of all, knowing a few keyboard shortcuts can also help save you oodles of time, so I provide a list of them, as well as some fun shortcut features and ways to bookmark your music.
Importing Your Local Files in an Instant Spotify automatically scans a range of folders in your computer’s hard drive and indexes the music it finds. Click Local Files on the left sidebar in the Spotify window to see them all in the Spotify window’s main pane.
118
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience The first time Spotify scans your local files may take a few minutes, depending on how many music files you have, but you can listen to other tracks within Spotify while the files are indexing. Spotify frequently looks for any changes to the index, such as newly added albums imported from a CD by using iTunes or Windows Media Player. In most cases, you don’t need to worry about manually adding these files (for cases where you have to, see the sidebar “Removing duplicate music files from your Local Files index,” in this chapter). Refer to Chapter 3 for more information on the music folders Spotify indexes and how to add additional ones to the mix. Spotify lists all the tracks in these folders that are in a recognizable file format. To find out the type of file format a track has, open Windows Explorer (or the Finder on the Mac), browse to the track in question, and take a look at its file extension (the part after the dot). Like digital photos, digital music doesn’t come in just one musical form. The file formats that Spotify is happy to index include ✓ MP3: After all these years, MP3 is still the most common digital music file standard out there, even if enthusiasts like to, well, enthuse about other, superior-quality formats. Spotify is confident enough to use MP3s (which have a .mp3 file extension) in its relatively new download store which, in 95 percent of cases, you can get at the maximum quality format of 320 kilobits per second (Kbps). ✓ Next-generation AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) files: These types of files come in many flavors and include .mp4, .m4a, and .m4r, as well as.m4p files (apart from rights-protected ones; see the sidebar “Upgrading unreadable iTunes tracks,” in this chapter, for more on this issue). ✓ Some video file formats: These formats include .m4v, .3gp, .3g2, and .mov. Spotify doesn’t play video; but sometimes these files have only audio on them, and Spotify can support that audio format. Spotify, perhaps surprisingly, doesn’t yet support some file formats (but watch this space; the situation may have changed by the time you’re reading this book). These unsupported file formats include ✓ OGG files: Ironically, although Spotify streams its music in Ogg Vorbis format, it can’t yet support importing files in this format. ✓ FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) format: Audio fans love this format because it’s lossless, meaning the music loses none of a CD’s original quality when it gets saved as a digital file.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips
Upgrading unreadable iTunes tracks You may wonder why Spotify is missing some of the music you purchased from iTunes. Apple probably placed play restrictions on the digital files when you purchased them. Prior to 2010, Apple sold most of its cheaper, lower-quality tracks encoded with digital rights management (DRM), which prevented those tracks from playing on so-called unauthorized devices. You may need to pay extra to upgrade in order to remove the copy restrictions. Find out more at http://support.apple.com/kb/ ht1711 by clicking the View Your Eligible iTunes Plus Upgrade Items link.
On average, you probably have to pay an extra 30 cents (20p) a track, but luckily, you can pick and choose the ones you want to upgrade. If it all seems like too much effort (and cash), remember that you can just opt to play the streaming version when you’re in Spotify instead, as long as Spotify has the track in its database. But Open subscribers can play a track only five times before they need to purchase it or upgrade to an unlimited streaming plan.
Dealing with pesky Windows Media Player files Unfortunately, Spotify can’t play music that’s been saved in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. Avoid this problem when you rip (or copy) the tracks from your CDs by saving them in MP3 format, or in another higher-quality format that Spotify supports. You can actually rip CDs in MP3 format by using Windows Media Player, but you need to specify that you want to use a format other than WMA either each time you rip a CD or universally in the settings. Follow these steps to tell Media Player to rip your CD in MP3 format:
1. Click the Start button, and then type Windows Media Player in the Search text box.
While you type, a list of search results appears above the Search text box.
2. Select Windows Media Player from the results.
The Windows Media Player window opens.
3. Insert the audio CD that you want to rip into your computer’s CD/DVD drive.
Windows Media Player recognizes that your disc has been inserted, searches for track information, and displays that information in the main pane. The CD should also start playing.
4. Choose Rip Settings➪Format➪MP3.
The MP3 option becomes checked. During this session, all CDs you rip will be in MP3 format.
119
120
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
5. Click Rip CD in the menu bar above the track listing.
The ripping process starts immediately, and songs are saved by default to your Music folder.
To avoid having to choose MP3 every time you rip, follow these steps:
1. Choose Organize➪Options.
2. From the Options dialog box that appears, click the Rip Music tab.
3. In the Format section, select MP3 from the drop-down list, and then click OK. Already have a load of WMA files? You can deal with the ones you’ve already ripped by converting them to MP3 or AAC by using any number of software solutions on the market, including the latest version of iTunes. The WMA tracks have to be unprotected, meaning they can’t have digital rights management restrictions coded onto them.
Tagging your tracks Every MP3 or AAC file isn’t just a piece of audio. Just like a digital photograph can contain extra information (about the camera used, exposure settings, the time it was taken, and so on), a digital music file can also contain information, called metadata, that identifies and tags a track. Most likely, your local files have already been tagged for you by Gracenote (see the following section), but sometimes, you may want to input your own descriptive content for tracks (including adding your own track name). For example, you might need to input this info if the album isn’t in the Gracenote database. You can also change information to organize your music files in a certain way. For instance, you might want to add a classical music track’s original composer to the Artist field, rather than the performer who’s actually playing the track. Or maybe you want to remove the definite article before an artist’s name, such as The Who or The Beach Boys (although the software is smart enough to alphabetize artists correctly, ignoring the articles). To edit the information for a track in Spotify, follow these steps:
1. In Spotify, select Local Files in the left sidebar.
The Local Files pane opens.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips
2. Select the track whose information you want to change.
To edit a selection of tracks at the same time, rather than just one, select the first track, and then Shift-click the last track. All the tracks between these two are highlighted. To choose multiple tracks that aren’t listed together or to undo the odd highlighted track, hold down the Ctrl key (Ô on the Mac) while you click each one.
3. Right-click the title.
For Mac users, Ctrl-click.
4. Select Edit Info from the pop-up menu that appears.
A dialog box similar to Figure 7-1 appears.
Figure 7-1: Editing the metadata in a digital file is a good way to help you organize tracks.
5. Select a field that you want to change, and then enter the new information.
Repeat this step for all the entries you want to change.
6. (Optional) If you want to change the genre assigned to this track, click the selection below Genre, and then select the option you want from the drop-down list that appears.
7. Click Done when you finish making changes.
Your changes are saved, and you go back to Spotify. Choosing multiple items to edit at the same time can cause headaches if you make a mistake. Remember that what you change in the metadata applies to all the items you’ve selected.
121
122
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Removing duplicate music files from your Local Files index Spotify isn’t perfect. Like all software, errors do occur, and frustration can ensue. Once, duplicate versions of all my music files were appearing in my Spotify Local Files index. These duplicates might appear on iTunes, too — but iTunes includes a function to find and remove duplicate music files; Spotify doesn’t (not yet, anyway). You need to delete all files from your index, and then import them again. Follow these steps for an admittedly tedious workaround: 1. Click Local Files to display these tracks in the main pane. 2. Click a track listing, and then press Ctrl+A (Ô+A on Mac). All the tracks in the Local Files index are selected.
3. Press the Delete key to delete them all. Don’t worry — this step doesn’t delete the original files! Spotify apparently thinks that because you manually delete the files, you don’t want them indexed in the future. 4. For tracks that you do want indexed, manually drag the files from iTunes into Spotify’s Local Files index. You don’t have to do this process one track at a time. In iTunes, you can click All to select all artists and drag this directory into Spotify. Now, all these tracks (and only one copy of the tracks) should load.
Gracing your Library with Gracenote Out of the many hundreds of albums on my computer that I’ve ripped from CDs, I don’t recall manually typing in details about any of them. All the track and artist information, as well as the album’s title, was pulled up from the Internet. Back in the last century, ripping tracks from a CD to your computer was a bit of a chore. Digital files were normally identified as Track 01, Track 02, Track 03, and so on; you needed to rename the tracks manually and save them in an appropriate folder on your computer (usually named after the CD title and artist). Without proper labels, you might get your Rachmaninov mixed up with your Rage Against the Machine. But for many years, music database Gracenote (www.gracenote.com) has been able to identify the CD you’re playing as soon as you pop it into your drive, as long as you’re online at the time. People don’t even know how it happens, it just does. Your computer can connect automatically to Gracenote’s database via iTunes or Windows Media Player.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips Apart from title, track, and artist, Gracenote includes other information in its metadata descriptions, such as an image of the cover art, the genre (say, R&B), the composer, the mood and tempo, in what era the music was recorded, and so on. But sometimes, you want to have control over editing the information in your tracks (and other times, Gracenote actually doesn’t have the song in its database). Some people don’t always agree with the tags that Gracenote uses, and they want to assign a different genre or description to their tracks. If you manually edit the information in your tracks (as described in the preceding section), you probably don’t want Gracenote to overwrite those changes; particularly if you’ve painstakingly spent hours making them. When Spotify first introduced Gracenote integration, listeners expressed a lot of discontent. Spotify automatically updated people’s local tracks by using the Gracenote metadata, which then overwrote people’s unique tags. Luckily, there was an option for people to undo Gracenote’s changes and revert to their original data. Spotify has since abandoned this practice, so updating data by using Gracenote information is strictly optional — and you can still undo changes. You may have a few stray or orphan tracks in your Spotify Local Files content that you want Gracenote to identify. To update track information from Gracenote via Spotify, follow these steps:
1. Click Local Files and browse to the local track or album you want to update.
To find tracks quickly, check out the section “Filtering the music,” later in this chapter. A small rectangle that features a musical note at the end of the track listing confirms that the file is locally stored (see the section “Recognizing Some Spotify Icons,” later in this chapter).
2. Select the track that you want to update.
To select multiple tracks, Ctrl-click (Ô-click on the Mac) to highlight each of the tracks you want. To highlight large swathes of tracks, click the first track, and then Shift-click the last track. All the tracks in between these two become highlighted.
3. Right-click (or Ctrl-click on the Mac) the name of the highlighted track (or tracks), and then select Update Info from Gracenote in the pop-up menu that appears (see Figure 7-2).
The first time you update from Gracenote, you have to agree to its terms, which appear.
123
124
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 7-2: You can update track information by using Gracenote.
4. Read the End User License Agreement, which appears as a pop-up message, and then click I Agree.
You need to approve this agreement only once, unless the terms change in the future. Gracenote updates the information for the selected track (or tracks, if you chose more than one). This update may take a few moments to complete. Any corrections are now displayed (for example, if your original track name was misspelled, Gracenote corrects it).
5. If you want to undo the changes, right-click the track again, and then select Undo Gracenote Changes from the pop-up menu that appears. If you keep your digital music within your iTunes Media Library and use iTunes regularly, you should be aware that in rare circumstances, when you update data from Gracenote, your local files could shift location and then be unplayable in Spotify unless you import them again. You can avoid this problem all together by going into iTunes and choosing Preferences➪Advanced, and then unchecking the Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized option. This happens because iTunes organizes music in hierarchical folders related to artist, album, and song; and if these parameters change, then Spotify doesn’t know where to find them. But if you don’t take this precaution and your files experience this location shift, you need to import your files again (see the sidebar “Removing duplicate music files from your Local Files index,” in this chapter, for information about manually importing files).
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips
Recognizing Some Spotify Icons Spotify uses several little icons to help identify certain features of a track or playlist. Table 7-1 gives you a helpful little primer on what the most common icons actually mean.
Table 7-1
Spotify Icons
Symbol
Meaning
Chain icon
You may see this icon next to a playlist track. It means you can’t play the track’s album in your country, but Spotify has found the same track on a substitute album, which you can play. If you want to know where the track came from, click the chain icon to go to this substitute album.
Rectangle that contains a music note
Seeing this icon next to a song means that the file is locally available on your computer.
Red, broken rectangle
Seeing this icon next to a local file means that the link (or path) to your local file is broken or not found. Perhaps iTunes moved the local file to a different folder. You can try to import the file again by browsing to the actual file and dragging it into Spotify’s Local Files pane. The broken rectangle link also shows up if a song is protected by digital rights management (DRM), so it can’t be played outside of iTunes. A notification bar appears if this is the case, and you’re prompted to remove all DRM-protected tracks from the Local Files pane.
Green music note with a dot next to it
This icon is shown next to a playlist and indicates that the playlist is collaborative, which means that multiple users can edit it. For more on collaborative playlists, see Chapter 10.
Arrow with a line above it
Seeing this icon next to a track means Spotify has several versions of the track available under the same name, such as a radio-friendly edit and an uncensored version. Click this icon to see the different options appear in a list, connected by a bracket.
Green circle that contains a down-pointing arrow
The playlist is available in Offline mode. (This option is available for Premium subscribers only.)
Spinning arrows
The playlist is currently being synced so that you can listen to it in Offline mode (Premium subscribers only). (continued)
125
126
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Table 7-1 (continued) Symbol
Meaning
Music note
A playlist.
Dot with waves coming out from each side
The symbol for Spotify radio.
Rectangle with a music note on it, overlaid on another rectangle
Playlist folder. When you hover your mouse over this icon, it turns into a triangle pointing to the right, which you can click to access any playlists within the folder.
Making Life Easier with Shortcuts It’s perfectly fine to navigate your way around the Spotify window by using a mouse; selecting menus to achieve tasks, and clicking or double-clicking here and there. It’s an extremely intuitive way to go. But at times, you might want to use keyboard shortcuts to achieve certain tasks quickly — for example, just pressing Ctrl+F on a PC brings up a Search text box that you can use to filter a bunch of search results. (I talk more about filtering in the section “Filtering the music,” later in this chapter.) I mention shortcuts throughout the book, but in this section, I give them to you in one handy place, with both the Mac and PC equivalents. Also, see the Cheat Sheet for the most common ones. Table 7-2 shows you Spotify’s official keyboard shortcuts. You can also find this list online at www.spotify.com/int/help/keyboard-shortcuts.
Table 7-2
Spotify Keyboard Shortcuts
Task
Shortcut (PC)
Shortcut (Mac)
Create new playlist
Ctrl+N
Ô+N
Copy
Ctrl+C
Ô+C
Cut
Ctrl+X
Ô+X
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips Task
Shortcut (PC)
Shortcut (Mac)
Paste
Ctrl+V
Ô+V
Delete
Del
Backspace
Select All
Ctrl+A
Ô+A
Deselect items
Ctrl+Shift+A
Ô+Shift+A
Play/pause
Space
Space
Next track
Ctrl+Right arrow
Ô+Right arrow
Previous track
Ctrl+Left arrow
Ô+Left arrow
Volume up
Ctrl+Up arrow
Ô+Up arrow
Volume down
Ctrl+Down arrow
Ô+Down arrow
Mute
Ctrl+Shift+Down arrow
Ô+Shift+Down arrow
Help
F1
Ô+Shift+/
Go to the Search text box
Ctrl+L
Ô+L
Browse back (to the previous screen)
Alt+Left arrow
Ô+[ (left bracket)
Browse forward
Alt+Right arrow
Ô+] (right bracket)
Play the highlighted (selected) row
Enter
Enter
Preferences
Ctrl+P
Ô+, (comma)
Log out active user
Ctrl+Shift+W
Ô+W
Quit (close) Spotify
Alt+F4
Ô+Q
Hide/close the Spotify window
- (dash)
Ô+H
Restore the hidden Spotify window
- (dash)
Ô+Alt+1
View album artwork in track listings
Ctrl+G
Ô+G
Don’t forget, too, that if you have a keyboard that includes media keys on it, Spotify’s been designed to work with those keys.
When quitting Spotify in Windows, you can’t just click the X at the top-right of the window like you usually do when quitting many other programs. This action only minimizes the Spotify window, it doesn’t shut down Spotify itself, which continues to show up in the taskbar in the background. To properly quit Spotify, you have to either use the Ctrl+Q shortcut or choose File➪Exit in the Spotify window. (This action will sound familiar to Mac users who are used to quitting programs in this way!)
127
128
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Organizing Your Tracks As I explain in Chapter 6, Spotify relies heavily on playlists when it comes to listening to your music. A playlist doesn’t have to be made up of disparate tracks from different albums; you can also make a playlist out of an album listing. Because much of your music may not necessarily live on your computer anymore, the Spotify playlist becomes even more essential as a way to keep track of the music you want to hear because not all that music is categorized on your hard drive.
Using Library view Click the Library symbol (shaped like a house) to access all tracks, including ones you’ve added to a playlist, imported from your computer, or bought from Spotify’s in-house digital music store. All your tracks are likely a mixture of both local tracks and tracks streamed from Spotify’s Library. A permanent Filter text box appears at the top of this view, which you can use to narrow the tracks displayed by typing the name of what you want to narrow your view to.
Managing the music in your Library When Spotify first debuted, it didn’t allow you to create folders for playlists, which was very annoying because all your playlists appeared in a list down the left sidebar in one long scroll. That’s all sorted out now, thank goodness. (Although, at the time of writing, Spotify still doesn’t yet have folders for people using its Mobile app on an Android device. Please hurry up and fix this, Spotify!) As I describe in Chapter 6, it’s easy to create folders and subfolders into which you can place your tracks. But how can you arrange these folders and playlists in a meaningful way? Here are some suggestions about how to make the listening experience easier: ✓ Arrange folders by composer; handy for classical music fans because many different artists may play the same song. ✓ Create alphabetical folders (A, B, C, and so on), and then subfolders that contain artist names within these folders.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips ✓ For filing albums, you can use a hierarchical arrangement similar to what iTunes uses for its Library — a main artist folder, which includes album subfolders that contain tracks filed within these subfolders. ✓ Create folders by year (1994 and 1997 were good years for music), with album subfolders in these year folders, or playlists dedicated to the best songs from those years. ✓ Make playlists stand out from the crowd. Use capital letters (LIKE SHOUTING), asterisks, dashes, or anything that can make your favorite folders and playlists shine from the rest.
Managing Spotify and iTunes playlists If you’ve established a lot of playlists in iTunes, you don’t need to re-create those playlists in Spotify. The first time Spotify scans your hard drive for iTunes tracks, it also knows to scan the playlists you’ve created in iTunes. A more recent Spotify release now lets you manually import playlists from iTunes. Just choose File➪Import Playlists➪iTunes. These playlists should appear in Spotify’s left sidebar, where your Spotify playlists also reside. But I find that iTunes and Spotify don’t always sync up; for example, iTunes has the ability to create automated playlists based on certain criteria (such as songs from 1992), but these playlists don’t copy over to Spotify. If you have iTunes playlists that don’t import to Spotify, you can manually copy them over to Spotify. Follow these steps:
1. Open both iTunes and Spotify on your computer.
2. Click and drag the title of your iTunes playlist into the New Playlist section of Spotify’s left sidebar.
All the tracks appear as a new playlist, but without its title.
3. Rename the playlist by clicking the untitled playlist and, when the mouse turns into a blinking cursor, typing the name of the playlist; then hit Enter. You can find loads of different and creative websites that can help you copy over your playlists from iTunes. One easy-to-use converter is Ivy (www.ivyishere.org). Follow these steps to use Ivy:
1. In iTunes, click your playlist and choose File➪Library➪Export Playlist.
2. In the dialog box that appears, browse to the location where you want to save the file and make sure XML is selected in the Format dropdown list.
129
130
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
3. Click Save.
Alternatively, you can save the playlist on a memory stick, if you don’t have immediate access to Spotify on the computer you’re using.
4. In your web browser, go to the Ivy website (www.ivyishere.org), and then click the Import Your Playlist Now button.
You get taken to a new upload page, from which you can add your playlist. The Playlist File tab is selected for you by default.
5. Click the Browse button in the Select a Playlist File from Your Computer section.
A File Upload dialog box appears.
6. Browse to the playlist you just saved, and then click Open to attach the file.
7. On the Ivy web page, click the Upload button at the bottom of the page.
Ivy analyzes the file you just uploaded and displays the number of tracks it finds.
8. Click the Spotify This Playlist button, located below the number of tracks.
Ivy looks for tracks that match the ones in your playlist on Spotify and displays the number it has found (for example, 9 Out of a Possible 12).
9. Click the music note image to copy the playlist tracks it’s found to your Clipboard.
All the found playlist tracks are copied as Spotify-friendly addresses (for more on understanding Spotify links and addresses, see Chapter 10).
10. In Spotify, paste the tracks into a Spotify playlist by opening the playlist in the main pane and pressing Ctrl+V (Ô+V on the Mac).
You can paste tracks only into a playlist you created.
Sorting out your tracks Spotify makes it easy to sort track listings by presenting search results, playlists, and local files in a list of columns, which you can swiftly arrange in ascending and descending order. For example, click the title of the Track column to sort the column in alphabetical order (an arrow pointing up appears next to the word Track). Click Track again to sort the columns in reverse alphabetical order, (with the arrow next to the word Track now pointing down). The sort fields include
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips ✓ Track/Artist/Album title: View these fields alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order. ✓ Popularity: When you conduct a Spotify search, you can click Popularity to see the most-listened to tracks first. The number of white bars that appears next to the track shows you the relative number of Spotify users who have listened to it. You can also sort by least-popular results, if you feel like helping out the stragglers. There have been plenty of times when I’ve been pleasantly surprised with what’s on offer! ✓ Time: Sort results from the longest songs to the shortest ones. Handy if you’re a Spotify Open user and don’t want to use up too much of your free listening time! ✓ User: This column is visible in all playlists to let you see who added what songs to those playlists (and when). This sorting field is useful for collaborative playlists in work scenarios — if it wasn’t for this feature, I’m sure some practical jokers could have gotten away with adding cheesy background music to freak out the latest work-experience intern. You can also see who has (in your opinion) the best and the worst taste in music! Sort the users out alphabetically or in reverse alphabetical order. ✓ Added: Viewable in playlist results and in Local File view. This column lets you see when a track was added to a playlist or to your local files. Again, you can sort this column by date added, in either ascending or descending order. I have a playlist that I created well over a year ago, and this column shows the various stages it’s gone through when I added new tracks over the months.
Filtering the music The filter is a cool tool that Spotify calls a “magical librarian” because it can find what you have on your shelf right away. Well, this is one library in which you’re allowed to crank up the music as loud as you want! Don’t get the filter mixed up with your regular Search text box, though. The filter is used to sort through existing search results or any track listings (such as local files or playlists) that are currently displayed in the main pane. It works in real-time, filtering these often long and relentless lists by narrowing down results in an instant. A Filter toolbar sits permanently at the top of your Library. Otherwise, you can bring one up by pressing Ctrl+F (Ô+F on a Mac). Just start typing the name of what you’re looking for to make Spotify start narrowing down the list to only tracks that include those characters. Spotify looks at the track name, album, and artist when filtering the list.
131
132
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Filtering your Spotify Library When you build up a load of playlists and throw your local files into the mix, you may be daunted by keeping track of them all. Fear not. The Filter can help keep you calm and organized. To use the Filter, click Library in Spotify’s left sidebar to open a list of all the tracks in your playlists and local files in the main Spotify pane. The Filter toolbar is located at the top of this Library list. For example, say that I want to view all the songs I have by British singer Adele. When I type ad into the Filter text box, Spotify instantly tells me that it found matches for 68 tracks from 28 artists on 29 albums. The results include Adele, as well as the tracks “Advert,” by Blur, and “Adelaide,” by Ben Folds. If I search for ade, the Blur track disappears. When I enter the whole name, adele, I get results from Adele, and only Adele.
Filtering your search results The Filter toolbar is always available in your Library, but you have to bring it up elsewhere (such as when you’re doing a general Spotify search and want to narrow the results). To access the Filter outside of the Library, choose Edit➪Filter or press the filter keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+F (Ô+F on the Mac). When you conduct a search, Spotify brings up a page of the most relevant results, and you may see what you’re looking for somewhere on the screen. But if not, take note: Spotify may have found many more results; they just can’t all fit on the screen at the same time. When you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you may see a spinning circle icon and the words Fetching More Results. After a few seconds, more tracks appear. Repeat the scroll-down process, and Spotify may well start looking for even more tracks. You can bring up the Filter either when you think you have enough results to sort through or when Spotify has delivered all the results it has. Figure 7-3 shows Spotify looking for additional results of a search for pj harvey.
Figure 7-3: Spotify downloads batches of results at a time.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips This process sounds dull, but if you know what you’re searching for, Spotify always delivers the most relevant or popular results first, meaning you don’t have to keep scrolling down too far. In Figure 7-3, the search results near the end (for singer PJ Harvey) are full of karaoke versions and tribute bands. If you wanted those kinds of results in the first place, you probably would have narrowed down the search earlier by including the word tribute or karaoke in the Search text box. I liken it to a typical web search — the search engine could potentially find millions of results, but you’re probably interested in only the first page. For more advanced searching tips, see Chapter 4.
Viewing album cover art (or loving Ctrl+G) In Spotify, when you’re playing a song, its album cover art shows up at the bottom-left of the window (click it to make the artwork even larger). A cool trick in Spotify to display the cover art for all songs in a playlist or folder — which was a hidden shortcut for ages and not officially supported until recently — is to choose View➪View as Album List. Alternatively, Ctrl+G (Ô+G on the Mac) works, too. Figure 7-4 shows you what a conventional Spotify playlist looks like.
Figure 7-4: You can view all your albums as a list; but sometimes that can get a little dull.
133
134
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Why would you live with such an uninspiring-looking playlist when you can have pretty pictures complementing it? Figure 7-5 shows you what the same playlist looks like after the effect is applied. To go back to the original dull view, press Ctrl+G again. You also can show album cover art in this way when you’re viewing local files and your Library.
You can resize the albums and make them even bigger. Move your mouse cursor to the gray bar at the top of the listings and hover it over the line that divides the cover art column from the Track column. The cursor turns into a line with two arrows coming out of it. Click and drag the edge of the cover art column to the right and watch that column magically expand.
Figure 7-5: You can switch to an attractive gallery-type view of your playlists, complete with album cover art.
Starry, starry tracks I introduce the concept of starred tracks in Chapter 3. In Spotify, all tracks and albums can be tagged with a star — it’s a way of bookmarking (or favoriting) your preferred tracks or tracks that you want to come back to later. All items you star are listed in your Starred folder. You can also star all tracks in an album at the same time and add those tracks to this list, too.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips You can star a track in a couple of ways: ✓ While listening to a cool track, click the empty star icon next to the track that’s playing, which appears at the bottom-left of the Spotify window. ✓ Click the empty star next to any track listing. This method is handy if you want to bookmark a track and come back to it later. To star an album, follow these steps:
1. Go to any album listing.
For more on browsing, see Chapter 4.
2. Click the empty star next to the album name (helpfully, you’ll see the word Star next to it).
All the tracks in that album become starred and are automatically added to your Starred tracks. Click Starred on the left sidebar to take a look at all your starred tracks in the Spotify window’s main pane. You can initiate the filter (as described in the section “Filtering your search results,” earlier this chapter) to narrow down these starred tracks if you’re looking for songs from a particular artist or album. Chapter 9 tells you how to share all your starred tracks with your Spotify friends.
Creating shortcuts to access the music Virtually everything on Spotify has its own unique address — tracks, public profiles, playlists, albums, artists, and even search results. This setup makes it very easy to share music across the Internet, as I explain in more detail in Chapter 9. When it comes to organizing your music, these unique addresses can also be a great help. By creating a computer shortcut — an icon on your computer that you can double-click to launch the appropriate music — you can have quick-and-easy access to albums, artists, tracks, and playlists. You can create shortcuts and put them on your desktop (the main screen of your computer), but if you create too many, your desktop can get a little cluttered. Alternatively, you can file shortcuts in appropriate folders on your computer that reflect a structure that means something to you. The easiest way to create a shortcut is to drag and drop the appropriate album, track, artist, or playlist to the desktop or into the folder you want. Figure 7-6 shows a very basic example of the Windows Music Library folder after I dragged a bunch of playlists into it.
135
136
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Figure 7-6: You can create shortcuts to playlists, tracks, and more by dragging them into a folder or onto your computer desktop.
Individual searches also have their own unique addresses, but you need to create a shortcut manually for them because they don’t support the dragand-drop mechanism. Follow these steps to create a shortcut to a searchrelated address in Windows 7:
1. Conduct a search on Spotify.
2. Double-click the search text you just typed so that it becomes highlighted, and then press Ctrl+C to copy it. You use this search query as part of your shortcut address.
3. Go to your desktop or browse to the folder in which you want to store the shortcut.
4. Right-click in the area where you want to store the shortcut, and then choose New➪Shortcut from the pop-up menu that appears.
5. In the Create Shortcut dialog’s Type the Location of the Item text box, type spotify:search:, and then press Ctrl+V.
This step pastes into the text box the search query you copied in Step 2. The spotify:search: bit tells your computer to launch a Spotify search that contains the content you just pasted. So, you could create a shortcut to Beyonce releases from 2009 by entering spotify:search: artist:beyonce year:2009.
6. Click Next to continue.
7. In the Type a Name for This Shortcut text box, give the shortcut a name (such as Songs I Discovered This Week), and then click Finish.
A shortcut appears — but when you manually add a shortcut this way, you don’t get the groovy Spotify icon that you get when dragging and dropping.
Chapter 7: Mastering the Library at Your Fingertips For Mac users, you need to follow these steps:
1. Conduct a search on Spotify.
2. Double-click the search text in the Search bar so that it becomes highlighted, and then press Ô+C to copy it.
You use this search query as part of your shortcut address.
3. In your web browser address bar, type http://open.spotify.com/search/.
Be sure to include the forward slash at the end of the address. Don’t press Enter yet. 4. Press Ô+V to paste the search query you copied in Step 2.
The query appears at the end of the address you entered in Step 3.
5. Press Enter.
A web link to the search is created.
6. Drag and drop the icon that appears to the left of your web browser’s address bar into your desired folder or onto the desktop.
The shortcut icon appears, ready to be clicked! Previous versions of Spotify allowed you to simply right-click a search result, and then copy and paste the address into a browser or shortcut location bar in order to create the shortcut. But this process doesn’t work any more (unless Spotify reinstates it in a future version), so you need to use the workarounds I describe in the preceding lists. You may think the workaround is worth it if you have very complicated searches you want to save, though!
You can organize music outside Spotify itself in many other ways. Many Spotify fans have come up with their own unique takes — this book’s technical editor, Jer White, uses Delicious, an online bookmark manager, to access Spotify playlists. Check out his technique at http://pansentient. com/2010/10/a-delicious-way-to-manage-spotify-playlists.
137
138
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
Chapter 8
Downloading Tracks from Spotify In This Chapter ▶ Buying downloads through Spotify ▶ Paying for your downloads ▶ Filling in missing tracks on offline playlists ▶ Appreciating the privileges of tracks
S
potify, along with other streaming music services like it, has undoubtedly changed the way people perceive owning music. Even when people started digitizing their CD collections or buying tracks from online music stores, they still owned that music, even though it wasn’t on a physical disc. Streaming music changed all that by giving people the opportunity to subscribe to (or essentially rent) access to a virtually unlimited library of music. Gone is the need to actually own the music — Spotify Premium subscribers can sync thousands of tracks at a time for offline listening on up to three separate devices, and at other times, they can listen to their favorites whenever they’re online. Even so, Spotify has always felt enough demand existed to justify offering a download service that lets people buy tracks that they can keep and do with whatever they want. Spotify has an in-house download store, from which you can purchase quality MP3s. The new offering gives all Spotify account holders the ability to purchase their entire playlists in just a couple of clicks and sync those playlists to their iPods and mobile devices. At the time of writing, Spotify had not yet introduced the download option in the United States. Spotify tells me it will eventually become available, though — so here’s hoping it’s arrived by the time you read this!
Introducing Spotify Downloads All tracks purchased from Spotify appear on a dedicated Download page, accessible from the Downloads option on the left sidebar. They are also stored in a dedicated Downloads folder — by default, the Music folder in
140
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience your Windows or Mac Library. You can easily change the location of your downloads in Spotify’s Preferences, as described in Chapter 3. From your Downloads folder, you can do what you want with the files — burn them to a CD, put them on an MP3 player that isn’t supported by Spotify syncing, or just back them up to a drive for safekeeping. The MP3 files are encoded at a top-quality bitrate of 320 Kbps (a small proportion of the catalogue, less than 5 percent, is available at 256 Kbps — but even this bitrate should provide more than enough quality in sound). For an explanation on bitrates and music quality, see Chapter 2. All downloads are DRM-free, meaning the tracks have no copy restrictions (DRM stands for digital rights management, a way for labels to restrict digital tracks from being transferred to many devices). Being DRM-free means you can copy them to all your computers and devices.
The download option is particularly useful if you’re a Spotify Open account holder and have either run out of your monthly listening allowance or have frustratingly come to the end of your lifetime five-times-per-track listening limit. Spotify Unlimited or Premium subscribers may not have as much need to download tracks as Open users because they have constant access to a massive library as long as they keep up their subscriptions. But every Spotify subscriber has the option — if you really love an album or playlist, and want to keep it forever, or you want to put together an old-school compilation CD and burn tracks to it, then you can buy the MP3 so that you can do that.
Buying Download Bundles Although you can buy a one-off track for £1.15, Spotify has negotiated with the record labels to provide download bundles, a group of credits that you can purchase and use to download whatever tracks are available. Bundles come in lots of 10, 15, 40, or 100. The more tracks in a bundle, the cheaper individual tracks become — proof that bulk buying really does extend to the digital world! At the time of writing, these are the prices for buying tracks and track bundles on Spotify in the U.K.: ✓ Individual track: £1.15 ✓ 10 downloads: £7.99 (£0.80 for a single track) ✓ 15 downloads: £9.99 (£0.67 for a single track) ✓ 40 downloads: £25 (£0.63 for a single track) ✓ 50 downloads: £50 (£0.50 for a single track)
Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify Prices differ depending on your country; you can see the latest prices when you go to purchase a track, as I describe in the section “Buying Tracks from Spotify,” later in this chapter.
To keep tabs on how many tracks are left in your download bundle, a number with a down-pointing arrow appears next to your name in the top-right corner of the Spotify window. When your downloads are close to expiring, Spotify regularly alerts you by displaying a yellow alert bar across the top of the window. You can buy more downloads to extend their validity by clicking your name and then selecting Buy Downloads from the drop-down list that appears. Then follow the same method for purchasing a bundle.
Using Your Bundle before It Expires Hang on a minute. You can download from Spotify for as little as 50 pence a track, you say? For prices that cheap, there has to be a catch, right? Well, kind of: Bundles are valid for 30 days, meaning that you have only a month to choose the tracks you want to download. That’s fine if you buy only a 10- or 15-download bundle, but when you have 100 tracks to play with, you really need to know what tracks you want to purchase before you make that £50 commitment — perhaps several albums or playlists you’ve always wanted to own. If you can’t decide what to buy and your 30-day limit is about to expire, then ironically, you can buy another bundle (of any size) to give all downloads, including the older ones, an expiration date of 30 days from the latest purchase. Downloads can be extended in this way only up to a maximum of 90 days (any unused downloads initially purchased more than 90 days ago expire, even if you keep buying more bundles). Don’t worry if you feel like this bundle-purchasing procedure is all too much to take in; as long as you use your download bundle within 30 days, you don’t have to worry about losing any downloads. Remember, the tracks are DRM free, so they can be transferred to other computers — perhaps if you can’t use all your credits in time, you can find other people in the family who want to own some music.
Payment Methods You can purchase tracks only by using a credit card or PayPal account registered to the same country as your Spotify account. You enter your payment details after you select the track or bundle you want to download.
141
142
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
To make the purchasing process more streamlined, you can save a payment method in your Spotify account settings prior to purchasing tracks from Spotify. That way, you don’t have to hunt around for your credit card details every time you want to make a purchase. Follow these steps to add a credit card as a payment method:
1. Click your name in the top-right corner of the Spotify window, and then choose Account from the menu that appears.
You get redirected to the Spotify website.
2. Click Subscription to view your account details.
In the Payment Method section, you can choose to add a credit card or PayPal account. Visa, MasterCard, or American Express are accepted. Spotify also offers PayPal as an option, but you need to have a verified account — for more on verified PayPal accounts, see Chapter 12.
3. Click Change.
Enter your card details in the fields provided. (If you’re using PayPal, you get redirected to the PayPal site and need to log into PayPal to confirm the authorization.)
4. Click Confirm Details.
Your details are now securely stored with Spotify. If you do save payment details with Spotify in this way, you should verify that your Spotify account isn’t set to remember your password when making purchases. This setting isn’t turned on by default, but it’s still worth checking if you’ve been adjusting your preferences. That way, if anyone else uses your computer while you’re logged into Spotify, she can’t download tracks unless she knows and enters your password. Just follow these steps:
1. In Spotify, choose Edit➪Preferences (in Windows).
Alternatively, on the Mac, choose Spotify➪Preferences.
2. In the Purchases section, make sure the Remember My Spotify Password check box isn’t selected.
Leaving this check box deselected means you’ll be prompted for your password every time you make a purchase.
Buying Tracks from Spotify Spotify doesn’t have a dedicated download store, per se, but you can buy tracks from wherever you are in the application. So, if you’re just browsing, or looking at a playlist or album listing, you can purchase tracks via any view. (You can even buy bundles of tracks when you’re syncing local files to your
Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify iPod, as I explain in the following section.) If you’re viewing an album, a Get Album link appears below the album cover art, as shown in Figure 8-1.
Figure 8-1: When in Album view, click Get Album to download all its tracks.
Next to search results and playlists, you see a dedicated Get column (which you can use to get the track as an MP3 download). A little logo that includes a down-pointing arrow appears in this column. For album and artist listings, you actually see the word Get next to the downpointing arrow, rather than a Get column (as shown in Figure 8-1). For album listings, you can also buy all its tracks in one go by clicking Get Album. To get a track on Spotify, follow these steps:
1. Click the Get logo next to the track you want to buy.
You don’t have to be listening to the track in order to buy it. The logo changes into Get for ↓ 1.
2. Click Get for ↓ 1.
You’re prompted to enter your password to access the Spotify Downloads section (unless you previously opted to save your password).
143
144
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience
3. Enter your password in the text box and click Verify.
A window appears, like the one in Figure 8-2. In this example, I want to buy a track by cheeky novelty act Flight of the Conchords called “Fashion is Danger.” This track equates to one download. As you can see, I don’t have any downloads available to obtain the track, so I have to buy some.
Figure 8-2: You can choose to buy a single download, but a bundle is better value.
4. Either buy the one track or buy a bundle by selecting the appropriate radio button.
In my example, I think paying £1.15 for one tiny song is quite hefty when I can buy a bundle and get individual tracks cheaper. When I click 15 Downloads, as shown in Figure 8-3, I’m alerted to the new price I must pay and how much this cost equates to per track (£0.67).
Figure 8-3: Fifteen downloads at £9.99 equates to £0.67 per track.
Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify
5. If you haven’t already registered a payment method with Spotify, click Continue.
The dialog box that appears allows you to securely enter your credit card or PayPal details. If you have registered a method of payment, skip to Step 7. For example, I’ve already registered my PayPal account with Spotify, so the message at the bottom of the screen says We Will Use Your Registered Payment Method (PayPal).
6. Enter your payment information in the fields provided.
7. Click Confirm Purchase to process the transaction.
When your payment goes through, an alert appears, telling you so. The track you chose starts downloading — you see spinning arrows next to the track, as well as next to the Downloads option on the left sidebar. This download probably takes only a few seconds, but it depends on your download speed. If your Internet connection hangs or your computer freezes during the download, don’t panic. The download resumes when you can reconnect to Spotify, and you can download a track several times for free (as I discuss in the following section).
Buying Missing Tracks When you manually choose playlists to sync to your iPod (see Chapter 15), you can opt to download the missing files and complete your digital collection. I describe the process of ordering tracks in the preceding section, and the ability to buy playlists is an extension of it. (At the time of writing, the download store isn’t available in the U.S.) Your playlists almost certainly contain some tracks you don’t own — tracks you stream from Spotify’s library and haven’t bought or ripped from CDs. Spotify makes it easy for you to get these missing tracks as MP3 files, and then syncs these to your iPod. When you see a playlist that contains missing tracks, a Get Missing button appears, as shown in Figure 8-4. (When you manually choose playlists to sync, this button appears only on the playlists you’ve actually selected.) I have 14 spare downloads to use up, as shown by the number next to my account button on the top-right of the Spotify window. I’ve chosen to download the latest album by Liam Finn in this example (son of Crowded House’s Neil Finn), which I previously saved as a playlist. When I click Get Missing, a window appears like the one in Figure 8-5, showing me all the tracks I need to download.
145
146
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Available downloads
Figure 8-4: Spotify makes it easy to complete your music collection and buy missing playlist tracks.
By the way, if you don’t have any download bundles available, you’re prompted to purchase one at this stage. The download bundles represent good value (as opposed to £1.15 for one single track), but they must be used up within 30 days. For more on the buying process, check out the preceding section. Click Get All, and tracks start to download immediately if you previously indicated that you want your password saved for purchasing purposes. I haven’t, so a prompt appears asking me to retype my Spotify password and verify the transaction. I can safely close the window and go to my Downloads page to see how my downloads are progressing. All this while, my iPod is still syncing, and there’s music playing — Spotify is truly one mighty multitasker! If a download doesn’t complete correctly, an exclamation mark appears next to the track the next time you launch the app. Click Download under the Re-Downloads column to finish the procedure.
Chapter 8: Downloading Tracks from Spotify
Figure 8-5: You can download the missing tracks from your playlists in a couple of clicks.
Privileges with Purchased Tracks After you download a track and it appears in your Downloads page, you can view its identifiers (track, album, time, and artist), as well as a new column called Re-Downloads. This feature is handy if you have Spotify on another computer (say, at work) because you can re-download the track for free to that computer. Yes, the MP3 file itself is unprotected, so you can always transfer the file manually onto a memory stick or a CD, and then transfer it to another computer — but that’s a hassle. The re-download option adds another element of convenience to managing and syncing your music collection to all your devices. Re-downloading has no time limit (unlike using up downloads from a bundle). You can go back to a track you bought a year later and still be able to redownload it. However, you can only re-download a track from within the account that purchased it.
147
148
Part II: Managing Your Spotify Experience Default downloads always go into your computer’s Music Library (unless you specify otherwise in your Spotify Preferences, as described in Chapter 3). A separate Spotify folder is created for your downloads (you may already have an iTunes folder for your iTunes Library; a Spotify one appears alongside it). Tracks are arranged in the same folder hierarchy as in iTunes (artist first, followed by album and track name). For example, the navigation for the track I downloaded in the preceding section goes like this: Spotify➪Flight of the Conchords➪I Told You I Was Freaky➪07 Fashion is Danger.mp3
Part III
Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
M
In this part . . .
usic is a shared experience, and on Spotify, there are plenty of ways you can let others know about your brilliant musical finds. That’s what this part is all about. I explain how to connect your Spotify account to Facebook in order to discover what music your friends are sharing with the world. (I also explain how to tweak your Spotify and Facebook privacy settings if you don’t want people to know you’ve been listening to Vanilla Ice lately.) In this part, you can also uncover loads of other powerful social features in Spotify, including the Inbox, playlist sharing, and how to link to just about anything you find in Spotify. But my favorite chapter in this part is dedicated to the passionate Spotify community who are creating some truly useful music-discovery tools and social networking sites.
Chapter 9
Getting Started with Spotify Social In This Chapter ▶ Finding out how Spotify Social can help you discover new music ▶ Connecting through Spotify to share musical finds with friends ▶ Tweaking privacy settings for your Spotify information on Facebook ▶ Posting your Spotify activity on your Facebook Wall
Y
ou never get bored discovering and rediscovering tunes with Spotify. One of the best ways to share your favorite music or playlists — and peek at what your mates are listening to — is to use the service’s powerful social networking aspects. Spotify Social lets you create a public profile, which you can use to showcase your playlists, frequently played tracks, and so on to the Spotify community. But that’s not all: Connect Spotify to your Facebook account to instantly import all your Facebook friends who are also using Spotify Social into a list of contacts. You can listen to the songs they’re currently enjoying, rifle through their playlists, and even subscribe to those playlists yourself. And you don’t need any Spotify friends on Facebook; you can add any public Spotify profile to your list of people. In this chapter, I describe how to get started with Spotify Social.
As we went to press, Facebook was poised to launch a new social music service heavily tied to Spotify. For the latest updates, check out the free bonus content at www.dummies.com/go/spotify.
Understanding Spotify Social If you were around in the pre-Internet days, how did you share your favorite music? Swapping mixtapes with friends? Lending them your CDs? Or maybe you just sat in your bedroom, playing it really loudly for all to hear. Well,
152
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Spotify Social lets you do all this (in a 21st-century sense, at least) by tapping into your existing social networks. With Spotify Social, you can import your Facebook friends who are also using the feature. Their names magically appear in your Spotify People list after you connect your Spotify account with Facebook. And if you know someone’s Spotify username, you can add that user to this list, too. Figure 9-1 shows you how the People contact list (a sidebar on the right side of the Spotify window) looks.
Figure 9-1: The People sidebar shows a list of Facebook friends and other Spotify contacts who use the Social features.
Clicking a contact on your People list brings up that friend’s profile, which includes the following information:
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social ✓ Profile picture and name: The friend’s Facebook profile picture, along with his real name, are automatically displayed, with the Spotify username listed after this information in brackets. If anyone disconnects her Spotify account from Facebook, a silhouette image appears in place of the profile picture, and the profile name defaults to the Spotify username. ✓ Published playlists: Playlists that your friends choose to make public appear on their profile pages. These playlists include ones they’ve created (such as “Songs to Do Housework To”), as well as ones they’ve subscribed to (such as Britney Spears’s “Back to the 1980s” playlist). You subscribe to a playlist by clicking Subscribe, found below the playlist name. ✓ Real name: When you link Spotify to Facebook, your real name shows up if someone adds you to his People list. Your Spotify username (what you use to log in) appears in brackets next to your real name. (You don’t need to be Facebook friends with someone for your real name to appear if she has added you to her People list.) ✓ Starred tracks: Contacts who’ve favorited tracks by adding a star next to them can share their starred tracks on their profile pages. (Yet another way for you to discover music!) ✓ Top tracks and artists: Provided your friends choose to keep this information public, you can see links to their most-played tracks, along with links to their most frequently played artists. To keep it all fresh and interesting, this list is updated about once a week.
Keeping on top of any new activity, such as a playlist your friend has subscribed to, can be done from Spotify’s Feed section (click the What’s New link in the left sidebar, and then click the Feed tab).
Enabling Spotify Social Spotify’s social networking aspects are an exciting part of the service. When they launched in April 2010, people who were looking for an easy way to immerse themselves into a never-ending, serendipitous music party had an overwhelmingly positive reaction — and getting started is surprisingly easy, thanks to the Facebook integration. On Spotify, your favorite tracks and playlists could be viewed by anyone with Spotify who knows your username — not just your Facebook friends. In fact, the default setting is for Spotify to automatically publish all the playlists you’ve created until you go in and edit your profile. Spotify says this approach is easier for you than making you manually publish all your playlists. However, I prefer to manually share my music. See the section “Editing Your Profile Privacy,” later in this chapter, for how to adjust your publishing settings.
153
154
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Connecting to your Facebook friends To share and view public Spotify profiles, you can link your Spotify profile to your Facebook account. You may have a few people in your Facebook Friends list who are already using Spotify’s social features. To connect your Spotify account with Facebook and get started with Spotify Social, follow these steps:
1. Click the Connect to Facebook button below the large Facebook logo in Spotify’s right sidebar (shown in Figure 9-2).
A pop-up window appears, displaying a Facebook login screen.
2. Type in your Facebook username and password in the appropriate text boxes.
3. (Optional) For ease of use, select the Keep Me Logged into Spotify check box.
If you select this check box, Facebook won’t prompt you for your password every time you run Spotify.
4. Click Login.
You then get redirected to a Request for Permission page.
5. In the Request for Permission page, click Allow.
This step allows Spotify to access your Facebook information in order to run the service. (You can tweak the access details at any time; see the section “Limiting access to Facebook information,” later in this chapter.) The first time you activate Spotify Social, a pop-up window shows up, informing you that any playlists you create or subscribe to will be published to your profile by default — unless you edit your profile settings.
6. (Optional) To edit your profile settings, click the Edit button, and then turn to the section “Editing Your Profile Privacy,” later in this chapter.
You can also wait until later to change any profile settings.
7. Click Finish to publish all your existing playlists.
A pop-up window appears, asking whether you want to post a notification on Facebook, telling your friends you’ve enabled Spotify Social.
8. (Optional) Click Yes, Please to post a message to on your Facebook Wall and friends’ News Feeds.
Otherwise, click No Thanks. As if by magic, all the Facebook friends who’ve also enabled Spotify on Facebook appear in your People list! Of course, they can see you, too.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social
Figure 9-2: There’s no escaping Spotify’s integration with Facebook.
Viewing a profile page Click a friend’s name in your people list to bring up his or her public Spotify profile. Figure 9-3 shows what a typical profile looks like. From there, you can scroll down your friend’s page to see all his playlists.
Figure 9-3: Spotify Social lets you view profile pages containing people’s favorite tracks, playlists, and artists.
155
156
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Browse all the playlists on a profile page by clicking and dragging the main pane’s scroll bar downward, or by clicking within the profile page, and then using the scroll wheel on your mouse to whiz down (especially if your friend has a lot of playlists!). In older versions of Spotify, you could sort playlists by title, length, or number of subscribers, and in both ascending and descending order. The latest version of the software doesn’t have this feature, which is a little inconvenient if your contact has dozens of playlists you have to sift through. You can, however, sort a particular playlist if you click its title to select it (particularly handy if it contains hundreds of songs). See Chapter 7 for more on sorting, as well as searching. Chapter 10 has information on subscribing to playlists.
You don’t have to display the People bar in your Spotify window all the time, cluttering precious room that you want to use to view your track listings. If you want to hide the People bar, click the square bracket symbol with a right arrow, situated at the top-right of the main Spotify pane. The main pane expands, and the icon then turns into a small icon that looks like two silhouettes. If you want to see your People list once again, just click this icon. Conveniently, Spotify remembers this preference next time you start it up.
Adding extra profiles A handful of my Facebook friends are using Spotify Social, but I could always do with more contacts in my People list. As long as you know someone’s username, you can add that person very simply. For example, to add user audreyaudrey, type spotify:user:audreyaudrey into Spotify’s search bar and hit Enter. Spotify brings up audreyaudrey’s profile page. A yellow bar shows up saying Make It Easier to Access audreyaudrey’s Music by Adding audreyaudrey to Your Profile List. Click the Add button to add her to your list. (If the person uses Facebook, her real name appears in place of the username in this yellow bar.) You can also click any username that you see floating around in Spotify to bring up that user’s profile page — perhaps you’ll see it next to a playlist that user created or in a list of subscribers to a particular playlist. In fact, any time you see a public profile page, you have the option to add that person to your list (as long as that user has enabled Spotify Social).
A feature that’s currently missing in Spotify Social is the ability to see who’s added you to their People lists. I don’t necessarily want to reciprocate the gesture; I’d just like to find out with whom I might have similar music tastes so that I can explore her profile page. One way to get around this limitation is to see who’s subscribed to your playlist and explore those users’ profiles from that playlist, which I cover in Chapter 10.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social
Dealing with connection issues Having problems connecting to Facebook? In the following sections, I discuss a couple of common reasons why this might be the case.
Making sure Spotify appears in Facebook Spotify on Facebook is classified as a third-party platform app, which is a mini-application that plugs into Facebook. In your Facebook account’s settings, you can actually block certain apps from appearing or turn off platform apps altogether. Facebook has countless apps, and it’s possible that once upon a time, you (inadvertently, of course) blocked Spotify. (You may have blocked Spotify by hovering your mouse over a Spotify notification in your News Feed, clicking the X that appears on the top-right, and choosing to block the app.) To unblock the Spotify app on Facebook, or check whether you’ve blocked all apps, follow these steps:
1. Log into Facebook and click Account.
2. In the drop-down list that appears, choose Privacy Settings.
3. In the Apps and Websites section at the bottom of the Privacy Settings page that appears, click Edit Your Settings.
4. In the page that appears, next to the Apps You Use heading, check whether you’ve blocked all platform apps from Facebook.
If you turned off all platform apps, a message says You Have Turned off All Platform Apps, Games and Websites. If you don’t see this message, then your apps are on — skip to Step 6.
5. Click the Turn on All Platform Apps link to enable apps again.
6. Click the Back to Privacy button that appears on the top-left of this page to go back to your main Privacy Settings page.
7. In the Block Lists section, which appears at the bottom of the page, click Manage Block Lists.
You then get to a page that lists all the applications you’ve blocked from Facebook.
8. In the Blocked Apps section, scroll down the list of apps you’ve blocked and see whether Spotify is there.
Each blocked app has an Unblock link next to it.
9. If Spotify appears in this list, next to Spotify, click Unblock.
157
158
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Secure browsing over Facebook If you use Facebook in public Internet cafes, over free Wi-Fi, or on a shared computer, I highly recommend enabling secure, private browsing (https://) on Facebook at all times to prevent hackers from sniffing out data. Whenever you’re connected to Spotify Social, you’re still connected to Facebook’s network, even if you don’t have Facebook open in your web browser. To enable secure browsing, follow these steps: 1. In Facebook, click Account, and then choose Account Settings from the dropdown list that appears. You’re taken to your Account Settings page. 2. Click Security in the left sidebar to access the Security Settings page.
Next to the Secure Browsing option, a notification tells you whether your Facebook account has secure browsing enabled or disabled. 3. If Secure Browsing is disabled, click the Edit link next to this option. You now see an option to Browse Facebook over a Secure Connection (https) whenever Possible. 4. Select this check box. 5. Click the Save Changes button to confirm your setting. Spotify didn’t work over https:// when it first launched, but this has now been fixed — so I don’t have an excuse to browse over an insecure connection!
Telling the world about your Spotify profile Don’t use Facebook? Or perhaps you want to reach out to people outside your Facebook circle? Your Spotify profile is always accessible from this web address: http://open.spotify.com/user/yourusername (yourusername is the Spotify name you log in with, not your real name). People clicking a link to your address (if they see it in an e-mail or on a website, for example) or typing the address directly into a web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox) brings you to a Spotify web page that automatically launches the Spotify application. Because this is an actual web address, it’s very versatile; it automatically becomes formatted as a web link if you stick it in an e-mail or on Instant Messenger, or type it into Twitter. You can use a slightly quicker way to launch your profile page if you run a blog or website, and have control over your link target. You can link directly to spotify:user:yourusername (where, again, yourusername is your Spotify login name). This link goes straight to the Spotify application, bypassing the Spotify website. You can try it out by typing your own profile page address directly into your web browser’s address bar and pressing Enter. I talk more about ways to link to things such as playlists, tracks, searches, and more in Chapter 10.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social
Editing Your Profile Privacy Spotify reckons that automatically publishing playlists is the best way to get the music out there, but I suspect that for some of you, you don’t want this automatic publication to happen in every case. (I could be wrong, but if word gets out that you’ve compiled a shameful playlist consisting of cheesy songs by Cliff Richard and Andrew Lloyd Webber when people assume you’re a massive heavy metal fan . . . you might never live it down!) Similarly, you may not want people to know what your top tracks and artists are, and that’s fair enough. After all, music is wonderful for sharing, but there might be times when you want to keep things private. Don’t worry! Spotify gives you control over your profile page in a very easy and intuitive manner. To switch off automatic publishing of playlists, follow these steps:
1. Click your name at the top-right of the Spotify window.
2. Select Profile from the drop-down list that appears.
The top of the screen displays the words Your Public Profile. People Visiting Your Profile Will Be Able to See the Music You Publish.
3. Click the Edit button next to this notice.
Your profile now becomes editable, and your playlists appear in a list. You can toggle which elements of your profile you want to make public or private while in this Edit mode.
4. Next to the Playlists heading above your playlists, deselect the Automatically Publish New Playlists I Create check box.
5. To select a playlist you’re happy to share (or deselect one you aren’t), click the On/Off switch next to the playlist.
If a switch is set to green, the playlist is public. Figure 9-4 shows what my profile page looks like when in Edit mode.
6. Publish your profile’s Top Tracks and Top Artists lists, which appear next to your name, by toggling the On/Off switch to On.
Like with the playlist switches, a green switch indicates that the list is public.
7. Click Done at the top of the screen to finish the process and save settings.
If you want to start over, click Cancel. Your profile appears in the window after you click Done and is displayed as it appears to others.
159
160
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Automatically publish
None/All
Arrowhead = no pref
Figure 9-4: Edit your profile page and choose which playlists and profile features you want to remain private.
Should you be in a sharing (or non-sharing) mood later on down the line, there’s a quick way to publish or unpublish playlists. Just right-click (Ô-click on a Mac) a playlist from the left sidebar and select (or deselect) Publish from the pop-up menu that appears, as shown in Figure 9-5. This pop-up menu also gives you an easy way to tell whether a playlist has been published — it has a check mark next to Publish if it has.
Figure 9-5: Right-click a playlist to quickly publish it to your profile, or unpublish it.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social
While editing your profile, click the All link, located above the column of On/ Off switches, to publish all your playlists at the same time. Alternatively, click None to unpublish all playlists. (These links can be seen in Figure 9-4.) Make sure you choose the right option!
Publishing Activity to Facebook Spotify will never abuse your personal information and, after thousands of reviews, still enjoys a 4.5 out of 5 star rating from Facebook fans — Spotify Social was already installed by well over 2 million users before it even launched in the U.S. But you may still want to control exactly how Spotify interacts with your Facebook profile. When you first connect your Facebook account to Spotify, you’re asked whether Spotify can access your basic information, post to your Wall, e-mail you, access your data at any time, and access posts in your News Feed. Spotify needs basic Facebook information to run its social networking service, including your name, profile picture, gender, networks, list of friends, and user ID. In the following sections, I describe what information Spotify posts to Facebook, how sharing this information benefits the social experience, and how you can choose what you want people to know about your listening activity.
Enabling posts to Facebook After you connect Spotify to Facebook, Spotify has the right to publish certain activity to your Facebook profile page. Such activity relates to the information that appears on your public profile, including when you subscribe to a playlist and what artists you’ve been listening to recently (provided you’ve kept this information public in your Spotify profile). Figure 9-6 shows an example of some recent Spotify-related activity on my own Facebook profile page. So, your Spotify activity shows up on your Facebook Wall and your friends’ News Feeds. It’s an excellent way for people to discover new tracks — I was happy to let people know I’d subscribed to lou_lonelyplanet’s Travel Playlist: Australia. Anyone who sees the notification in Facebook can click the playlist’s link to launch that playlist within his own Spotify window and subscribe to it if he likes it.
161
162
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 9-6: Certain actions you take on Spotify, such as subscribing to a playlist, are shared with your friends on Facebook.
Facebook ©2011
Disabling posts to Facebook In an ideal world, I think Spotify should always ask you for permission before it posts any Spotify activity to Facebook. But by default, most posts are automatic unless you choose to disable postings to Facebook. Anyone who has a secret Judy Garland and Barry Manilow obsession should be prepared for their musical tastes to become common knowledge, unless they read this section first. You can fix this posting problem by preventing Spotify from posting to Facebook altogether. To do so, click the tiny cog icon at the top-right of Spotify’s People sidebar and, in the menu that appears, choose Disable Posting to Facebook. Choosing this option does not disconnect your Spotify profile from Facebook (for that, see the section “Disconnecting from Facebook,” later in this chapter); it only stops Spotify from posting to your Facebook Wall. You can still view your Facebook friends’ public profiles from within Spotify, and they can see yours. Choosing to disable posting doesn’t mean the end of sharing music from within Facebook. You can still manually post links to playlists and tracks within Facebook — see Chapter 10 for more on how to do this linking.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social
Keeping up with Spotify Become a fan of Spotify on Facebook to make sure you’re kept up to date on the latest Spotify news, cool music additions, amazing playlists, exclusive content for Premium subscribers, and other random-but-interesting updates from the team. Spotify uses Facebook as a major way to inform people about its growing list of snazzy features. It can also gauge people’s feedback — whether positive or negative — and respond, if necessary. For example, in the course of writing this book, Spotify rolled out a major upgrade that let people sync music to their iPods. Syncing to an iPod was one of the most-requested features from Spotify’s many die-hard fans, so it was no surprise that just hours after posting the news on its Facebook page, hundreds of people clicked the Like button and contributed their own, mostly favorable, comments. Around a million people Like the official Spotify Facebook page, and you can, too, by logging into Facebook, going to www.facebook. com/spotify, and clicking the Like button.
Don’t forget, too, that you can follow Spotify news on the micro-blogging site Twitter (@spotify), and there’s even a dedicated Twitter feed for U.S. users (@spotifyUSA). A number of prominent Spotify staff are also prolific tweeters, the most notable being chief executive officer and founder Daniel Ek (@eldsjal). He occasionally tweets about what’s he’s up to in the office and the cool stuff he’s found online. Daniel also uses it as an official channel to issue opinions and statements about digital music and Spotify-related issues. He even advertises upcoming vacancies, if you ever feel like joining the Spotify team! (For more on Twitter, check out Twitter For Dummies, by Laura Fitton, Michael Gruen, and Leslie Poston, published by Wiley.) To keep tabs on some of the Spotify staffers’ own music profiles, here’s a tip: Go to the About Spotify page, and you’ll see a list of all the people who work for Spotify. Some of these people have public profile pages — when your mouse pointer turns into a hand, that’s a working link that you can click to open that person’s profile page.
Letting Spotify publish to your Facebook Wall can have some benefits. If anything, it helps make Spotify itself go viral — people who aren’t yet using it can see posts about your music, and then they might be encouraged to download it. If you ever feel like you want Spotify to start posting to Facebook again, you can find the option to re-enable posting to Facebook in the menu that opens when you click the cog icon.
Limiting access to Facebook information When you first authorize Spotify to connect to Facebook (which I talk about in the section “Enabling Spotify Social,” earlier in this chapter), you have to
163
164
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends give Spotify permission to access certain features of your Facebook setup, such as your Wall and your personal information. However, if you aren’t keen on it accessing any but your most basic Facebook details (which are necessary to run the service), you can go into Facebook after enabling Spotify Social and further edit Spotify’s access settings.
The curious among you, take note: You can even see what kind of personal information Spotify last accessed. Say that you’re happy to let Spotify post to your Wall but want to block it from accessing data at any time. To amend this unwanted access, follow these steps:
1. In Facebook, click Account and, in the menu that appears, click Privacy Settings.
The Choose Your Privacy Settings page appears.
2. In the Apps and Websites section, click Edit Your Settings.
You’re taken to your privacy settings for Apps, Games, and Websites.
3. In the Apps You Use section, click the Edit Settings button.
You’re taken to the Application Settings Page.
4. Next to Spotify, click the Edit link.
The window expands to display a range of information and activity that Spotify is allowed to access.
5. Next to both the Access My Data Any Time option and the Access Posts in My News Feed option, click Remove.
6. (Optional) Next to Last Data Access, click See Details to launch a pop-up window, where you can see what data Spotify accessed on your behalf.
7. Click Close when you finish.
This technique can be applied to all apps that you have authorized and installed on Facebook; not just Spotify!
Disconnecting from Facebook (but why?) I’m not sure why you’d want to disconnect Spotify from Facebook altogether, but hey, it happens. Click the cog icon at the top-right of your Spotify People list and choose Disconnect from Facebook from the menu that appears. You can’t see your friends’ latest playlists anymore. But you can reconnect again at any time.
Chapter 9: Getting Started with Spotify Social The disconnect action doesn’t remove the Spotify app from Facebook itself. You do that by following these steps:
1. In Facebook, click Account and, in the menu that appears, click Privacy Settings.
The Choose Your Privacy Settings page appears.
2. In the Apps and Websites section, click Edit Your Settings.
You get taken to your privacy settings for Apps, Games, and Websites.
3. In the Apps You Use section, click the Edit Settings button.
You’re taken to the Application Settings Page.
4. Next to Spotify, click the Edit link.
The window expands to display more information about what Spotify can do with your information.
5. At the top-right of the column, click Remove App.
A dialog box appears, reminding you that removing the app will mean it can’t access this data.
6. Click the Remove button to confirm the app removal. A confirmation dialog box appears, saying that you’ve removed Spotify. 7. Click OK to close the dialog box and finish the process.
165
166
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Chapter 10
Sharing and Collaborating on Music In This Chapter ▶ Sharing music using special Spotify links ▶ Collaborating on playlists and subscribing to them ▶ Sending and receiving tracks through your Spotify Inbox ▶ Viewing the Top lists on Spotify
A
while ago, I received a few tracks in my Spotify Inbox from Tanya, a former colleague at a magazine. At first, the tracks seemed quite random to me: “Lovely Head” by Goldfrapp, “House of Bamboo” by Andy Williams, and “A Walk in the Black Forest” by Horst Jankowski, among others. I already had the Goldfrapp track, but I wasn’t really familiar with the others — or so I thought. As soon as I played them, it was like a light switch had turned on in my head. These tracks were part of the magazine team’s office playlist when I worked there! Easy-listening background music that was constantly on rotation and a welcome diversion during hectic deadlines. I was instantly transported back to those old days when we were all young, and child- and carefree. The nice surprise in my Inbox really put a smile on my face. It’s just amazing that Spotify is helping people to relive memories and, of course, create new ones by introducing users to artists they’ve never heard of. The Inbox isn’t the only way you can share music through Spotify, as this chapter explains. Everything on Spotify — from tracks to artists to searches — has a unique web address, and you can share this address as a link on all manner of social networks or through e-mail. In this chapter, I assume that you’ve enabled Spotify Social, as explained in Chapter 9. You don’t have to use Spotify Social in order to share tracks outside of Spotify, but it does make the job a whole lot easier.
168
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
When I talk about right-clicking, I’m referring to Windows PC mice (in conventional right-handed mode), which have two buttons. You Ctrl-click if you’re using a single-button mouse on a Mac.
Using Spotify Links to Share Music You’re probably familiar with website addresses, also known as URLs (short for Uniform Resource Locators). Clicking a URL link or typing an address into the address bar of a web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox) takes you to the web page you want to access. Web links do exactly what their name suggests — bind the web together. But what about the kind of addresses that take you directly to a song, rather than a website, so that you can hear it virtually straightaway? According to a Guardian.co.uk interview with Spotify’s European general manager, Jonathan Forster, the web is getting closer to the URL “being the new universal format for music.” So, clicking a link should take you directly to a web page or an application that will launch a song. And that’s exactly what Spotify’s been doing for years. It’s just a matter of when it becomes as mainstream as clicking a YouTube link to view a video. Spotify can also link to many other things besides songs alone. Amazingly, practically everything can be linked — I explain how linking works in the section “Linking to just about anything,” later in this chapter. The things Spotify can link to are called resources, which include ✓ Tracks: You can always link to individual tracks. ✓ Searches: Link to a search string, such as a search for Blame It on the Boogie. ✓ User profiles: You can link to anyone’s profile page (see Chapter 9). ✓ Playlists: Spotify playlist URLs are frequently shared throughout the music-mad Spotify community. ✓ Artists: Link to an Artist page to see her biography, if she has one, and discography. ✓ Albums: What better way to get people to experience a fresh, new release than by linking to it? ✓ Timestamps within a particular song: You can link to a particular part of a song, a couple of minutes into it — if your friends are into saxophone solos, then they can skip directly to that bit.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music There are two types of links that Spotify uses, and you need to choose either of the following when copying links from within the application: ✓ Common URL: The web address preceded by http:// (which looks like http://open.spotify.com/track/5yEPxDjbbzUzyauGtnmVEC). Entering this address in a web browser’s address bar or following a link to it takes you to the Spotify-hosted landing web page shown in Figure 10-1. If Spotify doesn’t launch automatically, click I Have Spotify to launch Spotify and view the particular resource (in this case, The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony”). ✓ Spotify URI: Short for Uniform Resource Indicator, a URI is a quicker way to launch a resource. When you click a link that consists of a Spotify URI (rather than an HTTP address), you’re taken directly to the Spotify application — without having to go through the web page first. A URI starts with spotify: and looks like spotify:track:5yEPxDjbbzUzy auGtnmVEC. You can type or paste URIs directly into the Spotify Search text box and press the Enter key to go straight to the resource. Similarly, you can type a URI into your web browser’s address bar and press Enter to launch the resource in Spotify directly — if you don’t have Spotify, you get a web page error message. Strictly speaking, a URL is a type of URI, but one that launches a web page, rather than another application. A common URI you might have seen linked around the web is mailto:, as in mailto:
[email protected]. When a link to this URI is clicked or the URI is entered into a browser, it launches a new message in your mail application, preaddressed to the recipient. With spotify:, the link launches the particular resource within the Spotify application.
Figure 10-1: This Spotifyhosted landing page links directly to a track in Spotify.
The Share button Twitter, Microsoft Messenger, and Facebook users can easily share a link to their favorite artist or playlist by using the Share button. Spotify includes a handy Share button on Artist profile pages and playlist pages.
169
170
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Sharing on Twitter To use Twitter (www.twitter.com) to share a link to the band Muse’s Artist page, follow these steps:
1. Open Muse’s Artist page.
It doesn’t matter how you go there; perhaps you conduct a search for the band and click its name in the results.
2. Click the Share button below the band’s name, and then click the Twitter tab in the pop-up window that appears, as shown in Figure 10-2.
This tab displays the Artist page’s Spotify URL in a text box.
3. (Optional) Customize this tweet by adding your own message to the text box.
But remember that Twitter lets you type only a maximum of 140 characters per tweet. Spotify keeps a tally of how many characters you have left at the top-right of the text box.
4. Click Share to Twitter.
You’re directed to the Twitter website. If you aren’t already logged in, Twitter will prompt you to do so.
5. Log into your Twitter account, if necessary.
The text from your Spotify dialog box appears inside your Twitter Status Update text box.
6. (Optional) Edit the tweet further, if you want.
7. Click Tweet to post the tweet to your Twitter profile.
Twitter recognizes the URL as a web address and turns it into a clickable link.
Sharing on Microsoft Messenger You can share Spotify links to playlists and artists using Microsoft’s Instant Messenger tool. If you’re viewing a playlist and want to share it, follow these steps:
1. Click the Share button, and then click the Messenger tab in the pop-up window that appears.
You can type up to 512 characters in the text box to accompany the link, which can be shared as a status message.
2. Click Share to Messenger.
You’ll be prompted to sign into the Windows Live network if you aren’t already logged in.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music
Figure 10-2: Sharing music is easy if you’re using common social networking websites.
3. Sign into your Windows Live account, if necessary.
A preview of your message appears onscreen. From the links provided, you can either choose to post this as a status update within the Windows Live network or send the link as an Instant Message. Figure 10-3 shows an example preview of a status message linking to a playlist of children’s songs for my daughter.
4. Click the appropriate sharing option below Share with Messenger, and then click the Share button.
Figure 10-3: Share a Spotify playlist through Microsoft Messenger.
Used with permission from Microsoft
171
172
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends Anyone who sees the link in an Instant Message can click it to be taken to a web page that prompts them to launch Spotify. If they don’t already have Spotify, they can follow the links to download it.
Sharing on Facebook I discuss linking your Facebook account to Spotify in Chapter 9. You can also publish to Facebook playlists and links to artist profiles by using the Share button — ideal if you connect your Spotify account to Facebook but opt not to give Spotify the ability to post directly to Facebook. To post to Facebook by using the Share button, you need to have your Spotify account connected to Facebook. Click the Share button, and then the Facebook tab. Type a brief message to accompany your link, and then click Share to Facebook. This automatically posts your message to your Facebook Wall. It also gets posted to your friends’ Spotify feeds. If you don’t have your accounts linked, you can still manually paste a Spotify link to your Facebook status update. See the following section for information on copying links.
The landing page that opens whenever you follow a Spotify HTTP link — such as the page shown in Figure 10-1 — includes a Facebook Like button. If you click the Like button on the page, this action gets publicized on your Facebook Feed, and your Facebook friends can click through to the link.
Linking to just about anything Spotify lets you copy web links and URIs that you can paste anywhere you like: in blogs, e-mails, social networks, even word-processing documents. Right-clicking what you want to share and choosing a copy option from the pop-up menu that appears usually does the trick. In some cases, if you know how a link is constructed, it may even be quicker to type it in directly — for example, linking to a user always takes the form http://open.spotify. com/user/username.
Linking to a track, artist page, or album Want to share a track, artist, or album you’re listening to? Just right-click the name and, from the pop-up menu that appears, choose either Copy HTTP Link or Copy Spotify URI (the section “Knowing which links to use,” later in this chapter, talks about linking and which type you should use). Choosing one of these options copies the address to your computer’s clipboard, which is like writing a message onto a virtual notepad. You can later transfer (or paste) the message to its rightful place. You press Ctrl+V (Ô+V on a Mac) to paste it. For example, you could paste an HTTP address into your Facebook Status Update text box. Facebook automatically turns the address into a clickable link.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music Check out Figure 10-4 to see the pop-up menu that allows you to copy a link or URI to a specific track from Radiohead’s Amnesiac album.
Figure 10-4: You can copy a Spotify URI by rightclicking just about anything on Spotify.
Linking to search results Spotify can also make any search results into a link. In previous versions of Spotify, doing this was quite simple — after conducting a search, you’d rightclick the keywords that appeared at the top-right of the Spotify window to open a pop-up menu that let you copy the search link. In the current version, you don’t seem to be able to right-click these results. I hope this useful technique will be reinstated in a future version of Spotify. In the meantime, you have to stick with manually creating an address from scratch. For a URI-style link, type your search query after the parameter spotify:search:. For example, a search for only happy when it rains becomes the address spo tify:search:only+happy+when+it+rains for the URI-style link. For the HTTP web link, this becomes http://open.spotify.com/search/ only+happy+when+it+rains. You can link to advanced searches, too (see Chapter 4 for more on advanced searching). Just type or paste your search terms after spotify:search: if you want a URI-style link, such as spotify:search:genre:pop. For HTTP web addresses, type the query after http://open.spotify.com/search/ (with the forward slash). However, it’s best if you place special web code
173
174
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends in place of apostrophes, spaces, and quotes. Use %27 for apostrophes, %20 (or the plus symbol) for spaces and %22 for quotes. For example, linking to track:“what’s new pussycat” becomes http://open.spotify.com/ seach/track:%22what%27s%20new%20pussycat. This format makes it less likely for any linking errors to occur.
Linking to a specific part of a song You can also link to a specific track time. For example, you know the loud bit in Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android,” where you feel like jumping around like mad? That’s about 2 minutes 40 seconds in, and you can link right to that point in the song. When you right-click the track name and copy the Spotify URI, you get spotify:track:0LTZD4vTsp0EN1wXatc9IR. To link to the desired track time, add the hash symbol (#) to the web address, followed by the timestamp. So, the address now becomes spotify:track:0LTZD4vTsp 0EN1wXatc9IR#2:40.
Linking to a profile page You can also link to someone’s Profile page. As I explain in Chapter 9, the URI for your Profile page takes the form spotify:user:yourusername, where yourusername is the name you use to log into Spotify (for example, mine is jasminetea). The URL type is http://open.spotify.com/user/yourusername.
Knowing which links to use To HTTP, or not to HTTP? When you copy a link in Spotify that you want to share online, you need to make sure you’re copying the right kind of link. When you copy a web address and paste it into something else, such as a word-processing document or an e-mail, the program you’re using usually detects that it’s a web address. The pasted address then becomes an active hyperlink, meaning that the link turns a different color (usually blue) and becomes clickable. You can do this with Spotify links, too. (And when you paste a link into a word-processing document or something similar, it usually becomes the name of what you’re linking to, as opposed to the ugly URL.) Pasting Spotify addresses as HTTP links, rather than URIs, is generally a failsafe way to go because the programs know they’re web links and make those links clickable. Even if the program you’re using doesn’t know how to turn the address into a link, people viewing it should recognize that it belongs to a website, and they can copy and paste it into their browser address bars accordingly.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music
Simplifying ugly Spotify links Spotify links can be quite unwieldy, as you can see from the examples I provide in the section “Knowing which links to use,” in this chapter. When posting Spotify addresses on the web, you might want to try some of the many Spotify URL-shortening services when you share links. These services convert the long and ugly URL into a simplified one, and they can also do the job of making a link memorable, neat, and pretty. Popular tools include spo.tl (http://spo. tl) and Cleanify (www.cleanify.net). Cleanify doesn’t necessarily shorten a URL, but it makes a link understandable by including track, album, and/or artist information. So, instead of including a confusing link to spot ify:artist:3nnQpaTvKb5jCQabZef ACI, you can link to http://cleanify. net/play/artist/jeff-buckley. You
just need to enter the longer link in a text box on the website and press the Cleanify button, and it generates a new, pretty address for you in seconds. Whenever you see a shortened or Cleanified URL to a track that someone has posted, it’s likely that clicking it will take you to a Spotify landing page, instead of launching Spotify directly. These link shorteners are also handy for the microblogging service Twitter. Although you could use any URL-shortening tool available, such as www.bitly.com, a Spotify-friendly one (such as Cleanify) presents the link in a way people can understand before they click your URL. For more on these and other useful Spotify tools, see Chapter 18.
The disadvantage of the HTTP link is that when you click it, you get redirected to a temporary landing page on Spotify’s website that then asks you to launch the application, which adds a layer of hassle to the process. The absolute URIs that start with spotify: are much quicker and very handy. The trouble with the spotify:-type link, though, is that it isn’t a universal standard. So, if you paste one into an e-mail or Instant Message, the program you’re using won’t necessarily detect it as a Spotify link, so the URI doesn’t become a clickable link. Or, if the program does highlight the link to a track as clickable, the link doesn’t work because the program doesn’t understand how to open it in Spotify. Also, not everyone has Spotify installed, so their computers don’t know what to do with the link and, unlike with the HTTP link, people who click the Spotify URI don’t arrive at that handy landing page, which encourages them to download Spotify if they don’t have it. There are some programs that support the URI link, such as the Mac chat program Adium and the Mac version of Skype. But these URI-friendly programs are still relatively thin on the ground — it’s up to software developers to allow the spotify: protocol to work as a link.
175
176
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
When you first follow a spotify: link in your web browser, it launches a dialog box with a message asking you whether it’s okay to open Spotify by using that link. In Internet Explorer, the message says, Do You Want to Allow This Website to Open a Program on Your Computer?, and the program (Spotify) and address are listed below the message. Click Allow to launch the link in Spotify. You can deselect the check box next to Always Ask before Opening This Type of Address to avoid seeing this dialog box again. So when can you use the URI link? URI links are best reserved for those who run their own websites or blogs, and who have absolute control over the links in their code. URIs are quite prevalent on blogs, including Spotify’s own. The hugely popular Spotify playlist-sharing site Sharemyplaylists.com uses the Spotify URI format.
URIs can also be pasted or typed straight into the Spotify Search text box for instant access. So, if you have a link to a URI that’s not working for some reason, you can just paste it into the text box and press the Enter key.
Subscribing to Playlists In the preceding section, you can discover how to share links to playlists and other resources within Spotify. So, what happens if you’ve clicked someone’s link to a playlist, it launches within Spotify, and you feel like subscribing to it? All you have to do is click Subscribe next to the playlist. (You also see a similar Subscribe link next to a playlist when it’s listed in a public profile.) After you click Subscribe, the playlist appears at the bottom of your left sidebar, along with all the other playlists you’ve either subscribed to or added. You can file your new playlist in any way you see fit: You could drag and drop it into any folder you may have already organized or drag it up and down the list to arrange it in your desired order. (Or, like I sometimes do, you could leave it sitting there for a while and almost forget you’ve subscribed to it. To help you remember to listen to the playlist you’ve just subscribed to, you could star it, which is the same as bookmarking it or making it a favorite, as explained in Chapter 3.)
Looking at playlists In Chapter 9, I explain how to activate Spotify Social and view your Facebook contacts — along with other Spotify buddies — in a convenient People sidebar in the Spotify window. Whenever you click someone’s name, his public profile, which includes his published playlists, opens.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music Scroll up and down the list to browse his public playlists. The first ten tracks of a playlist are displayed, which gives you a good idea of the music you can expect to hear in that playlist. To see the full list, either click the playlist title or the See All x Tracks link, where x is the number of tracks in that playlist (the playlist could have a few dozen tracks, or it could be a mammoth 1,000song countdown), at the bottom of the first ten tracks. After you open a playlist, you can filter it by pressing Ctrl+F (Ô+F on a Mac) and, in the Filter bar that appears on the top of the main pane, type the name of what you want to narrow your view down to (enter an artist’s name to show only songs by that artist, say).
Seeing who’s subscribed to a playlist Next to the playlist name is a number listing how many other people have subscribed to that playlist. You can click this number to open a drop-down list that displays all the usernames who’ve subscribed to a playlist, as seen in Figure 10-5. Just select any name to see that person’s profile. I love this feature because you can see the kind of music that a completely random person is listening to and be introduced to her music collection. I think that the personalization features on the Internet (which make very specific recommendations based on your web-browsing history, music tastes, past purchases, or even the text written in your e-mails) can sometimes seem like they’re pigeon-holing me, depriving me of a world I don’t know but might like to experience. For instance, the music retail websites I visit know that I’ve never bought any country music CDs in my life and would never recommend any. But I’ve not really been exposed to such music, so who’s to say I wouldn’t like the odd song here or there? The same goes for folk music. I only discovered some of it by chance, thanks to a playlist that listed the original versions of some more famous covers, and the folk tunes weren’t half bad. Thanks to Spotify, you can get a bit random in your music discoveries by seeing who’s subscribed to a playlist that you also like. You have at least a slight music compatibility with those users because they obviously like the same music that’s on that particular playlist — but chances are there’s not so much overlap in music interests that you’re both boringly similar. Next to a playlist, you see Subscribers with the number of people subscribed to it. (If only the creator of the playlist has subscribed to it, you don’t see any number.) Click this link, and a drop-down list appears, showing the usernames of the people who have subscribed. You can click any name in this list to see that user’s public profile and what music she’s also into, sparking the beginning of a musical chain reaction. Nifty, isn’t it?
177
178
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 10-5: You can see who’s subscribed to a playlist and view a subscriber’s profile.
Collaborating on Playlists I love Spotify’s collaboration feature — it’s the ability to let your friends add their own tracks to your playlist. Collaborative playlists were launched on Spotify back in 2008 and were an instant hit. These days, they’ve evolved even further to display who added which track and when. You and your collaborators can add or delete tracks at any time by dragging them into the playlist or pressing the Delete key to remove them from the playlist; all the changes are visible on everyone’s copy of the playlist. If you own the collaborative playlist, you can turn the collaboration feature off if things are getting a little out of hand! Collaborative playlists are a lot like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that virtually anyone can edit. You put the playlist link out there and rely on the wisdom of your friends to ensure that the playlist remains of decent quality and on topic. Maybe, on occasion, some pranksters will think it’s a good idea to insert some Kenny G in the middle of your Kraftwerk (or vice versa, if you’re the one into the saxophone solos), but they’ll be accountable because the username of whoever added the track is displayed. At the moment, you can’t restrict who has access to a collaborative playlist. Spotify has put one measure in place to help restrict a free-for-all collaboration by random strangers — it doesn’t let you publish collaborative playlists to your public profile. So, you can control who has access to the playlist’s web address, and it’s up to you to determine whether your friends can be trusted to keep the playlist within your circle of buddies and not publicize it to their blogs or on Facebook.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music However, if the web address to the collaborative playlist somehow gets out there, anyone with that address can edit the playlist, and someone might delete all the tracks listed in it. So, I recommend backing up your collaborative playlist by making a copy of it as a private playlist — the master version. Just select all the tracks in the playlist (by clicking one, and then pressing Ctrl+A on PC or Ô+A on a Mac to select them all) and drag them into a new playlist to create a copy (for more on creating playlists, see Chapter 6). Making a playlist collaborative is straightforward. Just follow these steps:
1. After creating a playlist, right-click its title in the main sidebar, and then select Collaborative Playlist from the pop-up menu that appears.
The music note turns from white to green, and a little dot appears next to it.
2. Share the playlist in the way I describe in the section “Using Spotify Links to Share Music,” earlier in this chapter.
Remember that anyone who has the web address can edit the tracks within the playlist.
3. If you feel the need to turn collaboration off and make the playlist all yours once more, right-click the playlist in the sidebar again.
If the playlist is collaborative, a check appears next to Collaborative Playlist.
4. Click Collaborative Playlist to uncheck that option and turn off the collaborative feature.
The music note turns back to its original white.
Discovering Your Inbox A Spotify Social feature lets you send and receive music in much the same way that you exchange e-mails. You can even add a small message to any tracks that you send to your friends. The advantage of sending people a track by using their own personal Spotify Inboxes is that they can easily manage all received tracks from within the Spotify window. The Spotify Inbox looks like Figure 10-6. It includes fields for the track name (Track), who sent it (From), the artist and album, song length (Time), and when it was added to your Inbox. There’s also a link that you can click to buy the track, and if a message was included, you see a small speech bubble in the From column, next to the sender’s username.
179
180
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 10-6: Your Spotify Inbox lets you send and receive tracks.
Depending on how many tracks end up in your Inbox, you can filter them by using Ctrl+F (Ô+F on the Mac) to bring up a Filter bar — I talk about filtering in Chapter 7. Don’t confuse the Search filter with where it says Filter in your Inbox window, as shown in Figure 10-6. The Inbox filter is like a junk-mail filter that allows you to display only tracks from people you follow — I describe how to use it in the section “Blocking unwanted messages,” later in this chapter.
Sending a track To send a track to someone, you need to have him listed in your People sidebar first. Because you can add anyone who has a public profile to your People list, you may be a stranger to your recipient (and you might receive tracks from people you don’t know). Who knows, the Spotify Inbox could turn out to be some new form of online matchmaking, uniting couples through music! After you find the track that you want to send to a Spotify friend, click and drag it to that person’s name in the People sidebar. A dialog box pops up, as shown in Figure 10-7, which includes a text box where you can add a brief optional message. Click Send Track when you finish adding your message.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music
Figure 10-7: Send from 1 to 100 tracks at a time to your friends’ Spotify Inboxes.
To send more than one track at a time, Ctrl-click (Ô-click on a Mac) the tracks that you want, and then click and drag them to the person’s name in the People sidebar. You can’t yet drop a whole playlist into someone’s Inbox, but you can select all the tracks from that playlist and send them off in one go that way. Note that you can’t send more than 100 tracks at a time, and you can send tracks to only one recipient at a time.
Reading Inbox messages When you have Spotify running and see a number next to the Spotify icon in the Start bar in Windows 7 or your Dock on the Mac, it means that you have that number of new tracks waiting in your Inbox. This number also appears next to Inbox in Spotify’s left sidebar. Click Inbox in the left sidebar to view these tracks, as well as who sent them. Each unplayed track is shown in bold white to make it stand out and has a blue dot next to the track name. You can then double-click a track to start playing it right away, and the track becomes unbold. If the person who sent you the tracks has left you a message, you see a small speech bubble appear next to her name. Click this speech bubble to read the message, which appears in a little pop-up window.
181
182
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends You can’t really reply to tracks in the traditional sense to say thanks, but why not send the user a thank you track as a reply, with your own message? By the way, tracks play on your computer only if they’re already in Spotify’s streaming database or stored locally — otherwise, they appear grayed-out and are unplayable.
Marking and starring Inbox tracks If you start playing a track and don’t have time to listen through to the end, bookmark it by clicking the star outline that appears on the far left column, which adds the track to your starred songs. Alternatively, right-click the track and select Mark as Unseen from the pop-up menu that appears. Selecting this option turns it back to bold and makes the track look like it hasn’t been listened to yet, so you can easily find it at a glance if you have a lot of other tracks in your Inbox.
Blocking unwanted messages The Spotify Inbox isn’t susceptible to the sort of junk mail or spam that plagues traditional e-mail. I’m sure some bands who have music on Spotify send tracks from their albums to all their friends to get them to listen to those tracks, but that’s not really spam so much as a blatant plug! Someone annoying might start bombarding your Inbox — he might even be your mate. So, what to do? Well, thankfully it’s not a big deal. Just go to your Inbox, right-click his name, and select Block from Inbox from the pop-up menu that appears. In the future, all messages from this person won’t arrive in your Inbox. You can also select Hide This Person to get rid of all the messages he’s sent you — convenient if you have a load to sort through. You can also change the view of your Inbox to display messages only from people you’re already following. Click Filter and select Only Show Items from People I Follow from the drop-down list that appears. To undo this setting, repeat the selection to uncheck the option.
Checking Out the Top Lists The popularity bar that appears next to all Spotify tracks is a meter that measures how frequently a track is being listened to — the more people are listening to it, the higher the meter goes.
Chapter 10: Sharing and Collaborating on Music Spotify also provides a Top Tracks listing, which monitors what people are listening to within Spotify — think of it as an alternative to the Billboard Hot 100. From what I can gather, the Top charts do align quite similarly to the official Top 40 countdowns, with the usual suspects continuing to rate on Spotify with the same popularity as the mainstream charts. Lady Gaga, Pitbull, and Rihanna are just some of the acts who are practically off the scale in terms of popularity, as you can see in Figure 10-8.
Figure 10-8: Spotify displays top tracks and albums in a two-column view.
To view the Top lists, select What’s New in the left sidebar, and then click the Top Lists tab. You see two columns, one displaying Top Tracks and the other displaying Top Albums. The titles of what’s currently displaying in each column (top tracks, albums, or artists) are actually menu options — click one to open a drop-down list, from which you can change the type of view (for example, to display Top Artists in one column and Top Albums in another), as shown in Figure 10-9.
183
184
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 10-9: Each column in Spotify’s top lists can be customized to display the top artists, albums, or tracks.
After you choose your Top list views, you can be more specific about the region from which these results appear. In Figure 10-9, the current view is set to Everywhere. Just click the current view, which appears to the right of the column name, to open a drop-down list, from which you can choose a different view:
✓ Everywhere: The most popular tracks, artists, or albums in all Spotify countries combined. ✓ By Country: Want to know who’s charting in Norway or France? You can narrow down your view by selecting this option. ✓ For Me: What tracks, artists, or albums have you been listening to all week? Take a look at your own Top lists by selecting this option. (Your own Top lists can be made public on your profile page — I explain how to add these lists to your profile in Chapter 9.)
Chapter 11
Embracing the Spotify Community In This Chapter ▶ Using great Spotify-related web apps ▶ Discovering music with Spotify-related websites ▶ Diving into blogs about Spotify ▶ Signing up to the Spotify Help forums and submitting a query
O
ne of the strongest reasons to choose Spotify over any other music subscription or streaming service is, I think, its strong and creative community. There’s a whole Spotify fan world out there that’s absolutely thriving. Spotify’s toolkit, known as an API (or application program interface), has become wildly popular with developers who want to tap into Spotify’s inner workings and build their own music-related programs by using Spotify data. Non-techie types can find countless nuggets of brilliance: Many combine, or mash up, the best of Spotify with other services that issue APIs, such as Last.fm (which I discuss in Chapter 5), Google, or Twitter. Then there are the blogs, forums, and websites dedicated to all things Spotify. Find out what’s hot, read about new releases, and discover links to albums and unique playlists. It’s so refreshing to see such enthusiasm and passion about music out there. This chapter aims to pull all these great tools and websites together into one resource. I can’t aim to cover absolutely everything in this chapter, and new sites and apps are arriving all the time, particularly now that Spotify is available in the U.S. and its integration with Facebook. Turn to Chapter 18 to find out even more about some innovative add-ons. At the end of this chapter, I also talk about where to go for Spotify help. One small disclaimer: Spotify doesn’t officially support the services and tools I list in this chapter, and developers may withdraw them at any time. Some may be in a beta (trial) mode, which means they may have a few bugs or stability issues that still need ironing out. These are primarily free, noncommercial projects that have been produced in the developers’ spare time, after all. For cellphone-related Spotify apps, turn to Chapter 14.
186
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Playing with Special Spotify Toys Spotify’s roots are in Sweden, home to some of the world’s greatest pop and dance acts. Combine the country’s thriving tech industry with its enthusiasm for all things music, and it comes as no surprise to discover that so many of the great blogs and innovative web tools discussed here are indeed Swedish. For example, Radiofy (www.radiofy.se) pulls in tracks being played by dozens of Swedish radio programs; you can follow Spotify links to tracks and view the most frequently played songs. Meanwhile, ListDJ (www.listdj.se) brings up the lyrics of a song currently playing on Spotify. But Sweden isn’t the only country with enthusiastic developers who are helping to serve consumers’ musical needs. Plenty of creative websites and tools are coming out of all the countries where Spotify has a presence.
BRITify Like Radiofy from Sweden, BRITify (www.britify.com) pulls together playlists from the British Broadcasting Corporation’s radio stations and puts them together in a series of handy playlists, listed by timeslot and updated nightly. Spotify was so impressed by Richard Ablewhite’s creation, it tweeted about this tool to its 100,000-plus Twitter followers. Richard hopes to expand BRITify so it includes other U.K. radio stations, too. Richard cleverly mixes the BBC’s program listings API with Spotify’s APIs to create the tool. Here’s how it works: Select a radio station (BBC 1 to 6 or BBC 1xtra) to bring up a list of all programs from the past few days, along with the DJs or presenters allocated to that timeslot. Clicking a timeslot expands the view to display ✓ A Spotify link to the last 100 played tracks from that particular program ✓ A Spotify link to the program’s latest playlist ✓ Spotify links to individual songs played during that session
Some shows don’t have a great number of tracks on Spotify, but numbers tend to vary depending on the popularity and genre of the music. After I made an unscientific study over a couple of days, I discovered around two-thirds of songs played across all the radio shows appear to be available in Spotify’s library. You can tell which BBC programs have a decent number of tracks on Spotify by looking at the tally below the timeslot. For instance, 19/36 means that out of the 36 songs that were broadcast on that day’s show, Spotify has 19 of those tracks available to listen to. Figure 11-1 shows the site in action — on a day when I managed to find a timeslot that had all the songs available to play. Clicking a link takes you directly to Spotify, launching either the playlist or the individual track, as appropriate.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Figure 11-1: BRITify lets you listen to BBC radioprogram playlists on Spotify.
The BRITify website also hosts two sister sites, Last.ify (described in the following section) and biblify (www.biblify.com), a site that takes album recommendations from publications and turns them into playlists.
Last.ify Last.ify takes the music connected to your Last.fm profile and automatically generates Spotify playlists based on your listening habits. Quite a few other sites create playlists in this way, too, but it’s worth trying out a few to see which one you like best. (For more on Last.fm and how it works, see Chapter 5.) To use Last.ify, follow these steps:
1. Go to www.britify.com/lastify, enter your Last.fm username in the text box, and then click Make My Playlist.
You get redirected to the Last.fm website and are prompted to enter your username and password, if you aren’t logged in already.
2. Click Come on In to continue to your Last.fm account, if necessary.
3. Click Yes, Allow Access to give Last.ify access to your listening data.
You return to Last.ify, and it begins scanning your listening history, as shown in Figure 11-2.
4. After the scanning process is finished (which takes a minute), click the big Spotify icon to go to your playlist.
If the playlist appears empty, wait a few minutes for Spotify’s servers to sync your playlist. Now, watch and marvel while your recommended playlist appears.
187
188
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 11-2: Last.ify creates a Spotify playlist for you based on Last. fm music recommendations.
Apart from Last.ify, you can also try the Dutch-based site Spotrecord (http://spotrecord.haykranen.nl) to get Spotify album recommendations based on your Last.fm account. Just enter your Last.fm username in the text box and click Get Recs — you don’t need to log into Last.fm. Suggested albums appear, along with cover art, on the results page, and you can click Gimme Some More if you aren’t happy with the initial suggestions. If loading cover art takes a while, deselect the With Covers (Might Be Slow) check box, which appears below the Last.fm Username text box.
Pitchify Pitchify’s slogan is “Spotify Links Based on Good Reviews.” The easy-tobrowse site, shown in Figure 11-3, scans favorable album reviews from Drowned in Sound and Pitchfork — two popular online magazines — and checks to see whether those albums are on Spotify. Norwegian creator Anders Austad says on his site that Pitchify is “90 per cent automated, and I am trying to crack the last 10 per cent as well.” Links to the original reviews are included on the album’s Listing page. Anders tells me he updates the site every month or so with new features and small improvements; next on the list are better genre tags relating to album listings and a tie-in with musicrecommendation service Spotibot (see the section “Using Spotibot to Uncover Music,” later in this chapter). Visit Pitchify at www.pitchify.com.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Figure 11-3: Pitchify displays Spotify links to top album reviews.
Gigero Gigero’s polished, easy-to-use website (www.gigero.com) oozes with summerfestival happiness. Even though it’s technically in beta (trial) mode, it still looks very professional. All you do is type in the name of an artist, and Gigero scans Last.fm for gig listings, uses Google Maps to visually pinpoint where those concerts and festivals are, and then delivers Spotify links next to the artists’ names (which appear in a pop-up screen when you click a Google Map pinpoint). You also see links to any other acts also attending the same event. The service’s latest feature, Gigero Embed, lets artists embed a Gigero frame on their own sites to let people know where they’re playing next. You can also search by city and see all the events that are scheduled, wherever you are. I found plenty of events happening in Beijing, Jakarta, and Rio de Janeiro (but apparently none in Phnom Penh or Ulan Bator — which I’m sure isn’t actually the case, they just probably aren’t big Last.fm users over there). When viewing the Google Map of scheduled shows, you can zoom in to see the exact location of your chosen gig or zoom out to view the artist’s globetrotting schedule from afar, as seen in Figure 11-4. Another nice touch is the color-coded pinpoints — gigs happening sooner rather than later are displayed in a darker blue, and gigs that aren’t happening for several months are lighter, so you can plan your festival frenzy at a glance.
189
190
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 11-4: Gigero lets you see where an artist is playing or search for gigs in your town.
Tubufy If you don’t know what this strange word, Tubufy, means or how to pronounce it, just add an e to the first syllable — Tube. As in YouTube. Geddit? Tubufy (www.tubufy.com) bills itself as “Spotify with video.” Paste your Spotify playlist Uniform Resource Indicator (URI) link into the text box (for more on sharing links, see Chapter 10), and Tubufy generates the playlist with YouTube video clips of those tracks running alongside it. The playlist I’ve put together for my daughter Audrey that features songs from her favorite children’s shows now comes to life, and she can enjoy dancing with all the characters. Tubufy’s navigation is simple: All the tracks from your playlist are listed in a sidebar on the left side of the screen; click a track to launch the related YouTube video in the main part of your browser’s window. Note that for copyright reasons, not all songs link to videos; some link to only stills. You can click the Show Alternative link at the top of the video to see other versions of the song on YouTube, some of which may have a related video featured. Tubufy isn’t the only site matching music with YouTube videos: you can also check out Spot My Video at www.spotmyvideo.com, although you can only paste up to 12 tracks into its text box, rather than link to actual playlists.
Topsify Years ago, I remember lying on the floor with the tape recorder on and the radio tuned to the Top 40 Countdown, only moving to press pause in order to cut out the ads and any pointless talk from the DJ. I believe I also went
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community through a phase of writing down what the top songs actually were (this was before the web, and you couldn’t exactly look up this kind of information on Google because there was no such thing). Anyway, you can forget about waiting around for the countdown or meticulously writing it down: You can access the Top 40 playlists in the U.S., the U.K., and Sweden straightaway with Topsify. There are also specialized playlists for American Top 40 R&B and hip-hop, and the Swedish Top 40 dance and club charts. Just visit www.topsify.com to find links to the latest charts. You can also subscribe to Topsify’s Spotify profile by going to http://open.spotify.com/user/topsify (for more about subscribing to a profile, see Chapter 9). That way, you can view the latest charts as soon as they’re updated (more than 23,000 people have already subscribed to the U.K. Top 40 link alone, as shown in Figure 11-5). Subscriber number
Figure 11-5: More than 23,000 people have subscribed to Topsify’s Top 40 playlist.
Overhere Music is something to share, and if one of your Last.fm mates is listening to music at the same time that you’re online, you can listen along with her via Spotify and share a moment, even if she’s on the other side of the world. Just enter her username at the cleverly named www.overhere.me, and if she’s online, the site launches the song she’s listening to in Spotify. (Overhere is ideal for long-distance relationships!) On the other hand, when you think about how the site lets you listen to whatever someone’s listening to as long
191
192
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends as he’s online at the time and has his Last.fm real-time listening data turned on, it does seem a little weird. (If the thought of someone piggybacking your day’s music soundtrack gives you a chill rather than a thrill, you can always opt to have your listening data hidden in your Last.fm settings, as described in Chapter 5.)
Equalify Equalify (www.equalify.me) is a free, neat little app from Norway that plugs into Spotify and gives you a ten-channel equalizer to help you gain richer sound from the track that’s playing. You need to download and install the Equalify plug-in first (Windows only; a Mac tool is in development). Figure 11-6 shows Equalify in action. It’s accessible from a special EQ link, which appears on your Spotify client after you download and install the software. After Equalify is installed, you can turn it on and off by pressing the EQ button and docking the app in a convenient place (such as your Spotify window’s left sidebar). Equalify app
Figure 11-6: Equalify is a handy ten-channel equalizer for Spotify.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
truShuffle Hugo Lindström has created truShuffle (www.trushuffle.com), a clever little tool from Sweden (where else?) that generates a Spotify playlist on the fly while you listen to music. To get it working, a Last.fm account is necessary, and you also need to register on the truShuffle website (it’s free). Next, start listing to music on Spotify (making sure that scrobbling to Last.fm is enabled in your Spotify preferences, as described in Chapter 3). As if by magic, truShuffle recognizes the music you’re listening to, displays the artist biography and related info on its website, and then launches a related playlist in Spotify. Hugo has also developed a snazzy, standalone desktop application for both PC and Mac, so you don’t need to have the truShuffle website open all the time for it to display information about who you’re listening to and what’s playing. When the application’s open, you don’t even need to have scrobbling enabled for truShuffle to add tracks to the playlist it generates for you! I did have a slight problem the first time I tried it because my playlist remained blank — Hugo says that during peak listening times, such as Friday nights, it may take a while for Spotify to sync the tracks.
Spotisquare Foursquare is a fun social networking app that lets you plot your location by using a mobile phone, find out where your friends are, and view who else has checked in to the same place that you have. One bright developer thought up Spotisquare (www.spotisquare.com), which combines Foursquare’s locationbased aspect with Spotify’s playlist functionality (and its mobile app). When you check into a location by using Spotisquare, you can view any Spotify playlists that have been tied to that venue or use its connector tool to add your own. A venue doesn’t have to be music related — you could be on a beach somewhere, listening to a related playlist that perfectly matches the lazy mood. If a venue doesn’t have a playlist tied to it, you can add your own for other people to enjoy. A clever idea, but it needs bigger word of mouth to really get going.
Viral Music List Viral Music List is a neat little idea that pulls together the most popular tracks, albums, and artists that people have shared on Facebook in the last 24 hours and presents them in a nice series of Spotify playlists. See http://viralmusiclist.com for more.
193
194
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Examining the origins of Spotify websites You can have a lot of fun discovering all the Spotify-friendly websites and tools out there. I’ve found that many of them started off in order to fill a certain need.
service that showed upcoming festivals in an intuitive way. To make it easy for people to discover new music, they also decided to insert Spotify links to all artists attending an event.
For instance, Kieron Donoghue developed ShareMyPlaylists.com after he discovered there was no easy way to get other people to check out his songs (this was way before Spotify introduced social features; you can read an interview with Kieron in the sidebar “Behind the scenes at ShareMyPlaylists.com,” in this chapter).
Shi Lei’s Spotify Classical blog, described in the section “Spotify Classical,” in this chapter, was born after Lei discovered that not many people were listening to classical music on Spotify, despite its huge classical library. There’s certainly a growing interest in classical music: Traffic on his site tripled in the days following Spotify’s U.S. launch, with people looking for where to find classical music on Spotify. His carefully crafted playlists based on themes, such as Classical Music Inspired by the Sea, help make classical music on Spotify more accessible and open it up to a broader audience.
And Gigero, featured in the section “Gigero,” in this chapter, started off as a university assignment to create a web service, according to co-creator Filip Engberg. He and his former classmate Robert Åberg, both from Sweden, created Gigero after realizing there was no
Playlistify Playlistify (www.playlistify.org), a playlist-conversion site hailing from the Netherlands, lets you bake (or create) your own Spotify playlist in a number of ways. You can upload an exported iTunes or WinAmp playlist (among others) and watch it convert into a playable Spotify playlist. Playlistify also offers you the ability to convert a YouTube playlist into a Spotify one. It can even convert a plain-text list of tracks into a playable Spotify playlist — see Chapter 18, where I show you how to do this conversion in just a few easy steps. Actually, that’s not all you can do at Roeland Landegent’s quirky and creative site: There’s a playlist-sharing side of things that lets you submit your baked playlist to a huge directory of others and browse through the playlists that have already been submitted. You can also dig into Last.fm data to create Spotify playlists based on several factors (such as genre, a Last.fm user’s top tracks, similar artists, and more). I highly recommend spending some time checking it out!
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
clinc Spotify has a strong classical-music collection, and if you’re overwhelmed with the choices on offer, the folks at clinc (http://clinc.eu) can help you choose what to listen to next. As clinc says, when you’re on Spotify looking for classical music, you can get thousands of results mixed together. Sorting your trance remixes and Muzak versions from the real thing can all be too much! To use the site, you can browse by composer, conductor, ensemble, or performer, and then view a selection of albums that clinc recommends. Then, just drag the playlist link into your Spotify client to launch the tracks.
Discovering the Music with ShareMyPlaylists.com ShareMyPlaylists.com (or SMP, for short) was one of the first Spotify playlist– sharing sites around and still continues to innovate and deliver new features to visitors. The site’s mantra is “Long Live the Mixtape,” and here, you’ll find plenty of creations painstakingly compiled by thousands of users. After you create a Spotify playlist full of your own personal song selections (see Chapter 6), you can copy the link and submit it to the site, along with a brief description (as shown in Figure 11-7), to let other people listen to it, too. And, of course, you can discover loads of new playlists that have been submitted by others! Currently, lucky SMP is the only site allowed to use Spotify’s playlist data for development purposes (as opposed to just the track, album, and artist information that other developers are using).
Figure 11-7: ShareMy Playlists. com lets you submit your Spotify playlist for all to see.
195
196
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
SMP site features Here’s a rundown of the main features you’ll find on this extensive site, whose home page is shown in Figure 11-8: ✓ Playlists: Apart from submitting your own playlists to the site, as described in the preceding section, you can search for playlists by genre, browse the newest selections, and check out SMP’s featured playlists. ✓ Members: You don’t need to be a member of the site to listen to playlists, but registering (for free) gives you greater benefits — you can immerse yourself in the community and follow profiles of people who’ve submitted playlists that caught your eye. Every profile lets you add friends and leave messages on each others’ profiles, too. See the following section to find out how to register. ✓ Connect: The newest feature to grace SMP lets you connect your Last. fm account and Facebook profile to the site. After you do, you get a list of recommended artists. You can remove a suggested artist as a favorite so that it doesn’t appear again, generate a playlist based on a recommended artist, or view an artist biography. ✓ Playlist Generator: Type at least one artist name into this generator, then opt to receive either popular or obscure tracks, and SMP delivers an automatically generated playlist related to the artist (or artists). ✓ Lyrics: You can view song lyrics for any track that appears in a playlist by clicking the track’s title, or just click the Lyrics tab to conduct a search. ✓ Charts: You can view the most popular playlists for that week — determined by the number of times people click Play next to a playlist’s Spotify link. Typically, hot charts can receive thousands of plays. ✓ Badges: For those of you who enjoy earning achievements while playing computer games, you’ll like the concept of earning virtual badges for attaining certain milestones. Open to registered users only, the badges recognize events such as 50,000 plays of your playlist or submitting a playlist that ends up on the site’s Featured section. Badges are also awarded for playlists that stay on the site’s charts for a number of successive weeks. You can proudly display the badges on your SMP profile for all to see. ✓ Blog: The folks running SMP know how to deliver some eloquently scathing music reviews, from what I’ve read on their blog! Apart from picking apart the latest Kings of Leon offering, the blog delivers weekly playlist highlights and frequent updates about what’s happening at the SMP HQ. ✓ Merchandise: Among other selections, SMP has shirts for sale emblazoned with the Long Live the Mixtape slogan.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Figure 11-8: The main ShareMy Playlists.com links to a host of interesting features.
Registering on SMP To add a playlist to SMP and use the social features, you need to connect your account to the site via Facebook or Twitter. Whenever you visit ShareMyPlaylists.com, a pop-up window appears, prompting you to sign in by using either of these accounts. The first time you sign in, you need to authorize SMP to have access to your basic Facebook or Twitter data. In the case of Twitter, for example, you get redirected to a Twitter page, asking if you Authorize Share My Playlists to Use Your Account. Click Sign In to log in by using your Twitter username and password to confirm. You then get logged in to SMP via Twitter and are directed back to the site.
If you don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, or would rather sign up separately to SMP, that’s possible, too. Just click the Register button at the top of the page to set up a separate username and password. But it’s easier to use Facebook or Twitter, if possible, so that you don’t have to remember multiple passwords; there are handy links to publish your SMP playlists to either of these services.
Submitting a playlist to SMP Assuming you’re logged into SMP and want to submit a playlist, follow these steps:
197
198
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
1. Copy your playlist link by right-clicking the playlist name you want to submit in the left sidebar of your Spotify window, and then selecting Copy Spotify URI from the pop-up menu that appears.
2. On ShareMyPlaylists.com, click Submit Your Playlist.
You get directed to the SMP Playlist Submission page, like the one shown in Figure 11-7.
3. In the Playlist Image section, either choose Upload to submit your own artwork or click Generate Artwork to let SMP create artwork based on the tracks in your playlist.
The Generate Artwork option is faster and easier — it uses album covers to create the artwork — but creating your own logo or photo can make it stand out. If you want to do it yourself, click Upload and, in the Browse File dialog box that appears, browse to the file’s location and click OK. Images should be 150 pixels by 150 pixels in size.
4. Paste the link you copied in Step 1 into the Enter Spotify URL text box (Ctrl+V on a PC or Ô+V on a Mac).
5. Give your playlist a title in the Enter Your Playlist Title text box.
6. In the Enter Playlist Description text box, add the playlist’s description (such as what the playlist means to you).
SMP generates the artist names automatically for you, so you don’t need to mention them in the description.
7. Select a genre from the list provided in the third column.
You can choose only one genre.
8. Click the Submit Playlist button. You’re logged into SMP and have an account with the site, so your job’s done; other people can view your public playlist.
App downloads, Twitter, and more SMP has free apps for Android, iPad, and iPhone. These apps let you browse playlists with greater ease if you’re using mobile devices, and you can then launch playlists on the Spotify mobile app. Although reviews praise the SMP app’s usability and the simplicity of discovering and searching for playlists (particularly for the iPad version), at the time of writing, you don’t get the social aspects you do when you visit the main website. Figure 11-9 shows you how the app lets you browse featured playlists on Android.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Behind the scenes at ShareMyPlaylists.com Back in late 2008, Kieron Donoghue received an invitation to join Spotify, which was still in beta (trial) mode at the time. He knew there and then that Spotify was something special, and it didn’t take long for him to create ShareMyPlaylists.com, a popular resource to let people such as you and me, well, share their playlists. “I also wanted to discover new music and thought that a perfect way to do that would be to give people a platform where they can discover new music via other people’s playlists,” Kieron says. Since launch, the site has introduced mobile phone apps and, most recently, integration with Facebook and Last.fm to help people discover even more music. The startup site, which has Spotify’s blessing, now hopes to be profitable in its own right. In an interview, I asked Kieron about how successful his site has been. Q: How many people are actively using the site? A: As of July 2011, we have 85,000 registered members and are growing at the rate of 500 a day; however, you don’t have to be a member to browse the site. We’re currently serving 2 million page impressions per month and have around 100 new playlists uploaded each day and 7,000 playlists played per day. Q: What feedback have you received from the Spotify community so far? A: It’s all been very positive. We constantly monitor the web and the likes of Twitter to see what people are saying about us, and it’s extremely gratifying when users recommend our site via a tweet or they blog about some of the playlists on the site. We always try to innovate and add new features, too, to keep everyone’s attention and to make the site a richer experience overall. Features such as the Playlist Generator and the weekly Top 50 Charts have been really well received.
Q: How, if at all, have Spotify Open listening restrictions in Europe affected playlist creation and sharing numbers? A: We haven’t seen any downturn at all, in fact, quite the opposite — we’re seeing a nice growth each month of anything up to 20 percent. Q: Spotify is a fan of your site. How did your site first grab their attention? A: Back in 2008, I wrote a personal blog post on how cool Spotify is and why people should be using it. From there, they reached out to me, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. Q: What’s your partnership like with Spotify now? A: Spotify are incredibly supportive of us, as they are with all Spotify community sites. They understand that if an ecosystem grows around Spotify, then it can only be a good thing. So, to that end, they work with us to help us grow and promote us whenever the opportunity exists. One thing we’re working hard on is establishing contacts within the record labels so that we can partner with them and provide exclusive playlists for our users. Spotify have been really helpful with this, too. Q: Is the site purely funded by advertising, and are you making a decent contribution to your income out of it? A: Yes, the business model is based around advertising, although we hope to add more revenue streams at a later date as we grow. The site isn’t profitable yet, but that’s not uncommon for startups. We need to spend cash in order to grow and get to a tipping point where we can become revenue positive.
199
200
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Figure 11-9: Browsing ShareMy Playlists.com by using the mobile app for Android.
You can also keep up to date with SMP through Twitter (@sharemyplay list) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/sharemyplaylists).
Using Spotibot to Uncover Music Spotibot is a clever little musical robot (or bot), that seems to read your mind and suggests alternative tracks you may like to try that are similar to a particular band or your musical tastes. Drawing on rich Last.fm listening data and taking advantage of Twitter’s quick-fire aspects, Spotibot, shown in Figure 11-10, delivers on virtually all aspects of musical recommendation. The tool works in several ways: ✓ Twitter: Get song recommendations by tweeting @spotibot similar to and the name of an artist. Spotibot then replies in minutes with a tune it thinks you should try. ✓ Last.fm login: Generate a Spotibot playlist based on your Last.fm recommendations, as shown in Figure 11-10. Just enter your username to get started and choose whether you want more-popular artists (charttopping acts, as opposed to obscure ones) in the results. You can edit the playlist that appears by deleting tracks from it. Drag the large green
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community Drag Me into Spotify button into Spotify to play the playlist (there’s an old-fashioned web link to the playlist below this button if you’re unable to drag and drop). ✓ Spotify Loved: Any tracks that you mark on Last.fm as Loved — which is like starring tracks in Spotify (see Chapter 3) — can be turned into a playlist.
Figure 11-10: Spotibot delivers playlists and recommended tracks to you.
Spotify recently made it easier for developers to create mobile apps that use Spotify data, so Spotibot creator Andy Smith is confident about expanding Spotibot’s features and bringing it to the mobile platforms very soon. Andy says Spotify continues to be very supportive of Spotibot, which has existed even before its official API. (For those who have the interest — and ability — to launch a similar Spotify-related tool, you can read a brief case study with Andy in Chapter 19.)
Following Spotify Music Blogs Technology can do only so much: Sometimes, you do need a human to find the gems when it comes to what Spotify has on offer. Thank goodness there are plenty of dedicated blogs, or online journals, that can help you with this task. I’ve listed some of the most popular ones in the following sections, but I’m sure plenty are springing up every day — word gets out quickly, and many of the sites link to each other, so keep a lookout! Also, the sidebar “A league of its own,” in this chapter, offers a Q&A with this book’s technical editor, Jer White, who runs the popular, long-running Spotify community site the Pansentient League (www.pansentient.com). I’ve found it an invaluable resource while writing this book!
201
202
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
soundofus.com soundofus.com posts a Spotify link to a new track every day and rates a selection of albums, which you can launch directly in Spotify. There doesn’t seem to be any particular genre that soundofus.com sticks to: If it sounds good, they link to it. A nice touch is a category called Oldies of the Day (which tends to focus on a diverse range of 1960s to ’70s music) and upto-date YouTube videos are added, too. A blog accompanying the site is at http://soundofusblog.tumblr.com.
Spotify Classical Beijing-based Shi Lei (Spotify user ulyssestone) runs the popular Spotify Classical Playlists website (www.spotifyclassical.com), which includes plenty of classical playlists, along with tips for listening to classical gems on Spotify. For instance, Lei has posted a playlist of Bach’s complete works, which were released as a whopping 172-CD box set by German label Hänssler Classic. More than 3,000 tracks are included in this playlist, and the great thing about Spotify is that you can filter the tracks in a couple of seconds. You don’t need to scroll through such a massive library if you have only a particular opus in mind. Lei has also collated a chronological playlist of all Beethoven’s works, whose publication dates didn’t necessarily correspond with their completion dates. But it isn’t just straight albums that Lei posts. His inventive and meticulously compiled playlists include Opera Without Words, Piano Transcriptions of Famous Symphonic Works, and Penguin Guide Rossette Winners, a compilation of track recordings that have been awarded a Rosette by the definitive Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music — a guidebook highlighting what its editors consider to be the finest examples of recorded classical music over the last 50 years. Particularly notable tracks receive Rosettes. See Lei’s Spotify profile at http://open.spotify.com/user/ulyssestone.
Spotinews Joe Buck sifts through what albums have just been added to Spotify and regularly posts his favorite discoveries. You can find a variety of genres and a number of debut acts showcased on his blog. Joe’s Swedish, so you see a few links to new releases from there, too. His musical tastes have earned him some regular fans. Check out http://spotinews.wordpress.com.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
SpotiDJ Another great resource, SpotiDJ (www.spotidj.com) displays every tweet that contains a Spotify link (to share songs on Twitter, see Chapter 10). You can narrow the list a little by selecting songs from one of Spotify’s launch countries. But there’s more to SpotiDJ than automatically updated song links: Click the Blog link to follow an interesting experiment that’s been tracking what Spotify pays to unsigned artists and read reviews of the latest Spotify add-ons.
A league of its own This book has the perfect technical editor — Jer White runs the most comprehensive Spotify blog on the web. It rivals the official website in terms of the sheer volume of useful Spotify-related information it contains. Jer’s website, the Pansentient League (www. pansentient.com) enjoys more than 16,000 unique visitors per month and contains original reviews of new web services and apps; in-depth analysis of new Spotify features; step-by-step guides; up-to-date Spotify announcements; and a few Human League, synthpop, and Android posts thrown in for good measure. His site also hosts the New on Spotify page (www. pansentient.com/new-on-
spotify), which indexes all Spotify’s latest releases. If that isn’t enough, Jer’s site hosts the Spotify Community Site Awards every year, better known as The Spotties. Jer’s listening habits have changed so much since Spotify arrived on the scene. He doesn’t store MP3s files on his computer anymore and streams everything through Spotify. You can also follow Jer on Twtter (@afront) or become a fan of his Facebook page (www. facebook.com/pansentient). Here’s a Q&A with Jer:
(continued)
203
204
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends (continued)
Q: What did deleting all your MP3s feel like? A: Liberating! Actually, I did cheat a bit: I made a backup to an offline hard drive first, just in case. But it was a joyous moment when I realized that I’d won back hours of time a week previously spent downloading, tagging, renaming, sorting, and getting album art for all those MP3s. Q: How has Spotify changed your listening habits? Do you ever feel the need to buy an MP3 or a CD anymore? A: Spotify changed my listening habits more [than] anything previously. Growing up with vinyl and cassette, then moving to CD, was just format shifting. CD to MP3 was more of a change, but fundamentally, it was just another format shift. Spotify, however, was revolutionary. Instead of thinking about which songs to buy and balancing my budget to limit the number of “dud” albums I wasted money on, Spotify’s on-demand access model has meant that I can listen to anything at all. Consequently I’m listening to all sorts of music I probably wouldn’t have discovered before, since I’m no longer stuck in that ownership angst. I do still sometimes buy CDs, but usually only when I want to particularly support an artist I admire. Q: What kind of new genres of music have you discovered since joining Spotify? A: I’ve been listening to quite a bit of 1930s and ’40s swing music recently, even a bit of jazz. This all came from hearing and liking that style of music on PlayStation games Bioshock and L.A. Noire. Both these games have soundtrack albums on Spotify . . . and that led me on to all sorts of fantastic songs with all that wonderful brass and uncomplicated lyrics. I was gushing about my new-found love for Progressive Electronic music recently when
someone on Facebook asked me, “Have you heard Peru?” I hadn’t, but with Spotify, I was able to look them up instantly and start listening. I was blown away: What fabulous analog synth sounds! And Spotify had about a dozen of their albums to check out. I just love how you can mine for music and suddenly hit a rich seam like that. Q: What’s your advice to someone keen to discover new music using Spotify? What’s an ideal approach they should take, particularly if they only have limited listening hours? A: Pick an artist you already like, then view the band’s page in Spotify. Click the Related Artists tab to view a list of other bands that are most likely of a similar style. Spotify bases these recommendations on what other users in Spotify have listened to who also like the artist you chose. Alternatively, use a playlist generator like Spotibot [featured in the section “Using Spotibot to Uncover Music,” in this chapter]. This lets you put in the name of a band you like, then generate a custom playlist of similar music. If you’re worried about listening hours, you can tune how many tracks you want in the playlist. Q: What’s your biggest limitation of Spotify at the moment? A: Currently, the biggest limitation for me is Spotify’s poor ability to manage large numbers of playlists. If you only have a few dozen playlists, then it’s fine, but for “power” users like me who have lots of playlists, it can be hard to manage and keep track of them all in Spotify, since basically they’re just presented as one big long list down the side. When Spotify introduced playlist folders that certainly helped ease the situation, but you still can’t easily sort your playlists.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Getting More Help with Spotify This book will, I hope, be your Spotify bible and help you get the most out of this great tool without the need to consult extra sources for the answers. But the reality is there may be times when you need a little help from your Spotify friends. So, in the following sections, I introduce Spotify’s official support forum hosted on Get Satisfaction (www.getsatisfaction.com/spotify).
How Get Satisfaction works Whenever there’s a bug you want fixed or a missing feature you’re after — or you just get stuck trying to do something — simply go to the Get Satisfaction forums and submit a question. You can also submit an idea for Spotify’s developers to consider, and other people can vote for whether they like your idea. For example, at the time of writing, close to 1,000 people want gapless playback in Spotify (where there’s no pause between songs), and almost 500 people are wishing for an easy way to report problems with the music (such as instances when bands that have the same name appear in the same artist stream). People can follow threads, or posts related to a particular topic, to keep up to date — replies to a topic can go straight to your e-mail so that you don’t need to keep checking the site for the answers. Oh, and if you absolutely love Spotify, you can choose to flatter everyone working there by clicking the Give Praise button and typing a fan message in the text box that appears. The best thing about the Get Satisfaction forums is that the friendly, official Spotify staff (labeled as such by special Spotify buttons next to their usernames) frequent the site and regularly offer solutions and updates to people’s problems. When there are multiple threads related to the same topic, it can be hard to figure out which one to follow, but Get Satisfaction’s website anticipates this problem by analyzing your query for keywords and seeing whether other people also have that question before you hit the Submit button. It then brings up a list of suggested questions that it thinks might answer your query — I explain the process in the following section.
Submitting a Get Satisfaction query To submit a Get Satisfaction question, heap praise, report a problem, or reply to a message, follow these steps:
1. Click Log In at the top of the website (www.getsatisfaction.com/ spotify).
205
206
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
2. Click the tab relating to the service you want to use for logging in and follow the login instructions.
Either use your existing account with Twitter, Google, or Facebook credentials, or use your Windows Live or OpenID. (OpenID is an easy way to log into supported websites by using one identity; for more, see http://openid.net.) The first time you log in, you may be asked to approve the linkup between the service and Get Satisfaction.
3. On the main Spotify page, type your question in the text box, and then click Continue.
Spotify searches your question’s keywords to see whether other people have posted similar queries or comments, and then displays links to other questions people have asked, which it thinks are appropriate. You can click a suggested link if you think it’s relevant.
4. If none of the suggested links look like they’ll solve your problem, click the Nope. Finish Posting My Question button.
The Start a New Topic page appears, as shown in Figure 11-11.
5. Select a topic type from the drop-down list.
You can choose from Question, Idea, Problem, or Praise.
6. Add a catchy title encapsulating your problem in the Give Your Topic a Great Title text box and include a description in the Add Some Details text box.
7. (Optional) Uncheck the option to share your e-mail address with Spotify if you don’t want them to contact you directly with a solution.
8. On the right side of the page, in the Related Product/Service section, select the check box next to which product or service relates to your topic.
9. In the Tag with Words text box, enter three or more tags to your comment, including one on each line.
To tag a phrase, put it in quotes. These tags can help other people search for the same problem.
10. Click Post.
You’re redirected to the Spotify forum, where other people can view (and hopefully answer!) your question.
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community
Adding an image to your query In some cases, you might want to add an image to your query that illustrates your problem better than words can. (Actually, I think there should be a space to link to a Spotify track that suits your mood; most obviously, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”) Uploading an image that illustrates your problem might help others solve it faster. Follow these steps to do it in Windows:
Figure 11-11: Entering a new topic in the Get Satisfaction Spotify forum.
GetSatisfaction.com
1. Get your problem to show up on your computer screen and press Print Screen to capture it.
2. Open Windows Paint.
You can type Paint into your Windows search bar to find it.
3. Paste in the screen capture by typing Ctrl+V.
4. Click the Save icon in Paint and choose to save it as a .jpg file.
5. Go to Get Satisfaction and upload the image by clicking Add Image below the Add Some Details box and then browsing to the image you just saved. Get Satisfaction accepts only images that are 2MB or less in size. Your capture should end up being around 500KB.
If you want to crop it in order to zoom in on a particular problem, then you need to copy the selection and save it as a new file. For full instructions, go to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows7/Crop-a-pictureusing-Paint.
207
208
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends For Mac OS X users, you can use the built-in Grab program (in Applications) to conduct a screen capture of a window or a selected crop, and then save it to your computer. However, Grab saves images as TIFF files, and you can’t upload this file format to the website. So, you need to convert the TIFF to a JPG by using your image-editing software. Open the file in Preview, and then choose File➪Save As. In the Format drop-down list of the Save As dialog box that appears, select JPG, and then click Save.
Giving help to others After you gain some confidence in using Spotify, you might want to share your new-found knowledge with other people who need help — the web is like that; full of generous souls willing to offer assistance to complete strangers! The Spotify community needs people like you to keep the conversation going and help other people who are new to the service. After you log into your Spotify account, you can reply to a topic by clicking it, and then entering your comment in the text box that appears below the selected topic. You can also reply to individuals’ comments by clicking Comment below their comments. Handy one-click feedback systems are also in place that can help the system recognize and then highlight an interesting comment. Click Good Point if you agree with something that someone has written. To follow a topic, click +1, which also adds your vote for that topic. You receive a follow notification via e-mail (you can unsubscribe at any time if a topic gets a bit too heated!).
Contacting Spotify Support You can always e-mail
[email protected] with your question or log into Twitter and send a tweet to @spotify. Be sure to include any information that might help the support team, including your username, so that they can investigate the issue. The best way to get help is to use the Spotify Support form at www.spotify.com/int/about-us/contact/contactspotify-support/?contact, which includes all the fields you need to enter to help the team help you.
Consulting Spotify’s official website I mention Spotify’s official website elsewhere in the book, but it’s worth highlighting that it includes a lot of handy frequently asked questions (FAQs) and step-by-step instructions. Some of the answers in its archives do need a bit of a cleanup because they relate to earlier versions of Spotify and have outdated
Chapter 11: Embracing the Spotify Community pricing and screen captures, but for the most part, the information you find is up to date (and any older information should at least point you in the right direction). Go directly to www.spotify.com/int/help/overview to find the most popular Help topics and links to the main Help categories, as shown in Figure 11-12.
Figure 11-12: Don’t forget the official Spotify website as a source of help!
209
210
Part III: Getting By with a Little Help from Your Friends
Part IV
Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
I
In this part . . .
f you’re on a free Spotify account, consider yourself lucky that you have a world of music at your fingertips. But with listening limits, regular ads, and the inability to take your music with you, a free account gives you only a mere taster of what’s possible. In this part, I explain how Spotify’s paid-for services extend its functionality big-time by stripping out restrictions and giving you the flexibility to take your music on the go. Although a couple of chapters in this part are targeted towards Premium users, everyone can still sync local files from their computers to mobile devices or iPods — here, you find out how to do just that. Meanwhile, if you upgrade to a Premium account, you can discover exactly how to use the Spotify app on your iPhone or Android device. I also explain how to sync Spotify tracks to your computer or mobile device for offline listening, which is also a major reason to upgrade.
Chapter 12
Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services In This Chapter ▶ Considering all Spotify products ▶ Paying for a Spotify Unlimited or Premium subscription ▶ Giving a gift Premium subscription ▶ Using invitations and promotions ▶ Getting help from Spotify Customer Service
S
potify exploded onto the scene in Europe as an all-you-can-hear streaming music service. The free version was funded by ads, but you could hear as much music as you wanted, with no restrictions on the amount of times you could play a track. Millions of subscribers flocked to Spotify in droves and simply could not believe their luck. With so many users, unlimited access for everyone became unsustainable, and Spotify eventually introduced listening limits for new free accounts: ten hours a month after six months, and a maximum of five plays per track, ever, unless you buy the track or upgrade to a paid account (which removed the ads and listening limits). I completely understand Spotify’s difficult but necessary decision to reduce listening hours. I also think that paying for Unlimited or Premium access is very reasonable, considering the benefits you get, which I outline in this chapter. Without my subscription, I wouldn’t be in a hotel room in Hong Kong listening to Spotify while typing this chapter: I simply wouldn’t be allowed to access the service from here at all! This chapter and the rest of Part IV are all about comparing Spotify’s paidfor services and introducing the enhanced features that make it so great. I also talk about the invite-only Spotify Free accounts that swept the U.S. when Spotify finally launched there in mid-2011 and include all-important information on payment options, upgrading, and contacting customer service.
214
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Moving on to Bigger and Better Spotify Access So, you have Spotify, but you’re still on a gratis Spotify Open plan. You’ve searched for and listened to tracks, discovered some new songs, and have created a load of playlists. You’ve imported all your local files into Spotify, and it’s now the only music player you use, particularly because it’s just so easy to see and play other people’s playlists. But it’s been six months since you joined, and as a long-term user, Spotify has reduced your listening hours from 20 to just 10 free hours a month. You’re feeling a little frustrated that you can listen to only the tracks you already own when out and about with your iPhone or Android device because Spotify doesn’t let you listen to its streaming music on these portable gadgets. Worse still, you’ve finally listened to your playlists five times — the ones you painstakingly put together, as well as the ones you’ve subscribed to. You can’t listen to the tracks you haven’t bought anymore, and it hurts. Could this be you? Well, to badly paraphrase the band R.E.M., everybody hurts sometimes — then they just upgrade to one of Spotify’s subscription plans. Spotify Unlimited is the most basic paid-for service and offers superb value at $4.99 (£4.99 or €4.99) a month. The Premium plan, at $9.99 (£9.99 or €9.99) a month, is even better, offering you the opportunity to enjoy all the music you want from anywhere, any time (incidentally, R.E.M’s latest album was exclusively available to Premium customers before being released to the masses). Don’t worry. Upgrading is a pain-free process, as I explain in the section “Exploring Payment Options,” later in this chapter. Come on, join the club! There’s no escaping the fact that it’s well worth paying for all the benefits you get as an Unlimited or Premium subscriber. And plenty have. In July 2011, Spotify announced 1.6 million paying subscribers out of 10 million users overall. In the following sections, I compare the similarities and differences between Spotify’s three main products. Everyone who signs up to Spotify gets these benefits: ✓ Have instant access to Spotify’s 15 million-strong catalogue. ✓ Join Spotify Social (see Chapters 9 and 10). ✓ Organize and play your music collection (see Chapter 7). ✓ Sync your existing music collection to your iPod, iPhone, or Android device (see Chapters 14 and 15). ✓ Create playlists and share links to music (see Chapters 6 and 10).
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
A sustainable free service Spotify insists in countless interviews and quotes that a free service will always be available and denies that record companies were behind the listening restrictions first introduced in Europe. According to an article in the British digital marketing magazine New Media Age (Centaur Media), the reason Spotify had to cut back on hours was because many advertising slots remained unsold. What’s more, users were notching up too many listening hours and listening to the same ads over and over, diluting those ads’ value.
This reason makes sense. Artists have to get paid, and the more music played, the more royalties need to be allocated. But there also needs to be enough revenue coming in from the ads to make Spotify work as a business. It reminds me of all the commercial magazines I’ve worked for: You’d plan a certain amount of pages every month, but sometimes, ads would fall through or pages would remain unsold. Then, you’d have to replace the empty page with an in-house ad promoting your magazine’s website or a special subscription opportunity, or give a discounted ad to a good client. As a result, the magazine wouldn’t make as much money.
The preceding list may sound like a lot, but these features come with restrictions, depending on your plan. In the following sections, I compare the features you get (and don’t get) with each of Spotify’s three main products. In the section “Comparing Products at a Glance,” later in this chapter, I give a comparison of the features in a handy table.
Spotify Open: A tantalizing experience On its website, Spotify describes its free version, Spotify Open, as “a mouthwatering taste of the full Spotify experience.” What this means is that if you’re on a free plan, you’re getting only the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the benefits. You have to deal with three immediate drawbacks to having a free account (and they’re big ones): ✓ Time restrictions ✓ Advertisements ✓ Roaming restrictions You also get a load of other benefits as an Unlimited or Premium subscriber that you don’t on a free plan; see the sections “Spotify Unlimited: What it says on the tin” and “Spotify Premium: Music wherever you are,” both later in this chapter, for all the details.
215
216
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Time restrictions Everyone has instant access to Spotify’s massive catalogue, but as you probably know, those on the limited Open plan get only a certain amount of listening time. It works like this: You get an initial 20 hours of free streaming time when you first sign up for Spotify Open — that’s a great introduction to the service. Every week, Spotify gives you 5 extra hours of streaming time — if you don’t use all the hours up every week, it carries these hours over (up to a maximum of 20 hours per month). A timer on the Spotify screen helps you keep track of the hours you have left, as shown in Figure 12-1. But then, after six months, the real restrictions kick into your account: From now on, you get only 21/2 hours of free streaming per week and can save up to only 10 hours of free listening time per month. What’s more, you can listen to a song only five times. Ever. Yep, after five plays, Spotify tells you to upgrade your account or buy the track from its store. I know what some sneaky types are thinking: “Why not sign up to Spotify over and over again, using a fresh e-mail address I’ve created through a free webmail account, and subscribing to my own playlists I created earlier?” Timer
Figure 12-1: Spotify Open includes ads and a timer for how much listening you can still do.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services Well, you could do that, but you’d have to import all your friends again (difficult if they aren’t all Facebook friends) and tell them your old account is no longer active. You’d have to think of a new username every time you signed up again. All that effort, when the Unlimited plan gets rid of the ads, has no time limits, and costs as little as £5 a month? You can barely get a decent lunch for that price nowadays — bringing a homemade sandwich into work once a month means you can pay for your Spotify.
Advertisements With an Open account, every few songs, you have to sit through a broadcast advertisement. Many people are happy to put up with the ads because they’re short, and you definitely hear a lot less advertising than you would on commercial radio stations. But the ads do tend to interrupt the flow of your listening experience — you can’t skip them unless you pay to get rid of them, and you can’t press Mute on your computer to silence them either because this just pauses the ad until you un-mute! No offense to people who (successfully) advertise on Spotify, but sometimes, I just want to skip the ads. Banner ads, skyscraper ads, and other marketing phenomena also clutter your Spotify window, using up precious real estate. These ads aren’t massively intrusive, but I prefer a nice, clean Spotify interface. I already get enough ads when I’m browsing the web, thank you very much. Spotify does try to provide targeted messages based on location and demographics, so the ads aren’t always completely irrelevant, and occasionally, they even let listeners click a banner ad to hear a specific album from a featured artist.
Roaming restrictions Those of you who have a free Open account are barred from accessing your music from abroad after 14 days of use, unless you upgrade. Spotify knows the country you’re connecting from, and if you aren’t logging in from one of the places in which it operates, you get told off and blocked (in the nicest possible way). People who think they can bypass the restrictions may be sorely disappointed because they can’t even log into the Preferences screen after the 14-day limit. When I was on a free account, I too experienced only a maximum of 14 days’ worth of access from abroad. Spotify detected that my connection was coming from Australia — rather than the U.K., where I opened my account — and stopped me from accessing my account unless I upgraded.
217
218
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Spotify Unlimited: What it says on the tin Spotify Unlimited is a brilliant way of listening to all the music you want without any boundaries. It’s like a special someone buying you food and drink all evening so that you don’t have to worry about the bill. It’s like being able to sleep in on the weekend without worrying about work or whether your toddler is going to wake you up at the crack of dawn. It’s . . . well, you get the picture. Basically, you get unlimited listening time and no advertisements, all for just $4.99 (£4.99 or €4.99) a month. It really is a small price to pay. You still experience all your saved playlists, your social circle, and your local files. And although artists always benefit, regardless of whether you’re a free user, your money is making a difference. Doesn’t it make you feel all warm inside? Like Spotify Premium (discussed in the following section), you can travel the world with an Unlimited account and access Spotify from your computer. So, if you have Spotify on your computer and need to go overseas on business, you can impress your foreign colleagues by showing them exactly what Spotify can do. Then, you can gloat and laugh at them when you explain that Spotify isn’t available to residents of their country yet.
Spotify Premium: Music wherever you are When Lady Gaga released her blockbuster new album Born This Way, it was available to users in selected Spotify countries five days ahead of its official release. Although Amazon.com was selling the album online for a mere 99¢ in the U.S., Premium subscribers in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, and Spain could to listen to it online at no additional cost (see Figure 12-2). And thanks to Spotify’s state-of-the-art file-sharing technology, no one’s servers crashed in the process. The Lady Gaga prerelease is just one example of many exclusive offers available to Spotify Premium customers. About once or twice a week, the official Spotify blog gets updated with the latest information about what Premium customers can listen to ahead of anyone else. It isn’t all about Lady Gaga and mainstream acts, either — plenty of indie bands are promoted this way, too. There’s a whole lot more to Spotify Premium than exclusive releases. You get all the benefits of an Unlimited subscription — no ads, no time restrictions, and international access — plus the special features I talk about in the following sections.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
Figure 12-2: Spotify Premium subscribers in certain countries could listen to Lady Gaga’s new album days before the rest of the world.
Streaming music on your phone Spotify now allows everyone to download its app to a compatible mobile device (such as iPhone, Android, iPad, or iPod touch), but unless you’re a Premium user, you can only sync music files you already own to the app. Premium users get to search and stream music from Spotify’s catalogue on a mobile device.
Offline listening on your computer Only those users who have a Premium account are privileged enough to sync music from Spotify to their computers for offline listening (I describe how to do this sync in Chapter 16). Say that you create a playlist featuring songs from your favorite movies. Just click the Offline switch next to the playlist to turn it on, and Spotify starts downloading these tracks to your cache (see Chapter 2 for an explanation on how caching works).
219
220
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Next time you’re working in a cafe on your laptop and the cafe’s Wi-Fi access is on the blink (happens to me all the time), you can still listen to these tracks because they’re synced to your computer. (When Spotify can’t find an Internet connection, you see a broken blue bar with the word Offline at the bottom of your Spotify screen.) The same goes for when you’re abroad, working or playing. Sure, you could always log into your Premium account and listen to Spotify beaming to you over the Internet, but you may have to pay for access — so Offline mode is perfect for this kind of situation.
Offline listening on your cellphone Did you download the Spotify app to your mobile phone, iPad, or iPod touch? You can also sync playlists (containing any songs from Spotify’s catalogue) to your device and listen to them when you don’t have any Internet access. Instead of worrying about your phone eating up the monthly allowance on your 3G mobile data plan, you can be in Offline mode, listening to “Singin’ in the Rain” while you dance around in the street. Alternatively, you can be flying over the Pacific Ocean with your phone in Airport mode or sunbathing on the Riviera, well away from any kind of Internet hotspot, and your tracks will still be playable as if you actually owned them and put them on an MP3 player.
The Spotify Mobile app works on the iPod touch (apart from the first-generation model), so if you’re a Premium user, you can listen to Spotify’s streaming music on this device while connected to a local Wi-Fi connection and sync playlists for offline listening. You can’t download apps to regular iPods such as the iPod classic, nano, or shuffle, so Spotify Mobile doesn’t work on these devices. You can, however, sync files you already own to your iPod by using a USB cable, just like you would in iTunes — as I explain in Chapter 15.
To keep playing tracks in Offline mode, you need to log into your Premium account via your computer or mobile device at least once every 30 days so that Spotify knows you have an active subscription. All offline playlists are downloaded in an encrypted form and are playable only through Spotify, but these tracks can be synced on up to three different devices — so if you’re using Spotify on an additional computer or cellphone, any tracks marked for offline listening sync to that device, too. You can download up to 3,333 tracks from Spotify’s streaming catalogue for offline listening. (There’s no limit to the number of local files that can be transferred.)
High bitrates Those on a Premium plan get to listen to a large proportion of tracks at higher fidelity (320 Kbps, rather than 160 Kbps) meaning you can experience brilliantquality sound, exactly the way the music was meant to be heard. See Chapter 2 for more on bitrates and music quality. For those using top-quality speakers to listen to music, this feature could seal the deal. Admittedly, I don’t have a trained ear when detecting music of varying bitrates, but between 160 Kbps and 320 Kbps, even I can usually tell which one sounds better!
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services Multi-room listening Spotify has struck deals with three of the world’s best sound-system experts to let you listen to your Spotify music from different rooms around the house. Logitech, Onkyo, and Sonos all let you stream music by entering your Spotify Premium credentials. You can have people listening to different songs in different rooms at the same time! The deals aren’t necessarily exclusive — Sonos, for example, already has an agreement to let people stream songs via Napster at a similar price — but this is just one of many features that you get as a Premium customer. (More importantly, Spotify also streams a large selection of songs at a higher bitrate than Napster.) For full details on compatible systems and the features available, see Chapter 15.
Comparing Products at a Glance The folks at Spotify have kindly agreed to let us adapt and reproduce their product comparison table (see Table 12-1), so you can see what you get with each plan at a glance. Please double-check the online version of this table at www.spotify.com/int/get-spotify/overview for all the latest prices and features.
Table 12-1
Spotify Membership Features
Feature
Spotify Open
Spotify Unlimited
Spotify Premium
Price
Free (at the time of writing, this was not yet available in the U.S.)
$4.99, £4.99, or €4.99 per month
$9.99, £9.99, or €9.99 per month
Millions of tracks available instantly
Y
Y
Y
Play and organize your own MP3s
Y
Y
Y
Spotify Social
Y
Y
Y (continued)
221
222
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Table 12-1 (continued) Feature
Spotify Open
Spotify Unlimited
Spotify Premium
Play local files on your cellphone
Y
Y
Y
No time limits
N
Y
Y
Take your music abroad
N
Y
Y
Spotify Radio mode
N
Y
Y
No advertising
N
Y
Y
Play music from Spotify on your cellphone
N
Y
Y
Offline mode on your computer
N
N
Y
Offline mode on your cellphone
N
N
Y
Exclusive content
N
N
Y
Enhanced sound quality
N
N
Y
Play Spotify through multiroom music systems
N
N
Y
Exploring Payment Options Have a Spotify Open user account? Strictly speaking, Spotify calls people who sign up to its free service users. Anyone who signs up for Spotify Unlimited or Premium is no longer a mere user; she becomes a subscriber. I use the terms interchangeably in this book, but Spotify’s subtle change in marketing-speak translates to “You’ve paid for a pure service with no compromises or limits. Welcome to the club.”
Payment methods and charges In order to upgrade your Spotify account, you need to have a Visa, MasterCard, or American Express card, or a PayPal account. Potential subscribers who don’t have either of these payment methods may need to get a friend or relative to pay with his card, or get him to buy you a gift subscription (see the section “Giving the Gift of Spotify,” later in this chapter). The card or PayPal account used for payment must be registered in one of the countries in which Spotify operates, and the Spotify account must be registered in that same country.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
Spotify’s free music gets limits Spotify continues to support artists and provide you with a legal yet free way to listen to all the music you’d ever want. But over the past year or two, the popularity of the service means it’s had to impose cutbacks to the amount of hours free users can listen to every month. The most recent restriction in April 2011 caused the most discontent within the Spotify community — not only were listening hours cut back from 20 to 10 hours a month for long-term users, but those users would be allowed to listen to one song only five times, ever. After that, listeners are encouraged to sign up to an Unlimited or Premium plan, or buy a bundle of downloads and purchase tracks as MP3 files. When the dramatic announcement came, online forums filled with the virtual voices of protesters threatening to immediately boycott the service and switch to other dubious means of acquiring music. However, I’m sure that
Spotify’s Unlimited and Premium subscribers would hate to go back to a free plan. I certainly would! The truth of the matter is that these days, Spotify Open is now used as more of a music discovery tool, rather than one that’s designed for people to constantly listen to music on tap without paying a small upfront fee. But Spotify says it will never abandon the free model. A few weeks after revealing the changes, it tactfully released some new features for all listeners, including free users: iPod syncing and access to the mobile app for everyone who’s registered to the service. And it also claimed in an interview to gadget blog Shiny Shiny (www.shinyshiny.tv) that only three out of ten free users ever met the 20-hour limit it had previously imposed (before the latest cutbacks), so only a small amount of people would be affected by its latest changes.
Even though you sign up for a specified period, Spotify subscriptions are automatically renewed after the subscription ends. So, your credit card or PayPal account is charged on a recurring basis unless you say otherwise. You get charged only month by month, even if you previously signed up for a 6- or 12-month subscription period — and you can cancel the auto-renewal at any time. Alternatively, you can also extend your subscription manually for a longer period, perhaps if you know your card will expire shortly. Spotify doesn’t issue partial refunds for subscription packages, as stated in its terms and conditions. So, if you sign up for a year in advance and then decide to cancel two months in, you don’t get a refund for the remaining ten months. If you’re in doubt about committing for that long, just sign up for a one- or three-month package, and Spotify will charge you monthly after that. It won’t cost you any more to pay by the month because Spotify doesn’t currently offer discounts for buying subscriptions in advance.
Go to www.spotify.com/int/account to see your account details, including subscription status; upgrade or downgrade your account; or update your details (you’re prompted to log into Spotify if you haven’t already). Figure 12-3 shows what it might look like for a free Open account. Alternatively, to access your account info, log in and click your username at the top-right of any Spotify page, and then select Overview in the drop-down list that appears.
223
224
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 12-3: View your account details and subscription information within Spotify.
Spotify’s privacy policy states that it encrypts all the personal information it holds on its users, so you needn’t worry about Spotify storing your card details.
Upgrading your account You can upgrade to a Premium or Unlimited account by following these steps:
1. Click Log In at the top-right of Spotify’s website.
2. In the pop-up window that appears, enter your Spotify username and password in the fields provided and click Log In.
Alternatively, in the Spotify application, click your username at the topright of the window and select Account from the drop-down list that appears. Your Spotify account page opens in your web browser.
3. Click Get Spotify.
You come to a web page promoting Spotify’s different products.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
4. Click either the Get Spotify Premium or the Get Spotify Unlimited radio button, below the appropriate product description.
Alternatively, go directly to www.spotify.com/get-spotify/go/ premium to upgrade to a Premium account or www.spotify.com/ get-spotify/go/unlimited for an Unlimited account. Your subscription choice is highlighted, as shown in Figure 12-4. Note that if you have a Premium gift code, you won’t need to enter your payment details — just select the I Have a Code option.
5. Scroll down the web page and select the radio button for your payment method.
Choose either credit card or PayPal in the Select a Payment Method section. In my example, I’m choosing credit card.
6. Select the I Agree with the Spotify End User Agreement check box.
There’s a link to this agreement, so you can read it before continuing.
7. Click the Continue button.
Figure 12-4: You can easily upgrade to Spotify Premium from your Spotify Subscription page.
225
226
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
8. On the page that appears, review your purchase and enter your credit card details in the appropriate fields.
Remember, you’re confirming a recurring monthly payment. In the fields provided, enter your credit card number, its expiration date, and security code (the last three digits on the back of your Visa or MasterCard, or the four digits on the front of your American Express card).
9. Click the Confirm Payment button to finalize the process. If you want to cancel your subscription, you can find a link to do so on your subscription page, at www.spotify.com/int/account/subscription.
Creating a Premium or Unlimited account from scratch If you haven’t used Spotify yet, but you’re already convinced of its greatness and are ready to pay straightaway, then it’s a painless procedure to just sign up and do that. When Spotify first launched in the U.S., free accounts were invite-only, but keen users who were willing to pay from the outset were able to jump the queue and start using Spotify straight away by paying for an Unlimited or Premium subscription. So, how do you sign up? In Chapter 2, I explain how to sign up for a Spotify Open account. Rather than select the Open option, you can just click either the Premium or Unlimited option, instead. You simply need to have your payment details ready and enter this information as an additional step.
You can downgrade from a Spotify Premium to a Spotify Unlimited account from your Subscription page, too — the change happens during your next subscription renewal. Log into Spotify, then click the link to change to Spotify Unlimited on the cancellation page (www.spotify.com/int/account/ subscription/cancel).
Giving the Gift of Spotify Forget about buying someone a CD for her birthday. That’s just so 20th century, not to mention a waste of paper and plastic. Why not give her a Spotify Premium subscription valid for either 1, 3, 6, or 12 months? Maybe your lucky recipient can’t afford to upgrade to a Premium plan just yet, or perhaps you want to show her exactly what it’s like to be part of an exclusive inner circle.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services When you give the gift of Spotify, Spotify e-mails your friend an electronic greeting card that’s personalized with your message and includes a link to your friend’s Premium code. You can also print the message if you want to mail it or add it to a paper greeting card. Figure 12-5 shows what the card looks like.
Figure 12-5: Send someone a Spotify Premium gift!
It’s no big deal if you absolutely hate the look of the e-cards that Spotify issues or you somehow forget to print or send it. You receive an e-mail receipt for your transaction, which includes the gift code. Then, you can write the code down on a birthday card or plaster it on a giant billboard (oh, wait . . . but only if your friend is the only person who would see it!).
Spotify Premium codes sound like a tempting way to let friends access the service if they don’t live in one of the countries in which Spotify operates. However, they need to be in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, or the United States when redeeming the code. And, strictly speaking, the Terms of Use require you to live in one of these countries. Follow these steps to give someone a Spotify subscription:
1. Click Log In at the top-right of Spotify’s website.
2. In the pop-up window that appears, enter your Spotify username and password in the fields provided, and then click Log In.
Your Spotify account page opens in your web browser.
227
228
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
3. Go to www.spotify.com/int/get-spotify/e-card.
Alternatively click your account name at the top-right of the Spotify window, select Share Spotify from the drop-down list, and then click the Buy an E-Card link.
4. From the options that appear on the Spotify Premium Gift page, select the subscription gift that you want.
Prices for your region show up alongside the subscription lengths. In the U.K., you can choose between 1 month (£9.99), 3 months (£29.97), 6 months (£59.94) and 12 months (£119.88).
5. In the Order Details section, confirm your e-mail address and country.
Remember, your card needs to be registered to the same country your Spotify account is registered to.
6. In the Personalize section, select an image to use for your card by clicking that image.
At the moment, you have only two options: In addition to the gift illustration shown in Figure 11-4, there’s also a congratulations image.
7. In the fields provided, enter your name, the recipient’s name, his e-mail address, and a short message.
HTML code to make words bold or italicized doesn’t work; you need to type your message in plain text.
8. (Optional) Take a look at your message before continuing by clicking the Show Preview button.
A window pops up showing what your card will look like.
9. After you’re happy with your card’s message, click Continue. 10. From the options provided, choose either a credit card or PayPal as a payment method.
Spotify accepts Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. You can also pay by using PayPal as long as your account is registered to one of Spotify’s countries.
11. Select the check box to say that you agree to the Spotify Terms and Conditions, and then click Continue.
You can click the link or go to www.spotify.com/int/legal/ premium-code-terms-and-conditions to read the Premium Code Terms and Conditions.
12. On the page that appears, enter your payment details, including credit card number, expiration date, and security code, in the appropriate fields.
If paying with Visa or MasterCard, the appropriate authentication scheme appears and prompts you to enter random characters from your MasterCard SecureCode or Verified by Visa password (if you haven’t set up this scheme, see the sidebar “Keeping the fraudsters out,” in this chapter, for more).
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
13. Click Confirm Payment.
On the page that appears, the personalized card you designed is displayed and ready for you to print (there’s also an onscreen option to e-mail it to your friend, if you prefer). You receive the actual code as an e-mail receipt, so you can put that code in your own message, if you want. Here are some important things you need to know about Premium codes: ✓ Recipients need to agree to the Spotify Privacy Policy, and Terms and Conditions. ✓ Codes are valid for one year from the date of purchase. ✓ European consumer law means if you buy a code from there, you’re allowed a refund 14 days after you buy it, as long as it hasn’t been activated. In the U.S., you’re entitled to a refund if your code doesn’t work. Contact
[email protected] (in Europe) or premium@ spotify.com (in the U.S.) with the code number, or contact Customer Service (see the section “Contacting Customer Service,” later in this chapter) to receive this refund. ✓ If the recipient of your gift code is already a Premium subscriber, the code simply extends her subscription period. ✓ People who already have a Spotify account but are on either an Open or Unlimited plan temporarily upgrade for the duration of the code. The recipient’s account page informs him of the subscription’s expiration date. He can always pay to keep his subscription going after the time period expires! ✓ You can’t yet buy gift codes for Unlimited subscriptions, only Premium subscriptions.
Keeping the fraudsters out When paying for a gift card by using Visa or MasterCard, you need to be a subscriber to Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode — these schemes, collectively known as 3D Secure, add another layer of security to your account and are commonly used on e-commerce websites for antifraud purposes. (You don’t need to be part of the scheme when paying for regular Spotify subscriptions.)
Whenever you make a purchase on a site that uses 3D Secure, you have to enter a series of random characters from a previously set-up PIN in order to continue with the transaction. If you haven’t yet joined one of these schemes, don’t worry. Your card’s issuing bank will prompt you to sign up and set up a PIN during the payment process. And if you forget your PIN, all you need to do is answer a few security questions to reset it.
229
230
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Using Spotify Invitations and Promotional Offers Spotify has three main products — the Open, Unlimited, and Premium memberships. But there’s yet another type of account called Spotify Free, which you may have heard of if you were one of Spotify’s first U.S. users. It’s an invite-only account that requires a special token, or code, to access. Spotify also offers regular promotions for free trials of Spotify Premium — most of these last for 7 days, but I’ve seen ones for 14 and even 30 days.
Spotify Free Spotify allocates Premium subscribers a quota of special invitation tokens, codes you can send to your friends that, when entered, let them experience a free, ad-supported version of Spotify without any listening limits. Called Spotify Free, this type of account is purely invite-only and was what Spotify was like in Europe in the days before it imposed listening restrictions — in other words, just like Spotify Unlimited, but with ads. And when Spotify finally launched in the U.S. in July 2011, it was these Spotify Free accounts that were being dished out by loads of influential celebrities, brands, and websites. Most Spotify Premium subscribers receive two Spotify Free invitations a month, unless they’re in the Netherlands (sorry). Spotify Free provides people with unlimited, ad-funded listening for six months before accounts are restricted (Spotify can’t keep Free accounts going forever if it wants to provide a sustainable service). To see whether you have any tokens to give away, you need to log into your Spotify account and go to www.spotify.com/int/account/share to access the Share Spotify page.
On the Share Spotify page, you see a section that allows you to recommend Spotify to your friends by entering their e-mail addresses in the text box provided. Entering e-mail addresses here doesn’t invite those friends to Spotify Free, it’s just a way to let people know about Spotify. To invite someone to Spotify Free, scroll farther down the page, and you see a Your Invitation Tokens section that shows you the number of invitations you have left. If you have any, click the Create Invitation button to access a page of invitation codes, which you can copy and give to your friends.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services
The land of the Free To build up buzz around the invite-only U.S. launch, Spotify hit upon a genius marketing strategy — it set aside Spotify Free invites for celebrities and brands to hand out. Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher had some, as did Coca-Cola and Chevrolet. This figure shows Justin Bieber’s exclusive Spotify invitation page. Justin wasn’t really handing them out, of course, he was just directing people to a Spotify landing page where they could enter their e-mail addresses and get invites. It’s well worth keeping a look out for these invitations because
Spotify Free gives you six whole months of limitless listening. Spotify also teamed up with Klout (www. klout.com), a social networking website that rewarded members with a free month of Spotify Premium if they got enough people in their social media circles (like Twitter or Facebook) to sign up for Spotify Free. At the time of writing, Spotify Free invites are still like gold dust in the U.S. — particularly because you can’t yet sign up to Spotify Open. Perhaps Mr. Bieber has a few spare he hasn’t told you about?
For more about Spotify Free, go to www.spotify.com/int/get-spotify/ free, as shown in Figure 12-6.
231
232
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 12-6: Spotify Free is invite-only and has no listening limits for six months.
Free trials Spotify’s marketing team regularly issues trials of Spotify Premium in a cunning bid to convince you to become a paying customer. Go to the free trial page at www.spotify.com/int/freetrial to find out more about the seven-day trial — Figure 12-7 shows what the information page looks like. For a brief, tantalizing period, you get all the benefits without the commitment. If you already have a Spotify account, type in the free trial web address while you’re logged in to the Spotify website to see whether you’re eligible — usually, only new accounts are allowed to sign up for these trials.
To make the most of the free Premium period, you can read parts of this book before you begin and start thinking of ideas for searches and playlists. Every hour counts, and you don’t want to waste time mucking around. If you’re already an Open user and eligible for a trial, keep your calendar free so that you can make the most of your listening hours! You might even want to time your next holiday during a Premium trial period — you can then listen to Spotify’s catalogue by using your cellphone in either Streaming or Offline mode.
Chapter 12: Understanding Spotify Paid-For Services You still need to enter your payment details to use your free Premium trial because Spotify needs to verify your status and doesn’t want people abusing the service (and yes, I suppose it’s also a convenient way for you to keep the subscription going on a paid-for basis). Just remember that if you don’t want to continue being a customer, you can log in and cancel your account within the trial period to avoid your card being charged (if you do forget, you’re charged for only one month at a time). To cancel your Premium account, go to your Subscription page at www. spotify.com/int/account/subscription and follow the link to cancel your subscription. Confusingly, Spotify sometimes offers different types of Premium trials. At one stage, there was a standard 7-day trial, but alongside this offer, it ran a 7-day trial that allowed cellphone users to extend the trial by 30 days. Open users may also see promotional messages within Spotify or receive e-mails after they run out of hours or plays. So, it’s worth looking out for specific promotions because you may get more than the standard seven-day free allowance.
Figure 12-7: Spotify lets new users try its Premium product for free.
233
234
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Contacting Customer Service From my own personal experience, the Spotify team is a very close-knit, friendly, and responsive bunch, and they’re always willing to answer my silly questions. Even a cursory glance at Spotify’s Twitter feed shows that they’re always willing to help people who have any genuine account issues, such as payment problems. To contact Spotify, go to www.spotify.com/int/about-us/contact. On this page, you’ll see links to Spotify’s Help section and Support forum, as well as a Contact form. Always save yourself (and Spotify) the trouble of reinventing the wheel by searching the official forum at www.getsatisfaction. com/spotify (in case others have had and resolved your problem) and browsing Spotify’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) at www.spotify. com/int/help/overview. For more help with common technical troubles, see my tips and advice in Chapter 17. Although it’s a good idea to try to find the answers online yourself before contacting Spotify, I highly recommend contacting the company directly if you have specific account-related queries that you don’t want to broadcast in public. Go to www.spotify.com/int/about-us/contact/contactspotify-support/?contact, fill in the appropriate information, and then click Send Question.
Chapter 13
Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices In This Chapter ▶ Using your Spotify account on a mobile device ▶ Finding compatible handsets ▶ Discovering Spotify Mobile features ▶ Downloading Spotify Mobile ▶ Getting started with Spotify Mobile
S
potify Mobile really helps you experience the ultimate freedom by letting you take your music anywhere. Though only Premium subscribers can listen to streaming tracks from Spotify’s library on their mobile devices, all users (including Spotify Open account holders) can download the Mobile application (or app, for short) and listen to the files they already own by wirelessly syncing them to their portable devices. Spotify launched its mobile phone app back in 2009. Since then, it’s gone from strength to strength with every update — adding features such as the capability to perform tasks while it ran in the background (initially unavailable for iPhone users) and the Play Queue function. It still has a few limitations (and occasional bugs), but it’s an excellent application that lets you take your music collection anywhere. Plus, it’s updated regularly with new functionality and fixes. In this chapter, I explain what Spotify Mobile can do, the available features, compatible handsets, an outline of the download process, and how to adjust your settings before getting started. For more specific information on how to use Spotify on your mobile device, see Chapter 14.
236
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Experiencing the Ultimate Freedom with Premium The two main advantages Spotify Premium subscribers have over Spotify Open or Unlimited account holders are ✓ Accessing Spotify’s streaming catalogue via a mobile device ✓ Listening to tracks in Offline mode by using either your mobile or computer app Yes, there are plenty of other benefits, as I outline in Chapter 12, but these are the two killer features that justify the fact Spotify Premium costs double the price of Spotify Unlimited — $9.99 (£9.99 or €9.99) a month. By using Offline mode, you can listen to music from your playlists by using your mobile phone when it isn’t connected to the Internet. You may find this feature especially important if you’re traveling overseas. When I’m abroad and using international roaming, my telephone company charges me around £10 ($14.50) per megabyte to download data over a 3G mobile connection. So, listening to an album from Spotify’s streaming database on such a connection would probably cost more than a five-star hotel room! Luckily, mobile phones these days also have wireless Internet access built into them, so I can listen by using Wi-Fi to avoid paying extravagant data charges. I can make a playlist available in Offline mode, so when I’m away from a wireless connection, I don’t have to worry. The app itself costs nothing to download and is available on a range of phones (see the section “Investigating Compatible Handsets,” later in this chapter, for more information). There are a few differences between all the Spotify Mobile versions, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find your way around the app, no matter which one you’re using. I personally use the iPhone version, which is the most popular, so I focus on that version the most in this book. But the application is a charm to use on any device because it lets you instantly sync your playlists across your computer and your mobile device so that all the music you’re familiar with is already accessible. Spotify playlists are stored in the cloud (which is the term used for content or services that are hosted remotely over the Internet), so when you make a change, it’s accessible in real-time on all your Spotify-connected devices.
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices
Right now, only Premium users can log into Spotify Mobile for Windows Mobile, Palm, and Symbian devices. (This feature is eventually planned for all users, though, so do check the Spotify website at www.spotify.com for the latest information.) In this chapter, I assume that you have had some experience with downloading non-Spotify apps to your phone and perhaps with syncing content across both your computer and your phone. There’s a whole world of wonderful apps out there, and for more tips, I recommend reading the For Dummies book applicable to your device, such as Incredible iPhone Apps For Dummies, by Bob LeVitus, or Amazing Android Apps For Dummies, by Daniel A. Begun (Wiley). If you haven’t had experience with cellphone apps, then it’s not a huge stretch getting started. iPhone users need to have an Apple ID to download apps from the App Store to their phone, and Android users need to have a Google account to obtain Android Market apps.
Using the Spotify Mobile Service with a Non-Premium Account In May 2011, Spotify announced that its mobile app would no longer be limited to people on a Premium account — now, everyone who has a Spotify account can use it on an iPhone, iPod touch, or Android device. You don’t enjoy as many features as you would if you had a Premium account, but there’s still plenty of reason to run the app on your phone: ✓ The ability to wirelessly sync locally stored music from your computer to your phone, which includes music you may have ripped from CDs or downloaded elsewhere. Just create a playlist that features your tracks, and you can almost see them magically transferring over the air. ✓ Along with local files, all playlists are synced from Spotify to your phone (but you can’t play tracks that you don’t own already). Having the ability to listen to tracks on your mobile device is very convenient, particularly if you use Spotify on your computer as a musical hub in conjunction with streaming tracks from Spotify’s database. That way, you don’t have to use iTunes or some other third-party app to sync local tracks to your phone. Unlike the computer application, Spotify Mobile doesn’t stream by using peer-to-peer, as described in Chapter 2. Songs are pulled directly from Spotify’s own servers and stored in a cache. I’ve found that the streaming
237
238
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify version I get through a mobile phone is still very smooth. I’ve had barely any problems, even when I’m connecting from thousands of miles away — just an occasional lag while the track buffers and readies itself for playback.
Uncovering Spotify Mobile’s Features Spotify generally tries to keep a similar feature set across its various mobile versions — I’m told that if there are any significant differences between versions, they’ll usually catch up to each other in a manner of weeks or months, depending on the development schedule. The following sections give you the features you can expect to encounter as a Premium user — using the iPhone as an example because it’s the most popular Spotify app. I’ve categorized them based on the four main options available at the bottom of the iPhone app screen (Search, What’s New, Playlists, and Settings), as well as one based on what’s playing. Not all functionality is available if you don’t have a Premium plan. For more information on how to use the core features on offer, see Chapter 14.
Search Search the Spotify catalogue by tapping the Search icon and entering your query in the Search bar that appears. You can see results for tracks, albums, or artists by tapping the appropriate tab. After you find what you’re after, you can play it straight from the search results page by tapping the result.
What’s New Stuck for some musical inspiration while in the middle of nowhere? Want to know what’s cool with the crowd? The What’s New section is a living, breathing place where you can find out about the latest music and what’s being listened to. It consists of three main sections: ✓ New releases: Like its computer cousin, you can take a look at the latest releases promoted on the What’s New page and access the music directly by tapping an album cover. ✓ Top Tracks: Check out what everyone is listening to right now by browsing through the hottest hits of the moment. ✓ Latest news: Read the latest updates from Spotify from within the app.
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices
Playlists Just like on your computer, you can manage playlists on your phone. Any change you make to your playlist is synced across all the devices you’re logged into, in real-time. When you start up the Spotify app, all your playlists are displayed straightaway, but you can access them at any time by tapping the playlists button at the bottom. Some of the things you can do include ✓ Creating and editing playlists: When you start playing a song you like, you can add it to an existing playlist or create a new one from which the currently playing track will be added. You can also rearrange songs within playlists on an iPhone (although this is currently not possible on platforms such as Android). ✓ Starring: Bookmark a track you like or want to come back to. ✓ Sharing: Directly share your track, a playlist, or an artist profile to social networks (including Facebook and Twitter), Spotify contacts, and e-mail, just like you can by using the computer app. On the iPhone, you can also copy the URL to your mobile device’s Clipboard. ✓ Checking your Inbox: Access your Spotify Inbox from right within the app (for more about the Inbox, see Chapter 10). ✓ Accessing local files: Access local files after you transfer them from your computer to your phone by using Wi-Fi. This is the main feature available to Open and Unlimited users, and those on the Free invite-only plans. ✓ Using Offline mode: Save playlists to your phone so that you can listen to them through Spotify, even if you aren’t on the Internet. You can save tracks for offline listening on three different devices. (On Android, you can even save the tracks to a cache on an external memory card — for more on how to do this kind of save, see Chapter 14.)
Now Playing Tapping the Now Playing button at the top-right of the Spotify app on the iPhone lets you find more information about the track you’ve currently selected and access the playback options. Features include ✓ Track information: For the track that’s playing, you can view the track name, its artist, and the album it’s on. ✓ Now playing: Play and pause tracks, swipe to the next track in the play queue, and listen to playlists in Repeat or Shuffle mode.
239
240
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ Artwork: View album artwork in full-screen color, if available. ✓ Artist information: View an artist’s discography (on Android, you can also read a biography if Spotify has one, but this feature is missing from the iPhone version). ✓ Play Queue: A relatively new and much-requested addition to the iPhone app. Add tracks that you want to hear next to your very own Play Queue. Songs that you add to this list take priority over the playlist or album results that you’re listening to at the moment.
Settings Tap the Settings button at the bottom of the app to access the Settings page. These are useful preferences that you can switch on or off when you want to make important adjustments, such as listening to music at a lower quality if you’re out and about, and don’t want to consume too much data usage. Here are your options: ✓ Toggle Offline mode: When Offline mode is switched on, you can listen to playlists you’ve chosen to make available when you aren’t on the Internet. ✓ Scrobbling to Last.fm: You can choose to log tracks you’re hearing to Last.fm (for more on Last.fm, see Chapters 3 and 5). ✓ Stream quality: Listen to music at a lower quality if you’re on a slower connection or concerned about data usage limits. ✓ Sync quality: When synchronizing data for offline listening, you can choose the sound quality in which you want to hear them. ✓ Sync over 2G/3G: Keep this option off if you’re traveling abroad or have a tight data-download limit. When you have this option turned off, Spotify syncs tracks only when you’re connected over Wi-Fi. ✓ Log out: You can log into Spotify Mobile by using a different account. Just log out by tapping Log Out yourusername. You immediately get taken back to the login screen. Whoever else wants to log in by using their own account details can do so here, using the phone’s keypad.
✓ Help (iPhone only): If you run into any trouble, you can click a link to go directly to Spotify’s Help files and Customer Support pages. You can also view the version of Spotify Mobile that you’re using. (The latest version may iron out several bugs.)
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices
Spotify on the move Spotify on your mobile device is perfect for a vacation — because you’ve got access to millions of tracks, you can use it to play whatever music you think suits the mood. Or, if you’re visiting friends, you can hook up to their Wi-Fi connections to access your playlists from anywhere in the world and get the party started. I’ve certainly found it a lifesaver! Recently I was on a family trip, having lunch in a hotel restaurant on the banks of the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok. My dad suddenly remembered the name an old wartime song that was in his head, but he forgot how it went. I pulled out my iPhone, used the hotel’s Wi-Fi to access Spotify Mobile, and tapped in a few search terms. Within seconds, the song he was thinking of was playing through my phone’s speakers, thousands of miles from home. (Had I been using Spotify on the Android, I could have used
its voice search capability to speak the name of the song into the phone, which is even more amazing — you can find out more about voice search in Chapter 14.) The mobile app also saved me several other times on the trip, thanks to its ability to entertain Audrey, my energetic toddler. All I needed to do was start playing “Rubber Duckie” and some of her favorite nursery rhymes that I’d wirelessly synced from my computer to the phone, and she was hooked. She’s even mastered the art of swiping the touchscreen to go to the next track. Any Spotify user can sync local tracks wirelessly to their Android or iPhone handsets if they own the tracks, even those using Open or Free, so don’t forget to take your music collection with you before you go away. See Chapter 14 for details.
Investigating Compatible Handsets Spotify Mobile is most popular on the iPhone, but the excellent Android version (which basks in a 4.5 out of 5 star rating in the Android Market) is quickly catching up — which reflects the growing number of Android converts across the globe. It wasn’t always the case, but today, both Spotify for iPhone and Spotify for Android enjoy similar features. Spotify tells me that the greatest differences between the apps on the various devices mainly involve the user interface — the way you navigate various functions. It’s like using a different web browser or e-mail program to perform the same kind of action. You’re restricted to using the version of Spotify Mobile that’s designed to work with your handset. Figure 13-1 shows Spotify Mobile on the iPhone, and Figure 13-2 shows how it looks on Android. As you can see, they look a bit different, but the functions are very similar.
241
242
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 13-1: Spotify on the iPhone.
Figure 13-2: Spotify for Android.
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices New cellphones, smartphones, and other mobile devices are cropping up all the time, but there should be a version of Spotify Mobile that’s compatible with most mainstream handsets. One obvious omission is the BlackBerry — I know that Spotify is listening to its customers when it decides which platforms to support, but it’s very tight-lipped when it comes to product announcements. Speaking of wish lists, Spotify fans have been itching for a native Apple iPad app for ages, and I hope one is launched by the time this book is out. In a rare revelation, the company publicly confirmed via Twitter that they are working on it (see http://twitter.com/#!/Spotify/ status/66482706644615168). Like with all apps, the development process takes time, as does the approval process. The iPad isn’t just an oversized iPhone; so although you can run the Spotify Mobile app on an iPad, it’s not surprising that people have been less than enthusiastic about how it looks and functions.
Downloading the app to your phone To see if your phone is compatible with Spotify Mobile, just visit http://m. spotify.com on your phone. Spotify automatically detects the phone you’re using and presents you with a link that you can click to directly download the app. For example, on my iPhone, the link takes me to the App Store. (I could also go directly to the App Store and conduct a search for Spotify because I know for sure that it’s compatible with my phone.) Figure 13-3 shows the kind of page you might see when you access Spotify’s mobile website.
Figure 13-3: Visit the Spotify Mobile site to see whether your phone is compatible with Spotify Mobile.
243
244
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Manually entering a handset If Spotify for some reason can’t detect the phone you’re using after you visit http://m.spotify.com or has thrown up the wrong model, you can manually select your phone from the drop-down list that appears, as shown in Figure 13-4, and then tap the Go button. Spotify directs you to the place where you can download the app. Judging from that list alone, there are close to 100 officially supported models at the time of writing, and the list is growing all the time.
Figure 13-4: If Spotify can’t detect the phone you’re using, manually select it from a comprehensive list.
Still having trouble? Then go to the Spotify Mobile web page at www. spotify.com/int/mobile/overview. You see a text box in which you can enter your handset number. Spotify then sends you a text message that contains a link to download the app. Your number won’t be used for any marketing purposes, and Spotify won’t charge you to receive the text message, but note that your carrier may impose its own charges. You can also try to find your phone from a list at the bottom of the Spotify Mobile web page. You can view by manufacturer (Apple, Google, HTC, Huawei, INQ, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Palm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, or ZTE) or mobile platform (iPhone, Android, Symbian, Windows Phone, or Palm).
For those of you downloading Spotify from the iTunes App Store for your iPhone, you need to have an iTunes account that’s registered to one of Spotify’s launch countries — otherwise, the app doesn’t appear in the search results. On your iPhone, check to see which user account is logged in by going to Settings➪Store to view your Apple ID. If that account isn’t registered to one of Spotify’s launch countries, tap it and select Sign Out to change to the account you’ve registered in one of these countries.
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices
Downloading Spotify Mobile Using a Computer The section “Investigating Compatible Handsets,” earlier in this chapter, can help you download Spotify Mobile from the correct place when you’re using your phone, which is the easiest way to obtain the app. If you prefer to use your computer to search for the app, then you can do that, too. Both iPhone and Android phones let you sync Spotify to your device just like you would with any other app. Android even does this sync wirelessly via your Google account.
iTunes Store Figure 13-5 shows the Spotify app from within iTunes, all ready and waiting for you to download from the iTunes Store. You need to be logged into the store to find and download it. Next time you connect your iPhone to your computer in iTunes, iTunes copies the apps to your phone. (If you aren’t familiar with how to sync your phone with iTunes, see http://support. apple.com/kb/HT1386.)
Figure 13-5: Spotify is available to download from the iTunes Store.
245
246
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Support for Windows Phones In October 2010, Spotify finally made its mobile app available for phones running Windows Phone 6.x, and it should be ready in time for Windows Phone 7.5, also dubbed Mango. From what I’ve seen of the demo version, using Spotify on Mango is an elegant experience and quite different than the way it operates on the iPhone and Android. The multitasking aspect, in particular, looks quite sophisticated — while music is playing in the background and you’re
using other apps, you can still view what’s playing, and pause or skip a track. To install Spotify by using your Windows phone, you can go to http://m.spotify. com on your phone or just access the Windows Marketplace, search for Spotify, and select Install. For more information, see www. spotify.com/int/mobile/windows phone.
Android Market Figure 13-6 shows the mobile app available for download from the Android Market website. You need to log into your Google account to grab it, and it then downloads to your phone as long as you’re logged in through your Android with the same Google account as you are through your computer.
Figure 13-6: Install Spotify in the Android Market by using your computer, and it downloads to your mobile device as if by magic.
Chapter 13: Downloading Spotify for Mobile Devices
Using Spotify Mobile for the First Time When you launch Spotify Mobile, you sign in with your existing Spotify username and password, of course. If you don’t have one, you need to follow the link to sign up! When you log in and use your handset for the first time, you also need to confirm that you accept the Terms and Conditions, as shown on an iPhone in Figure 13-7. These are not dissimilar to the ones you agreed to when creating your Spotify account but apply to your use of its mobile application and complement its main Terms of Use and its Privacy Policy. For the latest version of the policy, you can go directly to www.spotify.com/int/legal/mobileterms-and-conditions.
Figure 13-7: Accept the end-user agreement to start using the mobile service.
Viewing playlists Because all your Spotify playlists are stored in the cloud (meaning they’re hosted remotely, accessible over the Internet), as soon as you accept the terms and log in, you see those playlists instantly appear in the app’s Playlists category. If you’re logging in with a basic Open account, you can’t play these tracks unless you own them on your main computer and sync them to your phone (see Chapter 14 to find out how to sync local files to your phone by using Wi-Fi). But those of you who are lucky enough to be Premium subscribers can start streaming tracks straightaway from Spotify’s library. Please make sure that when you stream tracks, you keep an eye on the data you’re downloading, particularly with your mobile data plan, so that you can avoid excessive data charges. Spotify recommends connecting to a local Wi-Fi Internet connection by using your phone and syncing your playlists so that you can listen to songs in Offline mode whenever possible.
247
248
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Login restrictions After you have Spotify on your mobile, what about the rest of the family? Can you stick it on their handsets, too? You can log into Spotify on any number of devices by using your account, but only one of these devices is allowed to actively stream music at any one time. However, Premium users can sync up to 3,333 tracks from Spotify’s library for offline listening on up to three different devices (including your computer). Spotify has yet to issue a family-type subscription that offers discounts for members of the same household or increased privileges that allow streaming from more than one account at a time. To play different music in several rooms in the house, you’re limited to options such as using one of the multiroom streaming solutions I discuss in Chapter 15. And although it’s great that playlists are kept in the cloud, it means everyone in the family has to access their own playlists from one central repository. As one dad commented on the official Spotify support forum: “How many other dads are out there that are fed up having McFly in their playlists! My son also surely isn’t keen on Van the Man stacking up next to his N-dubz!” Family accounts are one of Spotify’s most-requested features, but licensing deals are complex and would require renegotiating royalty deals with artists and composers. So, how to get around the problem of no family plan? Apart from setting up different subscriptions for everyone — which isn’t cheap — you and your partner might share an account and have a phone each, so the three-device limit can work well if you sync tracks to your phones for offline listening. If you have one child, then she could use Offline mode on her own phone or computer, but unfortunately, that means your desktop application on any shared family computer isn’t allowed to sync any tracks for offline listening because it goes beyond the three-device limit.
Using accessories Listening to music through tinny handset speakers that are even tinnier than the ones on your laptop is certainly not what the artist intended! And if you’re listening to files that are meant to be streaming in high quality, then why not make the most of it? At the very least, your personal earphones sound better than the speakers emanating from your phone. Just plug them in, and you’re ready to go. My portable Logitech iPod docking station happily accepts Spotify on my iPhone and plays the music through its speakers; I can even use my remote control to adjust the volume and skip through tracks. For more on listening to Spotify using other means, check out Chapter 15.
Chapter 14
Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device In This Chapter ▶ Accessing Spotify on your iPhone or Android device ▶ Discovering music using your phone ▶ Sharing and organizing music through your mobile device ▶ Syncing your phone with your Spotify desktop app ▶ Keeping your Spotify Mobile version updated and out of trouble
T
his chapter is all about playing songs by using the mobile app on the iPhone and Android, which I assume you’ve already downloaded (see Chapter 13 if you haven’t). Instructions also apply to the iPod touch and iPad, by the way, because the iPhone app is compatible with the operating system that these devices run on, called iOS. (A much-anticipated dedicated iPad app is reportedly in the works but has yet to launch at the time of writing.) I also presume you’re on a Premium plan in order to take advantage of the streaming features. However, any Spotify user, regardless of the plan he’s on, can still use the mobile app to listen to local files he’s synced to his device. Regrettably, I don’t have room in this book to explain the less-popular Windows Phone or Symbian versions, so you need to explore these apps for yourself. If you have a Windows Phone, see www.spotify.com/int/ mobile/windowsphone for the latest information. Symbian users can check out www.spotify.com/int/mobile/symbian. You should still find this chapter useful when exploring the functions available, though.
Using Spotify on Your Mobile Spotify’s mobile apps let you scroll up and down playlists and swipe to the next track in your Queue with ease. Playing a track is as simple as tapping
250
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify the Play button. It’s all very intuitive and doesn’t require a massive learning curve, particularly if you already use your phone as a portable music player. Happily, multitasking while the music is playing is possible — even if I exit the Spotify app and start browsing the web or launch my e-mail, I still can hear the music. You can also use your phone to move playlist tracks around (on the iPhone), create playlists from scratch, and share music with friends on Spotify, Twitter, or Facebook. I personally prefer to use my desktop application for this kind of activity because it’s easier for me to drag multiple tracks to playlists and I’m not confined to viewing a small screen. But that’s just me: Many people love the fact they can organize their playlists from their phones and have everything sync to their desktops. Spotify launched as an app for the iPhone and Android back in 2009, to much fanfare. The app uses your local Wi-Fi or high-speed mobile network connection to stream songs from Spotify’s servers directly to your phone. You can also sync Spotify tracks for offline listening, as I describe in Chapter 16. In Chapter 13, I explain what features you can find in the Spotify Mobile app. Mobile apps tend to get updated with insane regularity, so when you download Spotify for your mobile device, there may be slight differences in how I’ve described a process. Also, Spotify tries to make the same core feature set available on all the mobile platforms it operates on — it just wouldn’t be fair, otherwise — but the ever-popular iPhone seems to take priority at Spotify these days, and new features may take a few weeks or months to be updated on other platforms. For example, long-awaited playlist folders arrived on to the iPhone first but, at the time of writing, have yet to appear on the Android platform.
Connecting to Spotify Mobile Most modern smartphones are Wi-Fi enabled, so after you connect to a local network, you can stream Spotify tracks to your phone by using Wi-Fi. I’ve used Spotify Mobile at home and over Wi-Fi networks in hotels and cafes with no problem — you just have to make sure you’re logged in and connected. Streaming over Wi-Fi is the most efficient way of using the service, but you can also listen to tracks over high-speed 3G networks, meaning that there’s virtually no limit to where you can access your music. However, if you’re going to be using your phone all day, every day to listen to music, I don’t recommend you use a 3G network. You should sync tracks to your phone over Wi-Fi first for offline listening, and then switch Spotify Mobile to Offline mode when you’re out and about, as I explain in Chapter 16.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
You can turn 3G off in your phone’s settings, say if you’re abroad and don’t want to access the Internet in case you amass unwanted data charges. To turn 3G off on the iPhone, tap Settings➪General➪Network. On the Network screen that appears, next to Enable 3G, slide the switch off. But when you aren’t within range of a network, using Spotify over 3G is okay now and again if you have a generous data-usage plan — as long as you aren’t overseas, where international roaming costs tend to be on the more extortionate side. See the sidebar “How much will it cost?” in this chapter, for tips on how to reduce data usage.
Searching for Spotify tracks On iPhone and Android, you look for Spotify tracks by tapping the Search button, then the search bar, and then entering your query into the keypad. To view results by artist, album, or track, tap the appropriate tab. By default, track results are displayed first. Figure 14-1 shows how a results screen looks on iPhone when you do a search for Carpenters. You get top tracks by the Carpenters, followed by albums (shown in Figure 14-1) and artists — again, with the most relevant results displayed first. (Spotify’s search is smart enough to know I’m looking for the band, not songs with the word carpenters in them, so below Tracks, the band’s most popular songs appear first.) On the iPhone, small thumbnail images of the albums and artists (if available) appear, which is a nice touch.
Figure 14-1: Search for The Carpenters on Spotify, and you find many of their albums.
251
252
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify The advanced search techniques described in Chapter 4 work in Spotify Mobile, too, as shown in Figure 14-2. When I type year:2007 into the Search text box on an iPhone, I come up with Rihanna as the top artist (for some reason, I remember hearing that “Umbrella” song back then, when I was in the middle of nowhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway, heading to Mongolia — it did seem to be everywhere). Tap the Artists tab to see the most popular acts from that year. Advanced searches need to have the first letter of your query in lowercase, for some unknown reason. I’m not sure why, but on both iPhone and Android, nothing comes up if you use a capital letter. But if you use lowercase, everything works fine!
Figure 14-2: You can do advanced searches on Spotify Mobile, such as searches by year.
Android users can control Spotify with the power of their own voices! Spotify is compatible with Google Voice Search (available as an app from the Android Market). After you have this app, instead of entering boring old text into Spotify’s search bar, tap the microphone icon next to it. Now, say the name of an artist, track, or whatever you want, and Spotify happily goes looking for those words. Pretty cool. Don’t take offense if it doesn’t recognize your accent, though!
Using playlists When you first open Spotify on your phone, your playlists are all displayed. (Tap Playlists at the bottom of your iPhone or Android device at any time to go back to this view.) Playlists created on Spotify are stored centrally, so they sync on all your devices. Create something on your computer, then look at your mobile device, and it should show up there in seconds. The iPhone also displays any
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device playlist folders. At the time of writing, Spotify was busy working on displaying playlist folders on other platforms, such as Android, to make navigation easier, so watch this space. Scroll up and down your phone to browse your playlists (or playlist folders). To select a playlist, just tap it. If it’s in a folder, just tap the folder to open that folder, and then tap the playlist when it appears. You can then select the track you want to play, and it starts streaming to your phone right away.
There are countless types of Android devices, but some are more versatile than others and can even display Spotify in landscape mode. Just tilt your phone horizontally to see whether your phone is lucky enough to support this feature. It’s particularly handy if your playlists have particularly long titles or you just feel like a change! (The Archos 7 Home Tablet is one Android device that supports this feature.)
Playing back your tracks The main point of Spotify Mobile is to have millions of tracks in your pocket. But only Premium subscribers can enjoy streaming tracks from Spotify’s music library. Free, Open, and Unlimited users can listen only to local files that they already own on their computer and have synced to Spotify Mobile (I explain how to sync local files by using Wi-Fi in the section “Wi-Fi-ing a Stairway to Heaven,” later in this chapter). Playback should be familiar to you after you have some experience with using Spotify on your computer; you just use the touch screen to run the show, rather than the keyboard and mouse. To play back a track, just tap it. The album artwork appears, and the track starts playing. Slide your finger along the timeline at the bottom to jump to a certain part of the track. If you need to do something else — such as check your stock prices, see what’s happening on Twitter, or send an e-mail to your boss — you can do all that while the music keeps playing. On the iPhone, even if you exit the Spotify app, the music keeps playing. Android users are at an advantage here because you can see the track that’s playing in the notification bar at the top of the screen, even if you aren’t actually in the app. Just slide this bar down, and then tap the track displayed to return to Spotify. There’s also a nifty music-player widget, as shown in Figure 14-3, that includes basic playback controls. Tapping it takes you straight back into Spotify, too.
253
254
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify If you want to stop the track, you need to tap the Pause button (which appears where the Play button was) to pause it. Pausing is the same as stopping a track; there’s no actual Stop button. You can then exit the app like you would with any other (press your phone’s Home button to go to your main menu) and continue with the boring stuff you were doing before.
Figure 14-3: Spotify on Android tells you what’s playing, even if you aren’t in the Spotify app.
Tracks are streamed to the Spotify Mobile app from Spotify’s own servers (huge computers that store, receive, and deliver content over the Internet) and cached locally on your phone to save you from having to stream a track again. The desktop app is more sophisticated, combining these aspects with peer-to-peer sharing for a more immediate playing experience (for more on how it works, see Chapter 2). However, apart from a slight initial delay of a second or so when Spotify begins to fetch the track, I’ve never experienced any major playback hiccups on my phone. If you go out of wireless range or are in an area where the 3G reception isn’t so hot, then you might run into a few connectivity issues, but these problems are rare. And besides, you can always sync your tracks offline to avoid any streaming problems. The downside is that tracks over mobile may be of a lesser quality than on the computer (160 Kbps, as opposed to potentially 320 Kbps available through your computer’s desktop app). The sound’s still excellent, but real audiophiles might be able to tell the difference. To skip to the next track on both iPhone and Android, just swipe the album artwork by sliding your finger from right to left. Reverse the action to go back to a previous track or tracks. This process looks very impressive when you have a playlist containing a lot of different pieces of album cover art.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
Shuffling playlists The Shuffle function works a bit oddly, I think; it’s hard to always know whether it’s on or off. When you’re viewing track information for a song that’s currently playing, tap Shuffle to play songs in a random order. Spotify remembers this setting, even if you exit the playlist and select another one. But wait! On the iPhone, there’s also a different shuffle button available called Shuffle Play, which appears when you’re viewing a playlist’s contents. If you use Shuffle Play, and then go to a new list, that shuffle function automatically turns off. On the Android, you also tap Shuffle when viewing track information to randomize tracks from that playlist. Follow these steps to shuffle tracks on Android:
1. Go to a playlist and tap a track to play it.
2. Press the I button to open a pop-up window, displaying information from that track.
The Shuffle button appears in the pop-up window.
3. Tap the Shuffle button, and the Shuffle icon in the button turns green.
The playlist is now has Shuffle turned on. If you go to a different playlist, Shuffle is still on.
4. To switch off the Shuffle function, tap the I button again and tap the Shuffle button again to deselect it.
Finding out What’s New Tap What’s New to access Spotify’s recommended new releases, top tracks, and news. The view differs somewhat, depending on whether you’re on iPhone or Android, as shown in Figures 14-4 and 14-5: ✓ On the iPhone: You can use the iPhone What’s New screen in the following ways:
• Scroll sideways to view the full lists.
• Tap an album to view the tracks or tap a track to play it.
• Navigate back to the previous screen by tapping What’s New at the top-left of the screen.
• Scroll downward to view the Spotify News Feed at the bottom of the screen.
• Tap a news item to find out more information about what’s happening with your social network and at Spotify — this action could launch a web page or a Spotify playlist or album, depending on what it’s about.
255
256
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ On Android: You get three separate tabs for New Releases, Top Tracks, and the News Feed. Tap the tab that you’re interested in to see the listings and scroll down to see a more complete list.
Figure 14-4: The What’s New page on Spotify, as seen on an Android device.
Figure 14-5: The iPhone version of the What’s New page on Spotify.
Controlling volume Spotify works with the usual volume controls on the side of your phone and can be controlled while the phone is sitting in a compatible dock. Alternatively, on the iPhone, you can slide your finger along the volume
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device control when you view more information about a track (it’s just above the playback controls at the bottom of the screen). Sliding along this control also changes the phone’s overall volume level.
What’s currently playing When you play a song on your phone, the song and artwork are displayed and fill up the screen. You can continue to use Spotify to browse or organize tracks by hiding what’s playing without stopping the music. And you can bring up information about the currently playing track again from almost wherever you are in the app. Depending on whether you have an iPhone or Android device, you follow different procedures: ✓ On the iPhone: Tap Hide to minimize the track information and continue browsing Spotify Mobile. Tap the Now Playing button at the topright to bring up this screen again. On the iPhone, you can’t display information about what’s playing when you’re in your settings. You need to go back to another section, such as Playlists, to view this information. ✓ On Android: Tap the Now Playing tab (represented by an arrow) to minimize the track that’s playing. This tab now appears at the bottom of your screen. Wherever you are in the app, just tap or drag the tab up to bring up the track information again.
Tracks still play on either kind of device, even when you exit the app by pressing the Home button.
The Android offers one bit of information that the iPhone lacks: artist biographies, as shown in Figure 14-6. You access artist biographies by following these steps: 1. Press the I button to display a pop-up window for the track currently playing, and then select the artist name.
Alternatively, you can press and hold a track name, and then select View Artist from the menu that appears; or do a search and select the Artist tab.
2. In the Artist page pop-up screen that appears, select the Biography tab.
The artist’s biography appears. These are the same biographies pulled from Rovi that I discuss in Chapter 5. Not all artists have content in the Biography tab: sometimes it’s just empty.
257
258
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 14-6: Artist biographies from Spotify are available on Android phones.
Finding more track information You can discover even more details about a track that’s playing than offered in Standard view, where just the artist and track are displayed. When viewing what’s playing, tap the I button on either iPhone or Android to bring up an information screen that features more details. You can also perform some common actions from this screen. The I is located in the top-right corner of the iPhone and on the right of the playback settings on Android. (You can also quickly tap the album artwork on the iPhone to bring up the same view.) What you then see looks slightly different, depending on your setup (see Figure 14-7 for the Android view and Figure 14-8 for the iPhone), but the same elements are all there: ✓ Album Title: The album on which the track appears. Tap it to bring up a list of all tracks on that album. ✓ Artist: Tap the artist’s name to see a list of her albums. ✓ Add to Playlist: Tap Add to Playlist (there’s room to show only the Add To on the iPhone) to bring up a list of your playlists. Scroll down the list, if necessary, and then tap a playlist to which you want to add the currently playing track. ✓ Star: Just like with the desktop app on your computer, you can star a favorite track by tapping the empty star, which fills it with a nice shiny gold one. Like playlists, this information gets updated centrally, so you can star a track for listening on your computer later.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device ✓ Shuffle: Tap this button to turn on Shuffle mode. Tap it again to turn it off. ✓ Repeat: To start playing the playlist of tracks again after it ends, tap this button. Like the Shuffle function, you tap it again to turn it off. ✓ Playback functions: Play or pause (stop) a track, go forward and back in your Play Queue, and jump to a certain part of the track by using the timeline slider. On iPhone, you can also tweak volume by using the slider. ✓ Share track: Share tracks with your friends by using your phone (see the following section for more on how to share).
Figure 14-7: Track information and playback on Android.
Figure 14-8: Track information and playback on iPhone.
259
260
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Streaming with AirPlay You can use your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to stream your Spotify music straight to your compatible speakers. AirPlay is a wireless streaming functionality built into the latest iOS (the operating system running on these devices). It was primarily designed for people to stream tracks from their iPod app, but guess what? It works on Spotify, too! To use it, you need an Apple AirPort Express, plugged into a compatible stereo. This small wireless-enabled networking device costs around $99. Another solution is to use the second-generation Apple TV (discussed in Chapter 15), which is also AirPlay-ready, and you can find many AirPlay-ready speakers, iPod docks, and stereo systems available.
The AirPlay symbol looks like a rectangle with an arrow pointing up from below. When you’re in range of an AirPlaycompatible device or devices, this symbol shows up next to the playback controls in Spotify. Tap this symbol, and then select the device you’re streaming to. If you’re a Premium subscriber, I recommend streaming via your desktop app if that’s available because you can get better music quality from the desktop app than the mobile app for many tracks. It’s as easy as that! For more about AirPlay, visit www.apple.com/itunes/ airplay.
Sharing Tracks and Playlists Just like the desktop app, Spotify Mobile lets you easily share your favorite tracks and playlists in a range of ways: through Twitter, Facebook, or e-mail, or even just by copying the link so that you can paste it to your blog. And when you’re browsing the web on your phone, clicking a Spotify link from anywhere on the web launches the content in the app.
Sharing tracks on the iPhone When viewing information about a song that’s playing, tap Share Track. You then see a screen that gives you several sharing options: ✓ Copy to pasteboard: Copies your track’s unique Spotify URL. You can then paste that URL into a web form or other text box, like you would with any other text on your iPhone, by selecting the text box and tapping Paste.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device ✓ Email: Tap this option, and immediately a new e-mail message appears, with the track’s Spotify URL automatically displayed, as well as album artwork in the body of the message. You can edit the subject and body text to suit you. ✓ Send to Spotify People: You can send tracks to anyone in your People list, and even send them an accompanying message, just like you can with the desktop app. Just tap this option, and then tap the person to whom you want to send the track. Figure 14-9 shows you the resulting page that appears. If you’re familiar with iPhones, you know that when going backward through pages you’ve visited, you need to tap the topleft button of the screen you’re currently in. So, even though this button says Send To, it’s referring to the title of this page. You need to use the blue Send button at the bottom-right of the screen. (I was tempted to try to send Rolf Harris’s novelty song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport” to pop singer Britney Spears via her Spotify profile, but I backed out at the last minute and sent it to a friend instead.) ✓ Share to Facebook: Clicking this link brings you to the Facebook login page, where you can then paste the link as a status message, along with any accompanying words of wisdom. ✓ Share to Twitter: Selecting this option brings you to a Twitter login page. The track’s URL automatically gets pasted into your status update box; you can edit any accompanying text, as necessary, before you post your tweet.
Figure 14-9: Tie me kangaroo down, Spotify: You can share tracks with friends through your iPhone.
261
262
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Sharing tracks on Android To share tracks with your friends on Android, you press and hold a track to bring up the Options pop-up menu, which has two sharing options: ✓ Share Track: Tap to display a Share Track pop-up window, which uses the built-in Android sharing feature and lists all apps you have installed that are enabled for sharing. If you select Gmail, for example, a standard Gmail Compose window opens, with the track and artist name as the e-mail subject and the track’s URL in the body of the e-mail. If you select TweetDeck, it opens up a Compose tweet in TweetDeck featuring the URL of the track (no artist or track information). ✓ Share to Spotify People: Send to a friend’s Spotify Inbox. Select this option to display a Send to Inbox pop-up window, which lists all your Spotify friends. Select a name to whom you want to send the track (you can’t add a message). If you press and hold a playlist name (as opposed to a track), you get the Share Track option, but not the Share to Spotify People.
People are constantly sharing tracks to Twitter. Check out SpotiDJ (www. spotidj.com) to eavesdrop on the tracks people are sharing right this minute.
As discussed in Chapter 10, you can link to virtually everything on Spotify, such as tracks, playlists, and search results. And these links work on your mobile device, too.You may need to confirm whether it’s OK for your web browser to open Spotify. In the case of the iPhone, you tap Open in the pop-up window that appears when you try to launch a Spotify link, as shown in Figure 14-10.
Figure 14-10: You may be prompted to open a Spotify link.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
Performing Key Actions, Quickly When you’re viewing tracks in a playlist, album, or search result, you can take advantage of some groovy moves that can help you perform some important actions with ease.
Swiping your iPhone On the iPhone, you can swipe (quickly drag your finger across) a track listing from left to right to display a list of symbols, as shown in Figure 14-11. Each of these symbols represents a particular task; just tap the symbol to perform that task. From left to right, the symbols represent: ✓ Star a track. ✓ Add a track to your Play Queue (for more on the Play Queue, see Chapter 4). ✓ Add the track to a playlist. ✓ Browse the album on which the track appears. ✓ View the artist’s other work (confusingly, represented by a group of people, even if it’s a solo artist). Add a track to playlist Add a track to Play Queue Star a track
Figure 14-11: A number of playback and viewing options are available when you swipe a track on your iPhone.
Browse album View artist’s other work
263
264
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Pressing matters with Android On Android, press and hold a playlist track to bring up a range of options, as shown in Figure 14-12: ✓ Remove a track from your playlist. ✓ Add a track to your Play Queue. ✓ View the album tracks. ✓ View more artist information. ✓ Share the track with others. ✓ Share with Spotify people.
Figure 14-12: Press and hold a playlist track in Android for playback and sharing options.
A Star option doesn’t appear in this group because you can star a track by tapping the empty star symbol next to the track listing. Android phones also let you display a number of handy Spotify widgets (miniapps that give you quick access to certain features). Figure 14-13 shows a mini-Spotify controller that displays the currently playing track; a folder of starred tracks; and a Search text box. These widgets are really convenient because you don’t need to have Spotify open all the time to use them!
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
Figure 14-13: On Android, you don’t need to go into the app to find out what’s playing on Spotify.
Organizing Your Music Library I prefer using my desktop application to organize my music library, rather than a mobile device’s app. It’s quick, not at all fiddly, and I can see everything at a glance. But you may want to use your phone to organize your tracks: Swap tracks around, create a new playlist, or delete playlists and tracks. You may also want to search through your playlists to look for a particular track. In the following sections, I outline the organizational features available on the iPhone and Android. The iPhone app has a few more organizational features than the Android, but hopefully, the two will catch up to each other very soon.
Organizing playlists You use your phone to organize your life, so why not use it to organize the soundtracks to your life? The iPhone is particularly strong in this area, allowing you to rearrange tracks in a playlist and remove them if you need to declutter.
On the iPhone Select a playlist you created to view its contents. Then, tap the ellipsis ( . . . ) symbol at the top of the track listing to bring up three options:
265
266
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ Edit: Select this option to rearrange or remove tracks. If you tap Edit, you get a display like the one in Figure 14-14 — a warning sign on the left of each track and three horizontal lines on the right. To remove a track from the playlist, tap the warning symbol, and then select the Delete button that appears on the right. When finished, tap the Done button on the top-right of the screen. To rearrange a track, press and hold the horizontal lines and drag the track up or down into your desired position. When finished, tap Done. (I’m going to speak out for left-handed people everywhere by saying that this action is a bit annoying for me because my hand obscures where I want to drop the track!) ✓ Share Playlist: You can share this playlist with your friends by tapping the rectangle symbol with the arrow coming out of it. You can copy the link, e-mail it, or share it to Facebook or Twitter. However, you can’t send playlists to your People list — only individual tracks, as described in the section “Sharing Tracks and Playlists,” earlier in this chapter. ✓ Make Collaborative: Select this option to make this playlist editable by anyone who has its link, as I discuss in Chapter 10. It appears green in your playlist listings. Select the option again to make it non-collaborative.
Tapping the pencil symbol (shown in Figure 14-14) brings you straight to the Edit screen, where you can rearrange or remove tracks.
Figure 14-14: You can mix up the order of your playlists from your iPhone.
On Android Your organizational options are more limited on Android than on the iPhone. You can remove and share tracks by using the method described in the section “Performing Key Actions, Quickly,” earlier in this chapter. You can’t rearrange tracks at this point.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device To share a playlist on Android, follow the procedure I discuss in the section “Sharing tracks on Android,” earlier in this chapter. Also, you can make a playlist collaborative by pressing and holding the playlist name, and then selecting Collaborative Playlist from the pop-up menu that appears.
Creating and editing playlists When playing a track, you can add it to a playlist. The iPhone is more versatile than Android in this regard because you can also create a new playlist from the existing track.
On the iPhone To add a track to an existing playlist, follow these steps:
1. Tap the I symbol to bring up more track information, and then touch Add To.
Your list of playlists appears.
2. Tap the playlist to which you want to add the track.
That’s it! The track is now added to the playlist. To create a brand new playlist from scratch with the currently playing track included, follow these steps:
1. Tap the I symbol to bring up more track information, and then touch Add To.
2. Tap the plus symbol (+) at the top-right of the screen.
For convenience, the name of the currently playing track becomes the playlist name.
3. (Optional) Use your keypad to delete and edit this name, if you want.
4. Tap Create to finish the process. To make a playlist out of an album, follow these steps:
1. When viewing an album (from search results, for example), tap the ellipsis symbol (. . .).
Three additional options appear.
2. Tap Save to Playlist above the words Add This Entire Album to a Playlist.
267
268
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
3. Tap the plus symbol (+) at the top-right of the screen to create a new playlist based just on that album.
The name of the first track on the album becomes the name of the playlist.
4. (Optional) Use your keypad to delete and edit this playlist name, if you want.
You can rename the playlist so that it reflects the title of the album, rather than just a track from it.
5. Tap Create to finish the process.
Deleting a playlist is possible from the main playlist view, but only if the playlists aren’t in folders. Tap Edit, select the warning symbol next to the playlist you want to erase, and then select Delete from the pop-up menu that appears. When finished, tap Done.
On Android To add a track to a playlist, follow these steps:
1. If the track isn’t already in a playlist, press and hold the track name to display the Options pop-up menu.
If you already have the track in a playlist, you don’t see an option to add it to a playlist.
2. Select Add to Playlist.
The Select a Playlist pop-up window appears.
3. Select the playlist to which you want to add the track. To add an album to a playlist, follow these steps:
1. Tap the album name to display an album pop-up window.
2. Select Add to Playlist.
The Select a Playlist pop-up window appears.
3. Select the playlist to which you want to add the album, or tap Add as a New Playlist to add the album as a new playlist. You can’t currently create an empty playlist in the Android Spotify Mobile app.
Filtering within playlists You can search for tracks within your playlists on the iPhone to save you from having to scroll down your list, trying to find what you’re looking for. If a playlist has hundreds or even thousands of tracks, this is a godsend
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device because, at the moment, there’s no way to sort your music on a mobile device in the same way that you can on your computer. So listing tracks or artists in alphabetical order isn’t possible, and you need to search for them, instead. On Android, you can’t search within individual playlists, but you can search tracks from your overall library. On the iPhone, the search bar is hidden at the top of your page. On Android, this search bar is available only by selecting Library, in the Playlists tab. To reveal it, swipe the screen from top to bottom to navigate to the top of the page, which includes the search bar. Then, type your search query.
Syncing Local Tracks over Wi-Fi Spotify has one of those killer features: the capability to copy local tracks stored on your computer to the mobile app, without having to use cables. These local tracks can be anything on your computer that’s listed in your Local Files folder. They could be files you ripped from a CD long ago or an album you bought yesterday from iTunes. You can also transfer tracks that appear in your Downloads list on your computer that you bought from Spotify’s store (at the time of writing, the store hasn’t yet launched in the U.S.). And the best thing? This isn’t just a Premium feature: It’s available for everybody who uses Spotify. I’m getting ahead of myself, but Spotify Premium users should check out Chapter 16 to find out how to sync tracks for offline listening by using Wi-Fi. You can choose to sync all the local files in your Library to your mobile phone — you’re limited only by your mobile phone’s storage capacity. The best method is to create playlists that contain a selection of local files, and then sync these playlists to your mobile device. These local files are copied over, and you can play them on your mobile device. (You need Spotify Premium to sync any tracks in playlists that you don’t own as digital files. If you aren’t on this subscription plan, you need to purchase the missing tracks first in order to sync them.) I know that the longer Spotify and other streaming services like it reign, the fewer people end up buying digital tracks to store on their computers or portable music devices. But many of us still own digital tracks as MP3 files. There’s still a huge market out there of people who want to own a digital track so that they can do what they like with it and listen to it at any time. Spotify recognizes this market, which is why it introduced its download store in Europe (still unavailable in the U.S. at the time of writing). People on Spotify Open plans might want to buy the odd track here and there after they reach listening limits, for example. Spotify’s download prices are very attractive.
269
270
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Even Premium customers who have streaming literally at their fingertips may find gaps in Spotify’s library that only local files can fill. A number of tracks I own aren’t in Spotify’s library. I can copy my local versions of songs by the Beatles and Led Zeppelin (which don’t appear in the Spotify library) to my iPhone by using the syncing function and listen to them on Spotify Mobile, as I describe in the following section. Local syncing frees you from the burden of having to go hunting for that cable to connect your mobile device to your computer. And it means you don’t have to use an alternative music player or app to listen to tracks while you’re on the move. There’s another reason to use local syncing: After you painstakingly build up and subscribe to a load of Spotify playlists, it’s easy to keep listening to those playlists because they’re stored centrally, and it’s hard to export Spotify playlists to other music apps (pretty sneaky of them, eh?).
Wi-Fi-ing a Stairway to Heaven In this section, I assume your computer is connected to a wireless network and you know how to use it. I also assume you can connect to the same wireless network by using your mobile phone (Wi-Fi connection options are accessible in your phone’s settings, and provided Wi-Fi is turned on, available networks should pop up when you’re in range of your own; type in your wireless password in order to hook up to it, if you need to). Before you sync local tracks to your phone, they should be made into a playlist or playlists. Actually, you can sync all local files to your phone in one big go, which is an option that appears when you wirelessly connect your device to Spotify on the desktop software. But you also can’t sort the list nicely by album or artist, like you can by using the desktop app, so it’s best to put them into easy-to-navigate playlists. On the desktop app, drag and drop the local files you want to make into a new playlist. For example, in Figure 14-15, I created a playlist based on Led Zeppelin tracks that I own and want to copy over to my iPhone. (As I talk about in Chapter 4, Led Zeppelin is just one of several massive bands who have yet to find their way into Spotify’s catalogue.) I can listen to them from within Spotify on my desktop because they’re the local, imported versions of my tracks. But I need to copy them over to my phone if I want to listen to them on the move. (For full instructions on creating playlists, see Chapter 6.)
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
Figure 14-15: Copy tracks you own to your phone if they aren’t in the Spotify catalogue.
Even if you bought a track directly from Spotify’s own store, non-Premium users still need to transfer the local track itself to their phones over Wi-Fi in order to play it. Spotify doesn’t recognize, “Hey, we know you’ve bought that track from us, so we’re happy to stream it to you from our own server, rather than have you store it on your phone.” (This current restriction differs from competitors such as the forthcoming iTunes Match and other digital locker services such as Amazon.) Of course, if you’re a Spotify Premium subscriber, you probably don’t need to even buy the track: Spotify is happy to stream it to you as long as it’s in their library. After you organize your playlists, you can start syncing, as I describe in the following sections. (Turn to Chapter 16 for ways to sync any Spotify track for offline listening if you’re a Premium customer.)
Step 1: Connect your phone to Wi-Fi You can use only Wi-Fi connections to sync local files. You can’t use 3G mobile networks for this method. Open Spotify on your computer and make sure you’re connected to your Wi-Fi network. Next, open Spotify on your mobile phone and make sure you’re also connected to the same Wi-Fi network (options are normally available when you turn on your phone; otherwise, go into your phone’s Wi-Fi settings to adjust them). You should see your phone appear below Devices in the desktop app’s window.
271
272
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Step 2: Make playlists available offline Go back to Spotify on your phone. As you can see in Figure 14-16, all the tracks in my Led Zeppelin playlist are grayed out (this is an iPhone view, but you see the same grayed-out tracks on Android). When I try to play a track, I get a message saying that the track isn’t available on Spotify but can be synced to my iPhone. How you sync depends on your device: ✓ On the iPhone: When you’re in a playlist, you see an Available Offline switch on the top-right that’s currently switched to No, as shown in Figure 14-16. When you slide this switch to the right, it turns green and the word Yes appears. Then, the syncing process starts. Alternatively, you can select multiple playlists to sync local files to by going to your main playlist page, tapping Edit, and then touching the circular arrow symbols on the right side of the playlists (or playlist folders). These arrow symbols turn green when selected. ✓ On Android: Go into your main playlist page and tap Edit Offline Playlists. You can then mark all the playlists you want to make available offline and touch Done. Alternatively, press and hold a playlist to display the Options pop-up window. Select the Available Offline check box to sync that one playlist.
Figure 14-16: You need to sync local files to your phone if the songs aren’t in Spotify’s library.
Step 3: Your tracks start syncing If everything is going according to plan, your tracks now start to copy over from your computer to your phone. This process typically should take a couple of minutes for an album — but if you don’t have a strong or reliable wireless signal, there could be some delays. I find that the sync doesn’t
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device necessarily happen in the order in which the tracks appear in the playlist. From the main playlist page, a green bar lets you know how far the sync has progressed, and you can see a countdown showing you how many tracks you have left to sync. When you’re in a playlist, completed tracks show up in black with the local file icon next to the track, as shown in Figure 14-17.
On the iPhone, I recommend keeping the phone active by not turning the screen lock on in case the app falls asleep and stops syncing. Go to Settings➪General➪Auto-Lock➪Never. I also think you should connect the phone to a power supply (such as a wall outlet), just in case the battery runs out, but this connection does somewhat defeat the whole purpose of wireless!
Figure 14-17: When tracks successfully copy over to your phone, the Local File icon appears.
You can also control what gets synced to your phone through the desktop app on your computer. Click Devices in the left sidebar of the Spotify window. Spotify recognizes your phone, and its name appears below Devices, as shown in Figure 14-18. The first time you do this, you see the words Sync This Device with Spotify (you can’t miss it — it’s in the main pane in absolutely massive font) to confirm and begin the syncing process. All your playlists are displayed in the main pane, and you can choose which playlists to sync by selecting the check boxes next to the ones you want to sync. The next time you log in, Spotify recognizes your phone. For more on how to manage what gets synced by using the Spotify desktop app, turn to Chapter 16. People who aren’t on a Premium plan can always buy any tracks that are missing from Spotify’s download store. You see the words Get Missing below your playlist, just like you do when syncing local tracks to your iPod (described in Chapter 15). This is a link prompting you to buy any missing tracks so that you can copy them onto your phone (for more on purchasing tracks, see Chapter 8).
273
274
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 14-18: You can control the syncing process from the Desktop.
Troubleshooting Problems Syncing is quite easy — in rare cases, you may run into a few technical problems, which are likely to be related to wireless connectivity or firewall issues, rather than any problem with Spotify itself. Turn to Chapter 17 for some troubleshooting tips and fixes that apply to everyone, not just Premium users.
Updating the Mobile apps Mobile apps get updated with relentless regularity. It seems like there’s one every day. But apps are always a work in progress, and Spotify is one company that is constantly looking to evolve and improve its product. I find it’s still slow on occasion to introduce an idea (it took a lot of effort from fans to get playlist folders on the iPhone app, for instance). It pays to speak up if something doesn’t work the way you want — others may be in the same boat that you are.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device Apps are also updated to fix minor bugs and sometimes even more serious ones. When the long-awaited update to include playlist folders was announced in June 2011, I updated my app straightaway. Shortly after updating, though, I found that my app was constantly crashing whenever I tried to access a folder and songs were ending a second early. A quick search online found others having the same problem. In addition to this, files I’d previously synced had vanished. Not good, particularly because a U.S. launch was imminent. When Spotify got hold of the issue, one of its iPhone developers got on Twitter and asked people to let him know what was happening to their phones. Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, retweeted the message and got the word out about the bug. After some user feedback, the developers were able to replicate the problem at their end and worked out how to fix it. A new release was issued quickly, as shown in Figure 14-19.
Figure 14-19: Spotify releases updates to introduce new features and fix bugs.
Unlike the desktop app, you aren’t forced to immediately update your mobile app the minute it comes out. Updating the mobile app is a manual process — it doesn’t automatically install onto your phone; you need to obtain the installation from the App Store or Android Market. (On Android, you can set any app to auto-update by going into the Market and selecting the Allow Automatic
275
276
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify Updating check box in the app’s page.) If you’ve updated apps before, then you know what to do: The update process for Spotify is the same as it is for any app. You see a number appear next to the App Store icon that indicates how many updates are available for the apps you’ve installed. You can then access the app or apps that need updating.
How much will it cost? At $10 (£10 or €10) a month for Spotify Premium, you get streaming access to tracks on your mobile device. But this price doesn’t include any kind of data usage costs you may incur when using Spotify Mobile. When you stream your tracks over a 3G mobile network, this streaming eats into your carrier’s data usage allowance. And even when you stream over Wi-Fi, you may be on a broadband plan with a fair-use limit, and you also have to take your desktop usage into consideration. Data usage over a mobile device is something to consider because it can cost money, but will you need to pay any extra? How much data does Spotify use up, exactly? There are several factors to take into consideration: ✓ Syncing over Wi-Fi: If you sync your tracks by using Wi-Fi over a broadband connection for offline listening (as described in Chapter 16), rather than over a 3G mobile network, it’s usually more cost effective. ✓ Caching: Like the desktop application, Spotify cleverly uses caching for Spotify Mobile to prevent you having to re-download a track from its servers again and again if you listen to it often. The Spotify cache is an encrypted area where tracks, or fragments of tracks, are stored so that the app can easily access them later.
Caching saves on data usage, and songs you sync for offline listening are stored here, too. (On Android devices, you can set the cache location to a removable memory card. See Chapter 16 for more on this caching location.) ✓ Streaming quality: You can stream tracks in high quality (160 Kbps on the mobile) or low quality (96 Kbps). Naturally, songs streamed at the higher bitrate use up more data. In general, every minute of music takes up approximately 1MB at low quality and 1.5MB at high quality. Depending on the complexity of the track itself, file sizes will vary slightly. So what does all that mean for you? If your data usage limit over mobile is say 1GB a month, that gives you the opportunity to download approximately 200 tracks over 3G at low quality (assuming, of course, that you don’t have any other data usage on your phone, such as checking e-mail, watching YouTube videos, or browsing the web). Make sure that you keep the option to sync over 3G turned off in your settings so that you don’t sync tracks to your phone for offline listening over a mobile network. See the section “Streaming and Syncing Settings,” in this chapter.
Chapter 14: Using Spotify on Your Mobile Device
Streaming and syncing settings You can adjust the sound quality of tracks that you stream, as well as the audio quality of tracks you sync to your phone for offline listening (see Chapter 16 for more on offline syncing). And, as described in the “How much will it cost?” sidebar, in this chapter, there are times you may want to listen to music at a lower quality to cut down on data usage. You can adjust your sound preferences in the Spotify app’s Settings screen. On the iPhone, tap Settings at the bottom-right corner of the screen to view them. On Android, tap More at the bottom-right of the screen, and then select Settings. Select Stream to choose whether you want to stream music at a high quality (160 Kbps) or low quality (96 Kbps). Select Sync to choose between downloading high-quality streaming tracks (160 Kbps) to your phone for offline listening, or lower-quality ones (96 Kbps). The Android app spells out the bitrates, but the iPhone doesn’t.
Expanding Your Spotify Capabilities Many entrepreneurs and developers have created some fantastic and creative apps to complement your Spotify Mobile experience (none of which are affiliated with Spotify). This list gives you just a few examples of what you can find for iPhone and Android in the App Store and Android Market that can help make your Spotify experience even better: ✓ Alarmify (free): Lets iPhone users wake up to a Spotify track. Tap the Search button in the app to find a suitable track and set your alarm by scrolling the numbers. The time is displayed as a digital version of a retro flip-clock. When the alarm goes off, the app launches Spotify and plays the track you set earlier. One downside: It needs to be on all the time for it to work, and you need to have it hooked up to an electrical outlet. ✓ MSearch (free): Lets you look for Spotify tracks on your iPhone based on any lyric fragments you might remember. And it worked for me, at least for the lyrics I looked up (green plastic found “Fake Plastic Trees,” by Radiohead; whiskers on kittens found “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music; and shave your face with some mace discovered “Loser,” by Beck). I found it a bit slow, taking around 10 to 15 seconds to look up a track, but it does need to cross-reference the lyrics with the actual Spotify listing. You may find MSearch a useful thing to have if you aren’t Shazam-ing your way into Spotify (see Chapter 5).
277
278
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ Spotlib for Spotify (69p/99¢): Spotlib is an iPhone app that automatically imports your music library at Last.fm (the music recommendation service discussed in Chapter 5) and lets you play your favorite tunes within Spotify. It’s available at the App Store. Last.fm has its own app, but it’s largely based around paying for the streaming radio feature (if you have Spotify Mobile and a Premium subscription, you already have this feature). ✓ ShareMyPlaylists.com: I discuss the ShareMyPlaylists.com playlistsharing site in Chapter 11. The app is available for both iPhone and Android, and complements the Spotify experience by letting you browse for playlists and launch them in Spotify. It’s slick and handy if you want to discover music on the go. Bear in mind that you won’t find as many features on the app as you would on the website itself. You can’t log into the site through this app by using your SMP login, for example, and you can’t submit playlists from within the app. Many new apps are being released all the time. Also, there are just too many options for me to cover in this book. For example, I don’t mention remote control apps in the preceding list because there are loads of them — these apps let you control Spotify on your desktop by using your mobile device.
Chapter 15
Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices In This Chapter ▶ Using Spotify to sync to your iPod ▶ Listening to Spotify on top-quality sound systems ▶ Turning your mobile device into a remote control
T
aking your music library anywhere is so simple with Spotify’s mobile app. But not all of us have the latest-and-greatest smartphones. Sometimes, I just prefer using my portable music player in order to save on my phone’s battery life. Spotify now supports syncing local files to your iPod music player from within the desktop application. You can also sync playlists to your iPod, and any tracks on these that you don’t own can be purchased in a couple of clicks during the syncing process. It’s superb news for those who are already using Spotify to stream music and manage their existing collection because iTunes can be bypassed altogether. In this chapter, I provide step-by-step details on how you can sync music to your iPod by using Spotify (see Chapter 8 for how to purchase your playlists during the syncing process). I assume that you have a working knowledge of how to sync music from iTunes to your iPod, but the instructions should still make sense if you don’t — it really isn’t that difficult! If you’re a Premium subscriber, you can also listen to Spotify by using a range of sound systems, including the Logitech Squeezebox, Onkyo’s latest cinema receivers, and the Sonos wireless multi-room music system. In this chapter, I delve into the prices, features, and benefits of these flexible music-listening options and direct you to places to go if you need extra support or information. For those who aren’t Premium subscribers, I discuss a way you can wirelessly stream music from Spotify to a set of remote speakers, if you want. I also discuss how you can even use your smartphone as a remote control, thanks to some intelligent developers!
280
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Marrying Your Music Device with Spotify I have two old-school iPods from 2004 and 2006, and in terms of technology, they’re both absolute fossils. Yet they’re both compatible with Spotify’s syncing tool. The older version is admittedly on its last legs because its battery barely lasts long enough to keep it going past an album, but I’ve kept it because it’s served me well and I do like a bit of nostalgia. The newer model, which supports video and games, is still going strong and, at 60GB, still has just enough capacity to store my entire music collection, unlike my iPhone, which has only a 16GB capacity. Sure, my old iPod looks like a brick, but I like it — it’s sturdy, it works, and the click-wheel mechanism gives it a bit of substance. Oh, and it’s not a phone, so if I touch it by mistake, I won’t inadvertently press the call button and end up with my Indonesian aunt on the other end of the line. Anyone who’s used an iPod should be familiar with using iTunes software to copy, or sync, content from your computer onto your portable device. The iPod mirrors your iTunes music library, so whatever changes you make to the library are also reflected on your iPod the next time it’s synced. iTunes knows when your iPod is plugged in, and depending on your preference, either it automatically syncs any new tracks or you tell it to sync by clicking the Sync button. iTunes is an invaluable application for millions of people; no doubt about that. And Apple’s recent introduction of iCloud will help people wirelessly keep all their data current across all devices without having to bother with troublesome cables. But iTunes is also a busy application, with a lot going on at the same time — and if you’re already using Spotify for streaming your music, why not use it to sync up your iPod, too? I’ll outline the current limitations before you get too excited: Spotify first needs to erase most things on your iPod, apart from podcasts and photographs, and then replace them with the music that’s on your computer. Expect to lose the following: ✓ Music. (Spotify syncs music to your iPod in a different way than iTunes, so it needs to erase what’s on there first.) ✓ Movies. ✓ TV shows. ✓ Audio books.
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices
Because all your content resides on your computer in the first place, you needn’t worry about losing master copies of your stuff if you back up your library regularly. In other words, any music, movies, TV shows, and audio books are erased from your iPod, but they still remain in their original state on your computer. Your music is copied back to your iPod in a format that Spotify can work with, and your playlist structure also is changed to reflect how it looks in Spotify. Cover art remains as is, and you still can browse by album, artist, and track. Only files you already own can be copied to your iPod, even if you’re a Spotify Premium subscriber who has marked several playlists for Offlinemode listening, because those offline files aren’t formatted in a way that the iPod can recognize — it can’t run the Spotify application. To listen to those tracks, you need Spotify’s mobile app on your compatible mobile device. You can always buy the tracks in a particular playlist if you really like them and want to keep them forever. In order to get started, I assume you’ve already imported all your local music files into Spotify (see Chapter 7 for more on how to do this, along with an explanation of how the import feature works). Familiarizing yourself with the concept of purchasing tracks and bundles directly from Spotify is also an advantage; I discuss this process in Chapter 8.
Welcoming the iPod Spotify is compatible with all the iPod classic models, as well as the iPod shuffle and iPod nano. Any iPod that connects via a USB cable connection, rather than the very first model that required a FireWire connection (isn’t there a museum you can donate that to?), will work. One exception is the iPod touch: You need to download Spotify’s mobile app to listen to local tracks. The instructions in the following section apply only to the classic, nano, and shuffle iPod versions. (Also, the Spotify mobile app is incompatible with the first generation iPod touch — so if you were an early adopter of the world of touch-screen technology, sadly, these instructions don’t work for you, either.)
Syncing music to your iPod To sync music from Spotify to your iPod, follow these steps:
1. Quit iTunes, if it’s running.
You can’t sync if you have both of these applications open because it could cause conflicts.
281
282
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
2. Open Spotify.
3. Plug your iPod into your computer by using the USB cable, as usual.
Your iPod should appear below Devices in your Spotify window’s left sidebar. The first time you connect your iPod to Spotify, you’ll be asked if you want to erase your iPod and sync it with Spotify, as shown in Figure 15-1. In subsequent syncs, you aren’t asked to do this again as long as you continue using Spotify for your syncs.
4. Click Erase iPod & Sync with Spotify, if it appears in the Spotify window.
After Spotify erases your iPod, two options appear at the top of the page: Sync All Music to This iPod and Manually Choose Playlists to Sync.
5. Sync all your music to your iPod.
The iPod automatically starts syncing all your music because the Sync All Music to This iPod option is selected by default. (If you want to manually choose which playlists to sync, see the following section.) Additionally, Spotify syncs your playlists, starred tracks and so on — but only tracks you’ve already bought are actually copied over.
Figure 15-1: When syncing with Spotify for the first time, it needs to erase your iPod.
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices You can see how much syncing has completed by viewing the progress bar. It counts down how many tracks are left to sync. Below Devices, you may also notice the spinning arrows next to your iPod, signifying that the sync is in progress. When the arrows stop and turn into an Eject button, the sync is complete.
6. Safely remove your iPod after the sync is complete by clicking the Eject button that appears next to your iPod in the Spotify sidebar.
Your iPod itself may also display a message warning you not to disconnect. When the iPod is properly ejected, make sure the warning message on the iPod disappears (it may take a few seconds).
7. After the warning message is gone, unplug your iPod. Your refreshed iPod is ready — updated through Spotify and with no intervention from iTunes! The next time you plug in your iPod, it doesn’t take nearly as long for it to detect any changes to your file setup as the original sync did.
Manually syncing You can manually choose playlists to sync to your iPod, rather than let everything sync automatically. Figure 15-2 shows a grid of images spread across the page. These images represent folders of your music, including playlists. Your folder of local files (represented by the music-note icon) is listed first; selecting this icon syncs all your local files to your iPod. You also see folders for your starred files, Inbox tracks, and existing downloads. Following these folders are all your other playlists, represented by a collage of album cover art (if a playlist consists of just one album, then only that album’s cover art is displayed). When you select the manual sync option, you select the check box next to the playlists that you want to sync. If you have a high-capacity iPod, you probably want to sync your Local Files folder because it contains all the music stored on your computer. Because of its size, it takes the longest time to sync, so be patient! It may take a few hours if you have tens of thousands of tracks, but it doesn’t take that long the next time because it knows to sync only new tracks. I have only about 4,300 tracks, so syncing my local files took about half an hour.
If you’re using an iPod shuffle or nano, your Local Files folder probably can’t fit onto your device. Create a selection of playlists based on the tracks you own and manually copy these playlists over to Spotify, instead.
283
284
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 15-2: Sync your local files and manually choose which playlists you want to copy to your iPod.
Viewing free space At the top of your iPod’s page in Spotify, you can see how much free space is left on your iPod before it fills up. The space currently being occupied on your iPod is represented by a green bar. Each time you add a folder or playlist, the green bar increases in length, representing the increased capacity being taken up by the tracks. It’s a clean, visual way of informing you how much music can fit onto your iPod. While tracks are copied to your iPod, the bar turns progressively gray as the number of tracks left to sync decreases (but it won’t take so long that your hair turns gray, too!). Remember that you can have only one computer’s local files synced to your iPod at any one time. You can’t copy tracks from different computers to one iPod. Each sync on a new computer requires a fresh install.
Going back to iTunes If you decide you want to revert to iTunes for syncing your iPod, you can without a problem. Just follow these steps:
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices
Bundled packages Phone and cable companies are starting to bundle Spotify Premium subscriptions into existing entertainment packages — letting customers listen to Spotify via a dedicated application on their TVs, as well as the usual computer and mobile device outlets. Such a service has been available in Sweden and Finland since 2010, where Spotify has a deal with the TeliaSonera network carrier.
In July 2011, Spotify finalized an agreement with U.K. cable and phone provider Virgin Media to deliver a similar package through their TiVO set-top boxes. (Prices were yet to be finalized at the time of writing, but were expected to be lower than a regular Spotify subscription if bought as part of an overall cable and phone package.)
1. Make sure you first quit Spotify by going to File➪Exit in Windows or Spotify➪Quit Spotify on the Mac.
2. Open iTunes and plug in your iPod.
Your iPod appears in the iTunes sidebar below Devices.
3. Click your iPod in the iTunes sidebar to view its details, and then click the Music tab.
4. Select the Sync Music check box.
5. In the dialog box that appears, click the Sync Music button.
You can choose to sync all your music, or selected albums and playlists.
6. Click Apply in the bottom-right corner of the iTunes window.
iTunes knows that you’ve used a different library to copy content onto the device, so it warns you that it must erase everything on the iPod and start again.
7. Click Erase and Sync to confirm.
Tracks start syncing. The process may take a while, depending on how many tracks you have to sync.
When using a laptop to sync, I always recommend plugging it into a power outlet because syncing can be a big drain on your battery. You don’t want the process to stall at the last minute because you have only a few minutes of power left!
285
286
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Streaming with Spotify’s Hi-Fi Partners You can listen to all your music in rich, gleaming hi-fi — streaming from the cloud — thanks to Spotify’s partnerships with a number of top-quality soundsystem manufacturers. You don’t necessarily need to have Spotify open on your computer or mobile device to use these Internet-ready systems, and you can stream to multiple rooms in the house, provided you have a compatible device from the same manufacturer in each room. They let you log into Spotify from the units themselves, conduct searches (in some cases), and access playlists through a dedicated interface. New partners are being announced all the time, but in the following sections, I outline the three main services currently available. These manufacturers have special access to Spotify’s underlying mechanisms, and you need to be a Premium subscriber in order to use their functionality. See the section “Wireless Streaming without Premium,” later in this chapter, for alternative options if you aren’t a Premium subscriber, can’t afford these systems, or are happy to use your existing setup.
Logitech Squeezebox Touch (and Radio) The Logitech Squeezebox Touch music player is a versatile little thing. You can wirelessly stream your computer’s music to it from wherever you are in the house. You download special software called Squeezebox Server to run on the computer that stores all your music, and that software streams wirelessly to the Squeezebox device. The Squeezebox Touch can also detect music stored on a range of other computers in the house, including highcapacity NAS (network attached storage). The Squeezebox can stream online music and radio stations without the need for your computer to be on, which is where Spotify fits in. Spotify now officially works with the Squeezebox Touch (shown in Figure 15-3) and the Squeezebox Radio (which streams only online radio stations), and lets people listen to tracks from their Spotify library in CD-quality, 320Kbps sound (where available). All you need to do is log into the Squeezebox’s app gallery by using your Squeezebox account, add the Spotify app, and then log in with your Spotify Premium credentials.
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices
Figure 15-3: Spotify Premium subscribers can listen with the Logitech Squeezebox Touch.
The Squeezebox Touch retails for around $250 (£200 or €250), and the Squeezebox Radio can be found online for around $145 (£160 or €140) — prices do vary, so it’s worth hunting around for special deals.
The Squeezebox itself is compatible with NAS (network attached storage) drives as long as the NAS is running the Squeezebox Server software. But when it comes to streaming local files on an NAS through Spotify, it takes a little extra technical know-how, and compatibility is patchy (it works only on NAS drives that don’t run Intel processors, for example). Nor does the official Spotify app work on older Squeezebox models, such as the Duet or Boom. These limitations haven’t deterred the determined music-loving geeks, however! There are unofficial plug-ins that can get the Squeezebox working in certain scenarios. These plug-ins are not supported by Logitech or Spotify, so tinker around only if you’re confident! Search the Logitech Squeezebox forum (http://forums.slimdevices.com) and Spotify forum (http:// getsatisfaction.com) for discussion of these plug-ins.
Onkyo Spotify has partnered with Japanese home-cinema receiver company Onkyo (the name translates to “sound harmony”), allowing people to listen to streaming music through their living room speakers. The service currently
287
288
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify works with the TX-NR1009 and the TX-NR609, shown in Figure 15-4 and available for around $600 (£500 or €600) — but technology prices do decrease over time, so double-check the latest deals. You navigate Spotify via your television set and stream CD-quality music from Spotify’s library through your customized home setup. Using the onscreen navigation, you can view your playlists, your starred tracks, and the What’s New page. One limitation of the Spotify application on Onkyo is that there’s no manual search functionality — you’re limited to only browsing the three areas I just mentioned. Sure, the What’s New section offers some diversity and allows exploration, but it’s still limited to whatever Spotify wants to promote that day. Hopefully, the lack of search functionality is addressed in a future update. For the lowdown on the latest compatible receivers, go to www.onkyo.com. You also can click the YouTube link on the Onkyo web page discussing the Onkyo receivers to see a video that shows how Spotify runs on them. (The receivers also work with Napster and Last.fm, among other streaming-music providers, and the Spotify bit of the video is about halfway in.)
Figure 15-4: Selected models from the Onkyo home cinema range are Spotify ready.
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices
Sonos Sonos is a music system that lets you stream music to several rooms of the house. Locally stored tracks can be streamed, as can tracks from online radio stations and streaming music services such as — you guessed it — Spotify. Each room could be playing a different Spotify track at the same time, streamed from the same Premium account! This is an exception to the usual Spotify restriction that forbids you to play music from more than one device at the same time. All you need is a small wireless digital hub called a ZonePlayer in each room in which you want to hear music. These digital hubs come in three varieties: ✓ ZonePlayer S5: An all-in-one wireless speaker that includes a built-in ZonePlayer; $400 (£350 or €400) ✓ ZonePlayer 90: A version that plugs into and makes use of your existing amplifier and speaker setup; $350 (£280 or €350) ✓ ZonePlayer 120: Equipped with a built-in amplifier that simply plugs into your existing speakers; $500 (£400 or €500) You use a touch-screen remote to control what’s being heard from the speakers in each zone (volume can also be adjusted for each room). Sonos has also released iPhone, Android, and iPad apps that let you use those devices as a remote, instead. Figure 15-5 shows the Sonos multi-room system product family, including the applications running on iPhone and iPad. For more, including videos of the tool in action, see www.sonos.com/music. (If a message shows up saying content is unavailable, change your location to one of the countries Spotify operates in by clicking the Change Location option at the top of the page.) One limitation is that you can’t currently modify or share playlists by using the Sonos controller. You need to do this kind of playlist work on the Spotify desktop app. Any playlist changes are then updated on the controller. Should you run into any connection problems, they’re likely caused by a firewall issue, and some basic configuration may be required. Access Sonos Customer Help at http://sonos.custhelp.com for assistance (search for Spotify to get started).
289
290
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 15-5: You can stream Spotify to multiple rooms of the house by using Sonos.
Wireless Streaming without Premium The Spotify community never ceases to amaze me — always coming up with innovative ways to wirelessly stream Spotify music through speakers. Some methods require geeky workarounds, and others require you to purchase an extra piece of software that’ll go the extra mile and deliver content through remote speakers. In the sidebar “Sticking with cables?” in this chapter, I briefly discuss how you can hook up your audio speakers to your computer by using cables. You don’t need Spotify Premium for this connection to work (but you may want to consider it if you want to listen to music at higher quality). But how about using a wireless setup to stream music to remote speakers without having to fork over some cash for a costly device? After all, you may already have a hi-fi setup that you’re perfectly happy with. You don’t need a Spotify Premium account, either — maybe you’re perfectly at ease with a Spotify Unlimited subscription (or even a free Spotify Open option). One of the most popular options is to use special software called Airfoil to stream music from your wireless-enabled computer to a preconfigured Apple Airport Express or an Apple TV that you’ve plugged into your speakers. Airfoil sits on your computer and picks up the audio signal coming from it. By using your computer’s wireless connection, it transfers the music to your Apple Airport Express ($99/£79/€89) or Apple TV ($99/£99/€89). These two devices plug into your speaker setup, and sound is transferred through them. Simple!
Chapter 15: Listening to Spotify Music on Other Devices
Sticking with cables? You can use good old cabling to connect your computer to your stereo. See this For Dummies tutorial for instructions on how to do it:
The tutorial doesn’t have diagrams of the cables you need, but if you’re unsure, ask your local electronics store for help.
www.dummies.com/how-to/ content/hooking-up-yourstereo-to-your-pc-orlaptop.html
Airfoil is manufactured by Rogue Amoeba (www.rogueamoeba.com) and can be downloaded from its website. Both Windows and Mac versions are available. You can try it out for free to see how it works (some noise is overlaid over the audio until you pay up). A one-time license key costs $25 (£15.60 or €17) and is well worth it (I’ve used it in the past — before I had Spotify — but I’ve seen plenty of praise on Spotify forums everywhere, with people raving about how easily it works). The website is very well designed, too, so you should be able to find all the support you need.
You can also use Airfoil to stream stuff to other wireless devices on your network, such as your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad — or even other computers in the house.
Using Your Mobile Device as a Remote A range of developers has introduced applications that let you use your smartphone or iPad as a remote control for Spotify on your computer. So, if you’re streaming music from your computer to some speakers (whether wired or wireless), you can use your remote to change what Spotify is playing on your computer without having to get off the sofa or walk away from your house guest. Typically, you download the app for your phone, as well as a small program for your computer that helps the two wirelessly communicate with each other. Here are two popular options for iPhone and Android: ✓ Remoteless: This Norwegian company has developed an app that’s compatible with both iPhone and iPad. It costs $3.99 (£2.50 or €2.80), and no Spotify Premium account is required. Go to www.remoteless.no for more information.
291
292
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ ReSpot: This remote app is designed only for Android devices. The app itself is free, but you need a Spotify Premium account to use it. See http://h3x.se. For even more alternatives, see a longer list at www.spotify.com/int/ about/spotify-on-the-web/apps-remote-controllers.
Chapter 16
Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium In This Chapter ▶ Using Spotify without the Internet ▶ Taking Spotify offline on your computer ▶ Putting your mobile device in Offline mode ▶ Taking care of Spotify syncing problems
A
part from an ad-free, unlimited jukebox at your fingertips, a Spotify Premium subscription also means you can listen to tracks offline, without an Internet connection in sight. So, you can be accompanied by your favorite songs next time you’re lazing on the beach; or they could keep you awake while you churn away at an accounting report you need to hand to your boss. Being able to stream tracks live from Spotify is revolutionary enough. But the ability to actually save them to your computer or mobile device, and then listen to them on the go (without worrying about Internet download costs or buying the tracks), adds another exciting dimension to the proceedings. The process of syncing tracks for listening in Offline mode takes just a flick of a switch (or the software equivalent), and that’s what I discuss in this chapter. You choose the playlists you want to make available offline, they sync to your computer or mobile device, and voilà — next time you’re in Spotify, you can hear your tracks, regardless of whether you’re online. For Offline mode to work, you need to have a Premium subscription (see Chapter 12 for more on the types of plans available), and all the instructions in this chapter assume that you have one. You also need to have the Spotify app installed on your computer and your mobile device (see Chapter 13).
294
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Playing Tracks in Spotify without a Web Connection In Spotify, you can mark selected playlists and sync them to your computer or mobile device for offline listening. Yes, you need to be online in order to sync the tracks in the first place, but after they copy over, they’re available for you to listen to, even if you don’t have a live Internet connection. You can sync a whopping 3,333 tracks — that’s about six days’ worth of music. These tracks can be made available on up to three computers or mobile devices. Because you need to have a current Premium subscription in order to use this feature, you need to connect to Spotify at least once every 30 days with the device that’s storing the offline tracks in order to keep them there. Music synced for offline listening is playable only from within Spotify apps. You can’t, for instance, open iTunes and play these tracks or transfer them to incompatible devices, such as iPods (you can sync only local tracks you already own onto iPods, not tracks from Spotify’s streaming library). They are all in encrypted form and stored in your Spotify cache (for more on how the cache works, see Chapters 2 and 3). A Spotify subscription gives you the right to rent the music, but not to own it. For that, you need to buy the track as an MP3 download, which I show you how to do in Chapter 8.
Using Offline Mode on Your Computer To use Offline mode, you mark a playlist as being available offline, rather than individual tracks. There’s no limit to the amount of playlists you can make available offline, as long as the combined total tracks are within the 3,333 limit. Nor are you restricted to syncing only your own playlists: There’s nothing stopping you from making a playlist you’ve subscribed to available offline, too. For more on creating and subscribing to playlists, see Chapter 6. To make a playlist available offline by using the desktop application, follow these steps:
1. Select the playlist you want by clicking its title in the Spotify window’s left sidebar.
The playlist’s tracks appear in the main Spotify pane.
2. At the top-right, click the Available Offline option to flick the switch to the On position.
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium Alternatively, right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) a playlist name in your left sidebar and select Available Offline from the pop-up menu that appears. The switch turns green, and songs now start syncing to your computer. Spinning arrows next to each track let you know that the syncing process has started, while a progress bar at the top of the left sidebar also tells you how many songs you have left to sync. The time it takes for songs to sync varies — if the music already happens to be in your cache and you’ve been frequently listening to it, then it might take only a couple of seconds for each track. But if it’s something you’ve never previously heard, it largely depends on your broadband speed. Should you need to shut down your computer or go offline before the syncing process ends, don’t worry. Syncing resumes when you start Spotify again. You also can listen to songs that have synced so far, even if you don’t have a live Internet connection. When songs have successfully synced, a symbol consisting of a green circle with a white arrow on it appears next to the playlist name. If a playlist sync has only partially completed, you see a gray circle with a white arrow on it, instead (the icon is not to be confused with the similar-looking symbol that’s used for downloading tracks, which appears next to the track name, rather than the playlist name). Figure 16-1 shows the 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory soundtrack being synced for download listening. (I’d pretend that was purely for my toddler daughter to listen to, but it’s always been one of my personal favorites!)
Figure 16-1: You can make songs available for listening in Offline mode.
295
296
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
You can always drag more tracks into an offline playlist. Whenever you do, Spotify starts syncing it, as long as you’re online. You see the usual onscreen indicators, including the spinning arrow and the progress bar, while it happens. You can listen to other songs and browse Spotify as normal during syncing. When you’re using Spotify’s desktop software — that is, the application that you install on your main computer, as opposed to your mobile device — you can’t manually force it to go into Offline mode while your other programs (such as your e-mail program or Internet browser) are still connected to the web. But if you switch off your wireless connection or disconnect your computer from your modem, causing your entire Internet connection to be cut off, then Spotify detects you’re not online and operates in Offline mode. Figure 16-2 shows what a connection looks like in this mode. The Spotify window shows various alerts to my offline status: a broken symbol at the bottom-right of the window; a message above the main pane alerting me to the fact that Spotify can’t detect an Internet connection and will keep trying until it does; and the People sidebar that usually lists all my contacts informing me that it’s unavailable in Offline mode. Whenever you’re in Offline mode, Spotify operates as normal, apart from the inability to search and stream live songs from Spotify’s library and view your People list. You can always listen to tracks you’ve synced. You also still can listen to all your local files (the songs you already own as digital files, such as MP3s).
Figure 16-2: Spotify goes offline when it can’t detect an Internet connection.
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium So, why can’t you isolate the Spotify software to make only it, and not your other programs, go offline? Spotify needs your available Internet connection to help distribute its tracks all around the world to other users by using peerto-peer technology, as I explain in Chapter 2. So, my guess is that if it were too easy to make Spotify go offline, it would be cutting valuable resources off from everyone else.
Going Offline with Spotify Mobile Spotify stores your playlists centrally, so when you create or modify a playlist, these changes are immediately pushed to all your devices. But when you make a playlist available offline, that status applies only to the computer or device you used to make that change. So, when you sync an offline playlist on your desktop, as described in the preceding section, that playlist isn’t also automatically available offline on your mobile device. To sync tracks to a mobile device, you can use either of the following techniques: ✓ Connect both your mobile device and your computer to the same Wi-Fi connection, and then use the Spotify desktop application to manage the syncing process. Choose to either sync all your playlists or select which ones you want to sync. ✓ Access the playlists directly on your mobile device. Tap a button or select a check box to choose the playlists you want to make available when you’re offline. See the following sections for specific instructions on how to use these techniques.
Syncing offline playlists from your computer with Wi-Fi In Chapter 14, I describe how to sync local tracks that you already own to your mobile device over your wireless Internet connection. That’s a feature all Spotify users who have the right technology can use. Premium subscribers can go one better and sync playlists for offline listening that contain tracks from Spotify’s streaming music library. If you’re a Premium subscriber, you don’t need to worry whether a playlist contains a song you don’t actually own as a digital file because Spotify syncs it for you as long as it’s in the Spotify music database. Follow these steps to sync playlists for offline listening:
297
298
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
1. Open Spotify on your computer, making sure you’re connected to your Wi-Fi.
2. Make sure your mobile device is hooked up to the same Wi-Fi connection and open Spotify on that device.
On your Spotify desktop app, you see your device appear below Devices in the left sidebar.
3. Click your mobile device’s name in the left sidebar, and then click Sync This Device with Spotify in the main pane to see a list of your playlists, as shown in Figure 16-3.
By default, the option to manually choose playlists to sync is selected. Playlists themselves are always stored centrally at Spotify, but you have to initiate the act of syncing tracks so that they’re available offline.
4. On your computer, select check boxes next to the playlists you want to sync to your mobile device for offline listening.
Watch your mobile device while the tracks start syncing. A green progress bar tells you how far you have to go, as shown in Figure 16-4. As you may imagine, when downloading tracks from Spotify’s server, the process takes considerably longer than when streaming local files across Wi-Fi — but it depends on your broadband speed. Back on the Spotify desktop application, a green banner with a white arrow at the corner of the playlist signifies that it’s been successfully synced to Offline mode on your mobile device.
Figure 16-3: Sync offline playlists to your mobile device by using Wi-Fi.
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium
Figure 16-4: Keeping track of sync progress on a mobile device.
You don’t have to use Wi-Fi to sync tracks to your mobile — it’s easy to mark them directly from your mobile device, as I show you in the following section. But the Wi-Fi method is ideal if your playlists contain a mixture of both local files stored on your computer and tracks from Spotify’s library. Spotify copies any locally stored files across to your mobile device during the sync.
Syncing offline playlists directly from your mobile device You can quickly mark a few Spotify playlists and make them available offline directly from your phone — your computer doesn’t need to be on because you download tracks directly from Spotify’s own server. I highly recommend connecting to a Wi-Fi network to do this procedure when possible, rather than 3G, because Wi-Fi is probably a lot faster and, depending on your data plan, should cost less, too. There’s an option in your settings that allows you to turn syncing over 2.5G/3G networks on or off to avoid unnecessary data costs. On the iPhone, go to Settings and ensure the Sync over 2G/3G switch is in the Off position (it appears gray, not green, when it’s set to Off). On Android, go to More➪Settings and make sure Sync over 3G is unchecked.
299
300
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify In the following sections, I focus on iPhone and Android devices because they’re the most popular. For those of you using another device, the information in the following sections should still help you find your way, and you can also check the Spotify Mobile page (www.spotify.com/int/mobile/ overview) for help.
Syncing offline playlists by using the iPhone To copy tracks on to your iPhone and listen to them later without a data connection, follow these steps:
1. Open Spotify on your mobile device.
2. Select Playlists at the bottom-left of the window to access a list of your playlists (if they don’t already appear), and then touch Edit at the topright to enter Edit mode.
On the right side of each playlist while in Edit mode, you see the Sync symbol, represented by a down arrow. As shown in Figure 16-5, any green sync symbol means the playlist has already been synced to your phone; if it’s gray, it isn’t available in Offline mode.
3. Mark any playlists you want to make available offline by tapping their gray symbols.
Any playlists you tap turn green.
4. When you finish selecting playlists, touch Done.
The syncing process begins, as long as you’re online and connected to Wi-Fi (if you’ve turned syncing over 2.5G/3G off in your settings).
Figure 16-5: On the iPhone, choose multiple playlists to sync by tapping the arrow symbols.
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium
You can also sync playlists while you’re actually in one. On the iPhone, swipe your finger across the silver Available Offline switch at the top-right of the screen to turn Offline mode on (or off). When on, the switch is green and says Yes. When off, it’s gray and says No. Figure 16-6 shows a playlist in the middle of a sync.
Figure 16-6: Syncing playlists for offline listening is as simple as swiping a switch.
Syncing offline playlists by using an Android device To copy tracks onto your Android device and listen to them later without a data connection, follow these steps:
1. Log into the Spotify application to view all your playlists.
2. Touch the Edit Offline Playlists button, as shown in Figure 16-7 to enter Spotify’s Edit mode.
3. Mark all the playlists you want to make available offline by selecting the check boxes next to their names.
4. Touch Done.
A blue progress bar appears next to the playlist name, and a green progress bar appears at the top of the screen, telling you how many songs you have left to sync. Alternatively, when you’re in a playlist, follow these steps to sync that playlist for Offline mode:
1. Log into the Spotify application on your Android to view all your playlists.
2. Press and hold a playlist that you want to make available offline.
An Options pop-up window appears, as shown in Figure 16-8.
3. Select Available Offline.
The playlist starts syncing automatically.
301
302
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 16-7: With Android, click Edit Offline Playlists to mark playlists you want to sync for Offline mode.
Figure 16-8: Make individual playlists available offline from the Options pop-up window.
For both iPhone and Android, songs continue to sync as long as the application is open.
Forcing the mobile app offline Unlike the desktop application, you can force the Spotify Mobile app to go into Offline mode while still leaving other apps connected to your home or mobile network. All the lovely tracks you sync (as described in the section “Syncing offline playlists directly from your mobile device,” earlier in this chapter) will be ready and waiting for you to listen to!
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium Going into Offline mode with your mobile device is particularly handy if you’re on the go and won’t be around a Wi-Fi connection. Whenever you’re using a 3G mobile connection, you usually need to keep an eye on your data usage because costs can mount. Being offline means that no data is being consumed, but you can still listen to the songs you synced previously. (Offline mode is most useful when you’re overseas because international roaming costs can be astronomical.)
Here’s another reason to go offline: When Spotify is open and constantly streaming music from the cloud, it can drain your mobile device’s battery somewhat. Switching to Offline mode can help prolong the time between charges. The process to force Spotify Mobile to go offline varies, depending on the type of smartphone you have:
✓ iPhone: Tap the Settings button, and then in the Settings screen that appears, swipe the Offline Mode switch to On (it should turn green). ✓ Android: Go to More➪Settings, and then select the Offline Mode check box in the Settings screen that appears. You can be offline only for up to 30 days because Spotify needs to know you still have an active subscription. When Offline mode’s been on for a while, go to the Settings screen, as described in the preceding list, to see how long you have until Spotify needs you to go online again. The number of days is displayed onscreen.
Although you can sync only up to 3,333 tracks from Spotify’s library, there’s no limit to the number of local tracks you can sync to your mobile device. When syncing local tracks by using Wi-Fi, as I describe in Chapter 14, your only restriction is the size of your computer or device’s storage capacity.
Dealing with Syncing Problems During my research for this book, I found some common problems related to syncing. I also ran into connection trouble myself and, thankfully, was able to sort out the problem without needing to tear my hair out in confusion! In the following sections, I describe some of the solutions to these frustrating issues.
Wi-Fi’s not working If you’re trying to sync tracks by using Wi-Fi and your phone doesn’t appear below Devices in the Spotify window’s left sidebar, there are a few possible reasons why:
303
304
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify ✓ Firewall: I had no problems connecting my mobile device to Spotify when I was using Windows, but I ran into a few problems when using my Mac. The reason was that my firewall was set to block all incoming connections, apart from what it thought were essential ones. I had to go into my security settings screen and, in my firewall’s advanced settings, deselect the Block All Incoming Connections check box and add Spotify to my Allowed list. Making these adjustments should take only a minute or so, but be sure you allow connections only for applications you trust. The procedure varies, depending on the version of OS X you’re using, so for exact guidance, go to http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1810. ✓ Wireless restrictions: Your wireless connection may be up and running, but there may be some restrictions on how it can be used or how many devices are connected to it. These restrictions typically happen in a work situation or perhaps a public Wi-Fi hotspot. You can contact the administrator for more information about whether the system has these restrictions and whether they can be relaxed. ✓ Wrong wireless connection: Sounds obvious, but when my phone says I’m connected to a wireless network and my computer does, too, I assume we’re hooked up to the same network. But that may not be the case, so it’s worth double-checking by clicking the wireless logo in Mac or Windows, and seeing whether the name that appears in the pop-up window or menu matches the wireless setting on your phone. In my iPhone, I find this information by choosing Settings➪Wi-Fi.
Freeing up space for Android phones Although you can sync up to 3,333 Spotify tracks in Offline mode to up to three devices, plus all your local files, transferring a large chunk of these files on to your phone may cause it to quickly fill up. The good news for Android users is that their phones use external memory cards (much like the memory cards in digital cameras), and you can buy high-capacity ones to store a greater number of tracks in Spotify’s cache. Consider yourself lucky that you don’t need to worry too much about your cache reaching its capacity or having to resync your phone every other day with fresh tracks. Point your cache to your memory card by following these steps:
1. Clear your Spotify settings by choosing More➪Settings➪Clear Saved Data.
2. Log out of Spotify by choosing More➪Logout, and then tapping OK when asked if you’re sure.
Chapter 16: Using Offline Mode with Spotify Premium
3. Tap the Spotify icon to restart the app.
4. When the login screen appears, press your phone’s Menu key.
5. Select SD Location from the menu that appears.
6. Enter the path to the location of your card in the text box that appears.
For example, enter /mnt/sdcard. The exact location varies from phone to phone.
Dealing with iPhone storage limits When it comes to offline storage, those of you who use iPhones, such as myself, are restricted to the capacity of the phone you have. I have a 16GB iPhone, which sounds quite paltry (and more than half of that storage space is full of photos and apps). But if you’re like me, don’t lose heart: That storage capacity still leaves plenty of space to store thousands of tracks for offline listening. To put it all into perspective, I just think back to the year 2000, when I first moved to Europe with a Sony Discman in my bag, a few spare AA batteries, and 20 CDs stuffed in a wallet — my very, very favorite ones. How far we’ve come, and how easy it is to take things for granted! (Those discs had a history and are long gone now, but thanks to Spotify, the songs live on.)
Syncing suddenly stops On the iPhone, sometimes your sync stops when the phone’s screen lock comes on if you don’t have the phone connected to a power outlet. To avoid this problem, you can keep the phone plugged into an outlet or set the screen lock to never turn on (until the sync is done, at least). To make this setting change, go to Settings➪General➪Auto-Lock➪Never.
Dealing with missing tracks If a playlist contains a local track and you synced it while using your mobile device, Spotify Mobile downloads the equivalent match from its own library. If there isn’t a match in the library, the track is still visible in light gray, but when you click it, you see an alert like the iPhone message in Figure 16-9, informing you that a Wi-Fi sync from your computer is required.
305
306
Part IV: Enjoying the Enhanced Features of Spotify
Figure 16-9: Spotify may need you to sync a local track from your computer to your iPhone.
Reaching mobile-device limits You can sync tracks on only up to three devices or computers at the same time. Should you attempt to add a fourth, one of your other devices must become de-authorized, and Offline mode will stop working on it. This de-authorization could happen in certain circumstances, even if you’re using only three devices — for example, if you reinstall everything on your phone, Spotify may think it’s a new, fourth one. Or perhaps you lost access to a work laptop that had Spotify installed on it and forgot to log out. Whatever happened, there’s a remedy: If you get a warning message saying you’ve logged into more than one device and will be logged out on the device you’re using, you need to restart your mobile device or computer, and then re-launch Spotify. The new device starts working, but you need to resync your tracks. Meanwhile, the device or computer on which you’ve used Spotify for the longest time stops working in Offline mode.
Part V
The Part of Tens
W
In this part . . .
hile writing this book, I found many snippets of useful information I wanted to include along the way — but I couldn’t really find the right place for them. So, I put them into this mixed bag of Spotify treats. Here, you can find practical answers to the most common problems on Spotify and find out about some innovative power tools, such as fast ways to search Spotify without leaving your browser. And I also get into the fun side of things, such as finding comedy and audiobooks on Spotify, getting your music on to the service, and even how to find a job there!
Chapter 17
Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems In This Chapter ▶ Solving problems with your Spotify account and connection ▶ Figuring out how you can navigate Spotify ▶ Translating Spotify error codes ▶ Dealing with problems on your computer
S
potify listeners do run into certain, er, issues on occasion. There could be a problem with the software itself, or it could relate to a subscription or login difficulty. The Spotify Help pages and the official Support forum are both superb resources, but the Spotify website has no easy search function, and a search on the official forum can bring up a lot of irrelevant or outdated results — at least, in my experience. Sometimes, it’s just hard to find the answer you’re looking for when there are so many ways to word it. I often see questions posed on forums and other sites from desperate people looking for answers who never receive a response. Well, this chapter is here to help you. I asked Spotify’s Customer Service team about the top Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that they receive. Thanks very much to Carl-Axel Larsen at Spotify for getting back to me with his ultimate list; I’ve also included a few other questions that I’ve come across while browsing the official forums at Get Satisfaction (www. getsatisfaction.com/spotify) and on Spotify’s own FAQ pages (www.spotify.com/int/help). Solving the problems doesn’t require you to be a technical expert or a rocket scientist, and I hope this chapter provides you with an easy reference tool. If it prevents just one person from posting a query that will remain unanswered, I’ll be happy!
310
Part V: The Part of Tens
Forgetting Your Username or Password All the passwords we have to remember these days! It’s just unbelievable. And because computer experts recommend that we have a different password for every site we visit for security reasons, remembering all these passwords is a daily brain-training exercise that could hurt even the sharpest of minds. So, it’s no surprise that forgetting your Spotify username or password happens. Thankfully, fixing this problem is no biggie. Spotify can e-mail you a temporary token that resets your password and uncovers your elusive username. If you forgot only your password, then you need to know either your username or the e-mail address that you used to sign up to Spotify. If you forgot your username, too, you need that e-mail address. Follow these steps to reset your Spotify password:
1. Go to the Spotify Reset Password page at www.spotify.com/int/ password-reset.
2. In the text box, type either your username or e-mail address, and then click the Send button.
Spotify sends you an e-mail that contains a long, unique link. If you only need to know what your username is or suddenly remember your password, fear not — you don’t need to click the link in the e-mail; just safely ignore it. Didn’t receive the reset e-mail? Wait a few minutes, and if there’s still nothing, check your spam or junk folder. Also, make sure that you set the e-mail address
[email protected] as a trusted source in your e-mail filter, if you have one.
3. Click the link in the e-mail if you want to reset your password.
A Spotify web page appears, where you can create a new password. The e-mail also includes details of your username, if you’ve forgotten it.
4. Enter your new password in the New Password text box, and then retype it in the Confirm Password text box.
When resetting your password at your reset page, a special bar lets you know in real time how strong your new password is. This is an important guideline because hackers who know your username could potentially try to crack your password by using age-old techniques such as dictionary attacks, where they use automated programs to try to guess your password.
5. Click Set Password to reset the password.
Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems If you lose access to the e-mail account you registered with and can’t reset your password, again, no worries. Contact Spotify Customer Support for assistance (www.spotify.com/int/about-us/contact). You need to provide some personal information in order to identify yourself and an alternative e-mail address that they can use to correspond with you. By the way, you can’t change your username after you create one. You need to reregister if you want to use a different name. Sorry about that.
Fixing Constant Offline-Mode Problems In Chapter 16, I explain how if you don’t have an Internet connection, you can still run Spotify in Offline mode if you have a Premium account — you can still access tracks you mark as available in Offline mode. But what if you’re sure you have an Internet connection, but you still get a message in Spotify saying you’re in Offline mode? Whenever this situation happens — and looking at the support forums, it happens a lot — it’s most likely to be because of security software blocking Spotify from sending and receiving data across the Internet. Spotify works by using a peer-to-peer approach; your computer sends and receives tracks and track fragments with other Spotify users. But because this process involves allowing Spotify to access a part of your computer, your firewall — the software that acts like a protective barrier between you and malicious Internet nasties — wrongly thinks that Spotify might pose a threat to your computer. In order to get around this problem, you need to include Spotify as a trusted resource. How to make this setting varies depending on the firewall you’re using, but it basically involves putting Spotify on your firewall exceptions list. In Windows 7, your built-in firewall includes a section called Allow a Program or Feature through Windows Firewall. In this section, all your programs are listed, with a check box next to any allowed programs. To allow Spotify through your firewall, follow these steps:
1. Click Change Settings.
2. Select the check box next to Spotify.
3. Click OK.
You may need your administrator name and password to make the changes.
311
312
Part V: The Part of Tens For full instructions, refer to this how-to tutorial, which also includes a video: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Allow-aprogram-to-communicate-through-Windows-Firewall On the Mac, the firewall is accessible in the Security section of your System Preferences. Follow these steps to make changes:
1. Click the Firewall tab to open it.
2. Click the lock icon in the bottom-left corner.
You may need to enter your administrator username and password to continue.
3. Click Advanced to bring up a firewall security dialog box.
4. Click the plus symbol (+) below Block All Incoming Connections.
5. Select Spotify from the Browse dialog box.
6. Click Add. In some cases, your workplace or school may have purposely blocked Spotify if it’s against the rules to use such applications on your computer. In that case, you need to contact the IT department (preferably after they’ve had their morning cups of coffee) to ask them very nicely whether they might let Spotify in. The work environment will be so much more productive as a result, I’m sure! Like the firewall, your antivirus software may, incorrectly, think Spotify is a virus or malicious program. Spotify’s well-known enough now that this problem doesn’t happen if you’re using mainstream antivirus software, but in 2010, this issue did happen for people running Symantec, which manufactures the popular Norton antivirus products. It wrongly thought that Spotify was a malicious Trojan Horse that could allow hackers to access your PC — an update fixed this confusion, but people who already had Spotify quarantined in their antivirus software had to both uninstall and reinstall Spotify and update that antivirus software.
Finding a Particular Album, Artist, or Track Spotify is frequently asked, “Why can’t I find a certain track on Spotify?” Music licensing is a complex business that mere mortals like us can only pretend to understand fully, and sometimes artists choose not to have their
Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems music on Spotify for whatever reason. Turn to Chapter 4 for more information on what bands are on Spotify, who’s missing, and why some artists are available in some countries and not others. Remember, Spotify is adding more than 10,000 new tracks a day to its database, and chances are that your favorites will be on Spotify soon. Another reason Spotify can’t find tracks is because the artist appears under a different name. For example, the Grateful Dead is listed under Grateful Dead and The Grateful Dead, while Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is also listed under OMD and O.M.D.
Wondering Where Your Playlists Will Go One question that might concern you is where your playlists will go if you’re on a Spotify Premium subscription and then decide to downgrade or cancel the subscription. Will you lose your playlists? The short answer is, no. Spotify holds all your playlists in a central database, so you can always access those playlists no matter what plan you’re on. However, if you’ve saved playlists for offline listening, those playlists are no longer available offline, so you need to re-sync them if you upgrade again.
Decoding Error Messages and Codes Have you ever been using a piece of software that suddenly crashed for seemingly no reason, only to throw up some grotesque and random error code? In most cases, these codes mean something useful to the helpdesk staff or the technical person fixing your computer. You can even use the codes yourself to try to figure out what’s happening. Spotify is a very stable piece of software, but on occasion, it can get grumpy and bring up an error code. Thankfully, there aren’t too many types of Spotify codes around, so you can probably work out what the error relates to yourself. Here are the current code categories: ✓ Error code 0: Spotify may be having network problems. If problems persist, uninstall and reinstall Spotify. Also, check www.spotify.com for the latest system status update. ✓ Error code 4: Your Internet connection may not be very stable, or the signal may be weak. Try to find a better connection to see whether that solves the problem.
313
314
Part V: The Part of Tens ✓ Error codes 101 through 126: These codes are related to a connection problem, most likely a firewall issue. You need to add Spotify to your trusted devices. See the section “Fixing Constant Offline-Mode Problems,” earlier in this chapter, for more. ✓ Error codes 406 through 409: Your device needs to be upgraded to Spotify Premium for you to be able to access the service. This kind of error can happen if you’re not logging in from the same country in which you originally registered or if you’re using a third-party tool to access Spotify that’s available only for Premium subscribers. Upgrading removes the restrictions.
✓ Error codes 500 through 509: These codes are related to auto-updating problems. Uninstall Spotify, and then go to the Spotify website to manually download the latest version of the software (www.spotify.com/ int/download). See the section “Fixing Frustrations Once and for All,” later in this chapter, for details.
✓ Internal exception error: An installation is somehow corrupted. A clean reinstallation is recommended. See the section “Fixing Frustrations Once and for All,” later in this chapter, for more. Spotify may update these codes from time to time, but at least the preceding list can give you possible reasons why your setup is running into problems.
Dealing with Payment Problems One of the questions Spotify gets asked a lot is why a payment method was declined. If paying by credit card, Spotify recommends that your credit card meets the following criteria: ✓ Able to work for foreign purchases. ✓ Enabled for e-commerce transactions, including the Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode schemes (see Chapter 12 for more on registering for these schemes). However, you don’t need to have signed up to these schemes if you aren’t buying a gift code. ✓ Registered in a country Spotify operates in, which needs to match the country that you set in your profile. ✓ This seems like an obvious one, but worth double-checking: The card needs to be valid. If it’s expired, you need to update details on your subscription page (www.spotify.com/int/account/subscription).
Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems If you’re paying by using PayPal, you need to have ✓ A verified PayPal account if paying for a recurring Unlimited or Premium subscription. There are a number of verification methods. The most common requires you to prove that the bank account linked to your PayPal account is yours. You log into PayPal, enter direct debit details for your bank, and then a couple of days later, confirm the amount of two small deposits PayPal makes into your account. ✓ A PayPal account that’s registered to the same country as your Spotify profile. After you make sure that your payment method fulfills all these criteria and you’re still having problems, you need to contact your bank or card issuer for more information. Spotify keeps trying to withdraw payment, but if it keeps failing, then your account is downgraded to Open: Premium and Unlimited subscribers start hearing ads again, and Premium fans lose their offline access and mobile-streaming privileges.
Pausing for Thought: Why Has the Music Stopped? Spotify doesn’t let you stream tracks from its database by using more than one computer or mobile device at a time. Although you can actually log into Spotify from multiple devices, if you try to play music from one connection when another already has music playing, Spotify pauses playback on the first connection. Figure 17-1 shows an example of such a warning message on my iPhone.
Figure 17-1: If you use your account elsewhere, Spotify pauses play on any other logged-in device.
315
316
Part V: The Part of Tens The message Spotify Has Been Paused because Your Account Is Used Somewhere Else may appear if you have an installation for which you selected the Remember Me check box on another computer that someone else is using. So, you haven’t technically logged out, and in some cases, Spotify may think that you’re still playing music on this connection. Pressing play on your current connection should reverse the situation and resume play on your own computer or device. In some cases, your account may have been compromised if someone has discovered your password. If you’re certain that this is the case, you can reset your password (as described in the section “Forgetting Your Username or Password,” earlier in this chapter). Note that the person who’s using your password can still access your account if she’s logged in — at least, until the next system upgrade that forces her to reenter the account details. Spotify says that it updates its software every two to three weeks. For more information, see the Help page at www.spotify.com/no/help/ faq/account/play-has-been-paused.
Figuring Out Why a Track Won’t Play Sometimes, you might receive a track in your inbox or see it on a playlist — but it just won’t play. Why can other people seem to play it but not you? This playback problem might be happening for a number of reasons: ✓ Unavailable track: If you try to send someone a track from your own MP3 collection, you aren’t actually sending him that track — just a link to that track. Spotify tries to match the track from its own streaming catalogue so that he can play it. If it doesn’t have the track, your recipient can’t play it unless he also has it stored in his local files. A message may appear encouraging you to import the file in order for you to be able to play it. ✓ Country restrictions: Spotify’s current record label agreements mean that if you send tracks to friends in other Spotify countries, it’s possible that they may not be able to play those tracks and vice versa. Spotify’s official blog says that the restrictions “are a legacy from when most music was sold on tapes and CDs and they have continued over into streaming music.” Hopefully record labels will move with the times and catch on to this restriction problem.
✓ Listening limit: After their accounts are six months old, Spotify Open users can listen to one streaming track only five times, ever. Not just five times per month. After you listen to a track five times, you need to buy the track in MP3 form from Spotify to be able to play it and do what you want with it. There are bundled deals available to allow you to buy music cheaply (from as little as 50p per track), but these bundles last for only 30 days, so you need to know roughly what music you want before committing. See Chapters 8 and 12 for more information.
Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems
Dealing with Sound-Card Issues Having a faulty sound card is probably the worst problem you’re ever going to encounter on Spotify. And I’ve seen plenty of frustrated messages online relating to sound-card issues. In most cases, these problems sort themselves out after a few days (did you check your Mute button?), but if you have friends coming over for a dinner party in an hour, it can get mighty stressful if you rely on Spotify to play music. Here’s a checklist of things you can try before submitting a support request: ✓ Is the problem only restricted to Spotify? If so, then you may need to reinstall it first (see the following section). Then, if the problem persists, follow up on the other reasons in this list. ✓ If you’re running Spotify under Wine in Linux, have you entered the correct audio settings? See Chapter 2 for more on using Wine. ✓ Have you updated the driver for your sound card to make sure you have the latest version? Your sound card is the hardware device inside your computer responsible for playing sound, and the driver is the program that sits between it and your computer, enabling it to run. Usually, updating your operating system to the latest version should do the trick because it detects the latest drivers for your sound card. If you have a Windows computer, go to http://windows.microsoft.com for help. For Mac, go to www.apple.com/support. If you installed a sound card on your computer, you may need to manually update the drivers from the manufacturer’s website. ✓ A change in your setup or a system crash may have caused Spotify to stop working. You can try to go to a previous restore point or backup, from when you were sure Spotify was working.
Recently, on my MacBook laptop, suddenly all the sound stopped working and the speaker symbol had one of those Forbidden signs on it — I was unable to turn the volume up or down. Yet the startup sound still worked, so I knew it wasn’t a speaker issue. I looked into my headphone jack and saw a red light. After a quick search online, I discovered that the computer still thought my earphones were plugged in, and plugging my earphones back in and jiggling the plug around to loosen and reset the connection fixed the problem.
Fixing Frustrations Once and for All No, I don’t mean leaving Spotify altogether! There’s the age-old IT helpdesk joke that goes something like, “Have you turned it on and off again?” because that seems to be a common solution to many problems. (Sometimes I wish I came with my own reset button!)
317
318
Part V: The Part of Tens Yes, turning your computer on and off can help. But uninstalling and reinstalling Spotify can also fix technical problems, such as a corrupt installation. The reinstallation process varies, depending on whether you’re using a Windows computer or a Mac, or a mobile device, but it follows the same principles as uninstalling any program does. Here are some tips for the uninstallreinstall process: ✓ Make sure Spotify is no longer running before uninstalling it. Choose File➪Exit in Windows (XP, Vista, or 7) or choose Spotify➪Quit Spotify on the Mac. ✓ Make sure you’re installing the latest version of Spotify directly from Spotify’s download page at www.spotify.com/int/download. ✓ I also recommend ensuring that you’ve downloaded the very latest software update for your operating system, which can often smooth out many bugs. For specific instructions on reinstalling, check out the Spotify FAQ page (www.spotify.com/help/faq), which includes explanations for the following systems in the Technical Information section: ✓ Mac OS X ✓ Windows Vista/7 ✓ iPhone or iPod touch ✓ Android ✓ Symbian ✓ Windows Mobile
Should Windows users run into problems when first downloading Spotify, the issue may lie with a corrupt installer file or an installation that didn’t finish downloading properly. You need the installer file to acquire the full version of Spotify. Before attempting to download this file again, I recommend clearing out your browser cache, which may have stored a temporary version of the corrupted installer file. In Internet Explorer, follow these steps:
1. Click the Tools button (shaped like a cog), and then select Internet Options from drop-down list that appears.
2. In the Options dialog box that opens, click the General tab.
Chapter 17: Ten Answers to Common Spotify Problems
3. In the Browsing History section, click Delete.
4. In the Delete Browsing History page that appears, select Temporary Internet Files.
5. At the bottom of the page, select Delete.
6. Click OK in the confirmation dialog box that appears.
The contents of the folder that contains temporary files are erased.
319
320
Part V: The Part of Tens
Chapter 18
Ten Innovative Spotify Tools In This Chapter ▶ Exploring types of Spotify tools ▶ Web browser add-ons to enhance your Spotify experience ▶ Discovering tools to find and share music
P
lenty of services, tools, and add-ons can boost Spotify and give it a little extra oomph. Think of these additions as power tools that can help you get things done faster or as little embellishments that can make your Spotify life easier. Many are mini-programs that plug into your existing web browser (such as Chrome or Firefox) or into Spotify itself; others are web based. The small, by no means exhaustive, sample of resources in this chapter just gives you an idea of what’s possible with Spotify — for more ideas, check out Chapter 11, where I discuss Spotibot, BRITify, ShareMyPlaylists.com, and many more. Some people may not be into the social aspects of Spotify, but others thrive on them. Some users enjoy the geekier toys, and others prefer to keep it simple. Whatever the case, there should be something in this chapter to interest you. And even better news: All the tools featured in this chapter are free! Please note that none of these add-ons are affiliated with Spotify, and some may still be in beta (trial) mode. As always, exercise caution and ensure that your computer’s security is up to date before installing any kind of add-on or software!
322
Part V: The Part of Tens
Types of Spotify tools Spotify services and add-ons fall into several kinds of categories (and they often cross over into more than one type of category). The official Spotify resource page, at www. spotify.com/int/about/spotifyon-the-web, has content provided by this book’s technical editor, Jer White — but for more up-to-the-minute listings, check out the Resources section of his blog at www. pansentient.com, which also has searchable listings. Generally, these are types of web services, tools, and add-ons that you can expect to find: ✓ On-demand lyrics: Sing along to your favorite tunes, settle the score between warring spouses who can’t agree on what exactly is being sung, or overanalyze some heartfelt lyrics. With one of these services, you can plug one of these tools into or alongside Spotify and get real-time song lyrics displayed. Cool! ✓ URL tools: It’s a bit dull and ugly having to share a long Spotify web address (known as a URL) with someone. Especially when it looks like http://open.spotify.com/ track/6JEK0CvvjDjjMUBFoXShNZ. Like many other URL shorteners on the web, Spotify URL shorteners can make Spotify tracks look prettier (by including the artist and title in the URL) or shorter (so that they can fit in your tweets — although these days, Twitter automatically shortens long URLs when they’re typed directly into a post). ✓ Remote controls: Apps you use on your mobile device that are capable of running Spotify on your desktop. You usually need to install a small program on your desktop, which communicates with your cellphone. See Chapter 15 for some popular types of remotes.
✓ Playlist converters: Websites that convert non-Spotify playlists (or just plain text) into Spotify-friendly ones. ✓ Recommendation tools: Discover new artists thanks to these useful tools that automatically gather your Last.fm recommendations and turn them into Spotify playlists. Spotibot, which I discuss in Chapter 11, is the most well-known. ✓ Alert services: I have Google Alerts send me e-mails whenever there’s some interesting Spotify news. A number of websites can send you an e-mail when a certain artist has released new material on Spotify, so you don’t have to keep checking Spotify if you’re anticipating a new release. ✓ Web browser add-ons: These little browser customizations perform a range of actions. They extend the functionality of your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) and let you perform certain Spotify actions while you’re surfing the web. Popular add-ons include searching Spotify or viewing tracks playing in Spotify. Most of these add-ons take the form of bookmarklets — small pieces of code that you bookmark in your web browser or drag to your browser’s toolbar, like you do when you bookmark or favorite a website. ✓ Spotify extensions: Like Equalify (featured in Chapter 11) and Growl (featured in the section “Growl for Mac,” in this chapter), these tools interact directly with the Spotify software. ✓ Web services: Web-based resources that perform certain functions — many of the recommendation tools and playlist converters fall into this category.
Chapter 18: Ten Innovative Spotify Tools
✓ Developer tools: Resources for the technically minded only. I haven’t listed them in this chapter because they’re only for people who want to develop Spotifyrelated tools, but check out http:// d e v e l o p e r . s p o t i f y . c o m and
www.spotify.com/int/about/ spotify-on-the-web/developerresources if you want to get under the hood and experiment with bringing your own Spotify-related idea to life.
ListDJ My friend Kinuyo says her mother once misheard the song, “You’re the One That I Want” from the movie Grease as “You’re the One Dollar One.” (That song is full of misheard lyrics: John Travolta singing, “I got chills, they’re multiplying” can be heard as “I got shoes, they’re made of plywood.”) After you plug in ListDJ, which offers on-demand lyrics of the song you’re listening to, you’ll never doubt what’s being sung again. Head to http://blog.listdj.se to download the Spotify plug-in for Windows. You can also download a version for the Mac (which I can confirm works), but you need to have Growl installed first (see the section “Growl for Mac,” later in this chapter). You can also try ✓ Lyrify (www.lyrify.com): A Windows-only lyrics tool. ✓ ListeningNow (http://xaviesteve.com/1444/listeningnowspotify-song-lyrics-plugin-windows-mac-osx-linux): Xavi Esteve’s lyrics-display tool is a bookmarklet (see the sidebar, “Types of Spotify tools,” in this chapter, for an explanation of bookmarklets). It’s compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. To get it working, you need a Last.fm account that has your listening data made public and scrobbling enabled (see Chapter 5 for more on Last.fm).
Cleanify Clipboard Filter I discuss Cleanify in Chapter 10 — it’s a website where you enter a Spotify track, album, or artist URI, and the site turns that link into a nice, readable address. So, entering spotify:artist:50bY8HGxT0SuDgJX3AilTT becomes http://cleanify.net/play/artist/sesame-street.
323
324
Part V: The Part of Tens But copying and pasting a Uniform Resource Indicator (URI) into the Cleanify website every time you want a more user-friendly address can be time consuming. Enter Cleanify’s clipboard filter, which runs in the background and automatically converts Spotify links that you’ve copied and converts them to the clean versions. It’s available only for Windows and is downloadable from http://cleanify.net/tools. You can also try Spo.tl (http://spo.tl), which reduces those long Spotify links to something that’s only around ten characters long.
Better Spotify Links Better Spotify Links — a great creation from the home of Spotibot (www. spotibot.com), Andy Smith’s music recommendation tool profiled in Chapter 11 — takes a scary-looking Spotify link and adds a lot of information to it. Next time you copy and paste a Spotify web address that relates to a track, album, or artist, replace the open.spotify.com bit with spotibot.com. The result is a beautiful Spotibot-hosted web page dedicated to the track, artist, or album whose link you copied. To make the job easier for you, a plug-in for Firefox web browsers automatically inserts the Spotibot.com bit for you. You’ll first need to download and install Greasemonkey (a tool that helps all these little types of scripts, or piece of code, work) by following these steps:
1. Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ greasemonkey and click the Add to Firefox button to begin the download.
2. Follow the prompts to download the add-on.
3. Visit the Spotibot Better Spotify Links page (http://spotibot.com/ betterlinks).
A link to the Greasemonkey script is listed on this page.
4. Click the Spotibot Greasemonkey Script link.
A dialog box appears, saying This Is a Greasemonkey User Script.
5. To confirm the installation, click Install.
FoxyTunes FoxyTunes is a popular browser add-on for Firefox that lets you control virtually any media player from the browser window, thanks to easily accessible playback controls. You can also see what’s playing within the window.
Chapter 18: Ten Innovative Spotify Tools Right-click some relevant text in the web page you’re currently browsing (such as an artist name) to open a pop-up window, where you can check out a biography, lyrics, and more. At the time of writing, I was unable to get it working on my current browser (Firefox 5 on a Mac) because that browser version was too recent. You can find FoxyTunes at http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ addon/foxytunes.
Spotify Chrome Extension The Mad Pixel Factory’s Spotify Chrome Extension — recommended by Spotify — lets you highlight an act’s name on any web page, and then click the extension button to begin searching Spotify for that name. Results are slickly displayed in a pop-up window. Click an album, artist, or track name to be directed to Spotify’s launch page for that result. But don’t take my (or Spotify’s) word for it: To date, the extension has been downloaded an impressive 32,000 times and enjoys a four-star rating at the Chrome Web Store. You can find the Spotify Chrome Extension at the Chrome Web Store (https://chrome.google.com/webstore).
Those of you who have an Android phone can use this extension to send Spotify links from your browser directly to your phone. After your phone receives the link, that link then plays directly in Spotify Mobile — making it an ideal way to listen to music if Spotify isn’t running on the computer you’re using. You need to download the Google Chrome to Phone extension — an add-on that copies web links from your browser and sends them directly to your phone.
Growl for Mac Mac users listening to music through Spotify normally can’t tell what the song’s title or artist is unless they either know it already or go into the Spotify program to see what’s playing — which can be a hassle if you’re busy working on something else (such as writing this book!). The extra effort involved hugely differs from Windows 7, which includes loads of info about the currently playing track accessible from the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, including playback control.
325
326
Part V: The Part of Tens But Mac users have somewhat of a workaround. Growl is a popular, free tool that provides an unobtrusive, gentle alert system, which pops up a message whenever something important is going on — such as new e-mail, an appointment reminder, a phone call alert, what song is currently playing in Spotify — that sort of thing. Support for Growl is built into Spotify. All you need to do is have Growl installed, and each time a track starts playing, you see an alert pop up onscreen. Currently, you can’t control a track from this pop-up window — for that, you need something such as FoxyTunes, described in the section “FoxyTunes,” earlier in this chapter — but at least you can see what’s playing. Growl isn’t only for song alerts — ListDJ, the lyric-listing tool described in the section “ListDJ,” earlier in this chapter, is also Growl compatible. I’ve checked out Growl with ListDJ, and they work great together. You can find Growl at http://growl.info.
freshspotify Fed up with constantly checking Spotify to see whether your favorite artist has released his latest single on Spotify yet? There’s no longer any need to stress. freshspotify informs you via e-mail when your favorite artist has added new stuff to the service. You need a Google account to sign in and manage your alerts — if you have a Gmail address, simply use that account’s details to log in. If you don’t have Gmail, it’s free and easy to set up a Google account at www.google.com/accounts. After you log in, you can create a new artist alert, add more artists, or remove existing ones. You can also choose the Spotify countries from which you want to receive alerts (to be on the safe side, all countries are selected for you, but remember that in some cases, you may not be able to listen to a track released in a country that isn’t the one in which you’re registered). Access freshspotify and start managing your alerts at www.freshspotify.com. You may also want to try SpotiMail. This U.K.-focused tool requires your Last.fm username and your e-mail address (which you’re told will be used only to send you new release information). SpotiMail matches your music-listening preferences to the U.K.’s new-release database (so tracks may not necessarily be playable in your region). See http://spotimail.invitationstation.org.
Chapter 18: Ten Innovative Spotify Tools
Spotify Search for Firefox The Spotify Search for Firefox, a nifty and hugely popular little add-on, lets you highlight some website text (such as an album title or artist), right-click it (or Ctrl-click on a Mac), and then select Spotify Search from the menu that appears to open a list of search options. You can choose to either do a free search, which is just a search for those keywords, or specifically search for an artist, album, or song. It works very well for me, with results loading up in Spotify just as quickly as they would if I were conducting a regular search on Spotify. Another benefit is that the Spotify Search feature is very non-intrusive: The tool is hidden from view until you right-click the highlighted text that you want to search. Download Spotify Search for Firefox at the Mozilla Addons site (https:// addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/spotify-search).
Spotify Super Search Jer White, the technical editor for this book, has created yet another excellent resource: a way to help make Spotify searching easier. In fact, you can probably forget everything I explain in Chapter 4 about advanced searches. Yep, just ignore it. At Spotify Super Search, you can search by artist, album, track, genre, or year, and then select options from the drop-down lists to look for results either matching or not matching a particular search term. There are other options available, too, such as searching only some, but not all, search terms in your query. You can add as many terms to the search as you want. The search is generated in real-time onscreen so that you can see what you’d normally be typing into Spotify’s search bar. This is actually a good way to figure out how to conduct advanced searches through Spotify on your own! You can access Spotify Super Search at www.pansentient.com.
Playlistify Anything Bookmarklet I mention Playlistify in Chapter 11, a neat tool that converts any track listings (such as YouTube or iTunes playlists) into a Spotify playlist. Playlistify creator Roeland Landegent calls the conversion process baking.
327
328
Part V: The Part of Tens The bookmarklet makes the baking process easier for text conversions (when you copy and paste a list of track names into the Playlistify text box). Just go to http://playlistify.org/pages_tools.php and drag the Playlistify It bookmarklet to your browser’s bookmark bar. The next time you highlight some tracks (say, on a music retailer’s website), click the bookmarklet, and the text gets transferred to the Playlistify text box (you may need to edit the text slightly to make sure each track is on its own line). Playlistify actively encourages people to share the playlists they’ve created on the site. To date, almost 7,000 playlists had been shared. Roeland also posts regular updates and suggested playlists via his Twitter account, @playlistify.
Chapter 19
Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify In This Chapter ▶ Getting your band’s tunes on Spotify ▶ Working for Spotify ▶ Participating with other Spotify users ▶ Making a CD of your Spotify downloads ▶ Finding all kinds of music on Spotify
Y
ou’re probably reading this book because you want to figure out how to get the most out of Spotify. There are also plenty more fun things you can do with Spotify that I couldn’t really fit into the other chapters. Musicians can get their music onto Spotify. Geeks can start developing their own Spotify-powered apps. People fed up with their current jobs can keep Spotify’s vacancies page bookmarked. Music fans can start a blog or make a CD of their music purchases. Oh, and when you want to take a break from the music, you can listen to a range of stand-up comedy or take an audio guide with you on your travels. No matter what your interest, there’s probably something in this chapter just for you. Think of it as a mixed bag of wonderful, useful stuff. Happy exploring!
Getting Your Unsigned Band onto Spotify Much of this book has been all about listening to the music, but what about actually submitting your music to Spotify and letting others listen to it? Spotify has agreements with record labels to get their artists onto the service, but what if you’re an unsigned band? Well, you can still get your music heard on Spotify, thanks to its agreements with a number of music aggregators that distribute tracks to the service on your behalf. These aggregators have agreements with dozens of other music download sites, too, including Amazon Music (www.amazon.com), 7Digital (www.7digital.com), and iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes). They make your music available to these places as part of the distribution package.
330
Part V: The Part of Tens Potentially, you could reach millions of listeners, but I’m going to be realistic: The average band can’t make a fortune through royalty rates based on streaming alone, even if you receive tens of thousands of plays. So, why bother if the returns are so low? For most unsigned bands, putting their music on to Spotify isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme, it’s just one part of their promotional arsenal. It exposes people to their music and encourages concertgoers to head to one of their gigs. Because you can link directly to Spotify tracks from any website, Twitter feed, or Facebook page, visitors can automatically check out your band’s music. Spotify’s download store also encourages people to purchase your track, and you get a greater return from that. The biggest artist aggregators include CD Baby (www.cdbaby.com), TuneCore (www.tunecore.com), and Ditto Music (www.dittomusic. com). For a full list of the artist aggregators Spotify works with, go to www. spotify.com/int/work-with-us/labels-and-artists/artistaggregators. The main way each aggregator operates varies, but you sign up via the site and upload your high-quality music files to the service. In terms of pricing, some aggregators let you sign up for free but take a commission (CD Baby takes 9 percent of net earnings), and others let you keep all the royalties but charge an annual fee (TuneCore charges $9.99 per year to submit a single and $49.99 per year for an album). It’s up to you whether you think you can amass enough digital downloads and music streams to justify one or the other. (And if you’re into old-school physical media, CD Baby also lets you sell actual CDs and vinyl through its site.)
Finding a Job at Spotify Spotify is one of those young, agile, and fun-looking places to work (at least, it seems so to me; the people I’ve spoken to who work there always seem like they’re having a good time, even if they do seem constantly on the move because it’s such a fast-paced environment). Watch the videos and view the photos on their dedicated jobs site, and you encounter people skateboarding in the office, playing table football, and enjoying a Spotify Live Office Session every Friday. Spotify’s CEO and co-founder Daniel Ek explains on the introductory video that the company is always trying to move faster, push the envelope, and improve how something’s been done — if it sounds like you’re up for this sort of challenge, head to www.spotify.com/int/jobs.
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify Many of the jobs advertised are for software engineers, but I’ve seen positions for office managers, graphic artists, data analysts, accountants, ad salespeople, product developers, business development managers . . . the list goes on. The jobs are based in Spotify’s London, Stockholm, and New York offices. For the technically minded who want to know whether they have what it takes to work at Spotify, the company has included several puzzles, such as the one shown in Figure 19-1 (which I’m not going to pretend to understand). According to the sidebar on this website, some software engineers started working at Spotify on the back of solving these conundrums!
Figure 19-1: I’m not sure what moldy bread has to do with working at Spotify, but it’s part of a developer’s puzzle.
Making New Friends You can find out about Spotify’s strong connection with Facebook in Chapter 9, but its social networking features aren’t limited to your existing circle of friends. Spotify lets you add anyone to your People list, as long as you know her username and she’s also enabled Spotify Social. You don’t necessarily have to be friends with her on Facebook, and she doesn’t have to approve your friend request.
331
332
Part V: The Part of Tens The problem is there’s currently no way for that person to know whether you’ve added her to your list — you can’t view another person’s friends in the same way you can through Facebook. You can obtain some clues about who might have added you: For example, take a look to see who’s subscribed to your playlists. If there’s a name that pops up a lot, he’s probably following your Spotify activity. You can also let a person know that you’ve added her as a friend and see whether she responds. Spotify’s Inbox feature lets you send tracks to anyone in your People list, along with a short accompanying message. Perhaps you’ve been a fan of a certain person’s playlists in the past and want to introduce him to a band you’ve been enjoying lately. There’s no guarantee of a reply because people can filter their Inbox messages to show only messages from people they’ve added to their own list. But it’s one way of breaking the ice and maybe making a new friend.
Burning a CD from Downloaded Songs This process sounds a little like the opposite of what Spotify is actually about: Burn a CD, rather than just listen to Spotify streaming from the cloud? Arguably, there’s still a place for the humble CD (even if it’s just for a nostalgia trip). For example, if you just made a playlist of your favorite Christmas tracks, you might want to burn these tracks to a CD and send them to a friend as a personalized gift (you could decorate the front of the CD with your own design). Or if your 1990s-era car has a CD player in it, you can always take along a few compilation CDs (and you can always fall back on the master digital files if the CDs get scratched or damaged). To burn a CD, you need ✓ A CD/DVD burner: Most computers nowadays come with a built-in DVD burner that has the capability to burn CDs. If you don’t have one of these burners, you can buy an external DVD burner that plugs into your computer’s USB port. ✓ Digital music files: You need to own unrestricted digital music files, meaning music without any digital rights management (DRM) copyright restrictions built into the files, in order to burn tracks to CD. Spotify’s streaming tracks are encrypted, so even if you sync them to your computer or desktop app, you can’t burn them straight onto a disc. Only tracks you buy from a download store such as iTunes or Spotify’s in-house MP3 music store, or ones you’ve already ripped from a disc, can be copied onto CD.
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify ✓ Disc-burning software: You can burn a CD of your digital music tracks by using readily available software such as iTunes or Windows Media Player. ✓ A blank CD: A CD-R or CD+R disc means that you can only burn (write) data to it once, but a CD-RW or CD+RW disc can be written to multiple times. I recommend the write-once CD-R or CD+R for maximum compatibility, but newer players accept CD-RW or CD+RWs, too. Making an audio CD you can play in a CD player is different than just burning the files straight to a disc. Many newer players do recognize MP3 files burned on a CD, but conventional CD players don’t. You need to burn an audio CD, rather than just a data CD.
Finding Hidden Audio Gems on Spotify Did you know that Spotify isn’t only about music? Actually, there are plenty of other things to listen to on Spotify, from sound effects to self-help audiobooks. Here are some of the more interesting finds: ✓ Audio books and audio dramas: Although Spotify concentrates on adding music, you can find the odd audio book on Spotify. I expect that Spotify will continue to actively expand this area in the future. Back in 2009, the company experimented with audio by adding Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price for U.K. listeners (it’s still available there now). And you can find a lot of examples of audio dramas such as Pride and Prejudice, Three Men in a Boat, and Sherlock Holmes narrated by famous actors such as Joanna Lumley, Hugh Laurie, and Sir John Gielgud listed on Jer White’s blog (http://pansentient. com/2011/06/audio-books-and-fiction-on-spotify). ✓ Comedy: There are hundreds of comic albums on Spotify: Monty Python, Billy Connolly, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Steven Wright, and Chris Rock are some of the more familiar names. You can also find a few more alternative acts. Be warned that some of the language and the content may not be to your taste. ✓ Apollo missions: Did you know you can listen to all the recordings from Apollo missions released by NASA on Spotify? Check out Figure 19-2. The famous “Houston, we have a problem” line is found about 20 seconds into the Apollo 13, Excerpt 9 track. Go to http://cleanify.net/ play/album/nasa/the-apollo-missions for the link to the album.
333
334
Part V: The Part of Tens ✓ Audio guides: There are a number of City Speaker audio guides on Spotify that you can listen to before you go on vacation. Or if you have a Premium subscription, why not sync tracks to your mobile phone and play them in Offline mode when you’re out and about? The banter between the two presenters is a little cheesy from what I’ve heard so far, but that’s in keeping with the touristy spirit of audio guides! Cities in the series include Barcelona, Brussels, London, Marseille, New York, Prague, and many more. ✓ Radio shows: Spotify often experiments with radio shows, where a guest musician acts as a DJ and introduces a number of songs. The virtual band Gorillaz hosted a faux independent-style pirate-radio show on the site. And indie label Domino Records took over Spotify for a week and got a series of music acts to introduce their favorite tracks (see www. spotify.com/se/blog/archives/2011/06/08/domino-radiois-on-the-air). As usual, on-the-ball bloggers regularly link to these wonderful kinds of discoveries, so it’s worth doing a web search to see what’s been added recently.
Figure 19-2: Spotify, we don’t have a problem. I found the Apollo missions audio content!
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify
Listening to Music from around the World On Spotify, you can find endless examples of music from all corners of the globe. Recently, I decided to look up some Indonesian music and, apart from the usual gamelan orchestras, I found a 1950 compilation album of thenpopular Indonesian tracks (Music of Indonesia), along with a fascinating album containing a recently unearthed selection of underground 1970s Indonesian psychedelic funk bands (These Shocking Shaking Days). Take a look around, and you find no shortage of blogs that list world music playlists. Here are a few examples: ✓ West African music and djembe drumming: http://djembefola.com/ blog/djembe/djembe-and-african-music-spotify-playlists. ✓ Popular Japanese music (J-Pop and J-Rock): Plenty of examples here, such as http://sharemyplaylists.com/made-in-japan-jpopjrock and http://dir.playlistify.org/2249/j-pop.html, to name a few. ✓ Amazon.com’s top World Music albums: Shi Lei from Spotify Classical compiled a playlist based on Amazon.com’s list at www.spotify classical.com/2010/12/amazon-100-greatest-jazz-andworld.html.
Starting Up Your Own Spotify Blog There’s a strong community out there full of enthusiastic bloggers who dedicate their free time to combing Spotify’s extensive catalogue for playlist ideas. If you think you can do the same and have the knack for finding music or other audio tracks related to your favorite genre or other area of expertise, when why not start up your own Spotify-related website? The technical knowledge required to start up a blog is zilch, nada, nil. You only need to know how to register for an account, type your content into a few text boxes, paste in a Spotify URL, and click Post. Just use one of the many free tools available that let you start up your own blog in a few steps and have your posts (and images) hosted for nothing. These blogs are typically supported by advertising and should be flexible enough for your needs
335
336
Part V: The Part of Tens if you’re only posting updates about your musical discoveries. The major free blog hosts include ✓ Blogger (www.blogger.com): Owned by Google. Free blogs have an http://yourusername.blogspot.com address. Check out Google Blogger For Dummies, by Susan Gunelius, if you want to use this host. ✓ Wordpress.com (www.wordpress.com): The hosted solution, not to be confused with Wordpress.org, which, although free, is software you need to install on web space you already pay for. WordPress For Dummies, 4th Edition, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, talks about both versions. ✓ Tumblr (www.tumblr.com): A quick-fire way of sharing finds on the web such as video, images, and quotes. Oh, and Spotify playlists, of course! ✓ Posterous (www.posterous.com): Similar to Tumblr in that it lets you share quick links and posts that are too long for Twitter but not complex enough to put into a massive blog post. Like with all things that are free, it’s important to back up your content regularly because there aren’t any guarantees that the sites will host it forever. You should be able to export and save your blog content as a file. A step up from simply blogging is to combine blogging with a Spotify-related service (see the following section). For an example, check out the British Spotify site Spotimy (http://spotimy.co.uk), which automatically pulls together the week’s new album releases and artwork into a deceptively simple-looking website and combines it with handpicked links to favorite new releases and carefully crafted playlists.
Developing a Spotify Service or App As I outline in Chapter 11, Spotify lets computer geeks — er, I mean software developers — tap into its data in order to create their own third-party applications, add-ons, and other web services. There are so many creative ways in which people can use this data and combine it with other tools, such as the music recommendation service Last.fm. I’m not a technical person, so I don’t understand the underlying code behind it all, and the vast majority of people reading this book don’t, either. But if you have some experience with tinkering behind the scenes (or know someone who does) and want to see how you go about creating your own little Spotify app, head on over to its dedicated developers’ site at http:// developer.spotify.com.
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify
Spotibot: One success story Andy Smith created Spotibot (www. spotibot.com), an automatic music recommendation service that creates a playlist based on your musical tastes (see Chapter 11 for more). Spotibot averages around 1,000 unique visitors every day and enjoys even greater bursts of success whenever it’s featured in the online press. Here’s a brief Q&A with Andy about developing Spotibot. Andy uses Spotify’s API (application program interface) to develop his own groundbreaking tools based on Spotify’s engine, but Spotibot actually existed before this API was officially available. Q: How supportive is Spotify in helping you make Spotibot the best it can be? A: As one of the first ever third-party tools, Spotify have been very supportive of me . . . It would be very easy for them to do what Spotibot does, but I believe they are more interested in leaving it to passionate thirdparty developers while they concentrate on the core technologies. Q: Have there been any restrictions as to how you can use their data? A: I was disappointed to hear that they have some additional APIs that they have chosen not to release to the general developer community, and instead giving them to those third parties with commercial interests. Other than measures put in to prevent us third parties causing problems with their servers, there really doesn’t appear to be any restrictions on how we are allowed to use the vast quantities of
metadata [information about how data is structured] they make available. Q: What kind of feedback have you had from users? A: Wonderful stuff — not a bad word uttered! I get quite a few feature requests, which I am happy to implement, or just hack together as a “side script” for the person suggesting, to have for themselves. [One project Andy has worked on includes Spotify Instant at http://andysmith. co.uk/spotifyinstant, which lets you search for Spotify tracks via the web and presents them as easily accessible links.] Q: Any other future developments? A: Although the Spotify APIs do not make it easy, I am determined to take Spotibot onto the mobile platforms. I also have a few exciting ideas based on the way I consume music under this new “cloud” era, though I’m currently undecided whether to extend Spotibot or create a new site entirely. Q: Have you got any advice for beginners who want to try developing a Spotify thirdparty app or service? A: Just go for it. Spotibot was a simple idea that I thought would make my life easier as a music fan, which got popular — so I spruced up the graphics and user interface. With “own-time” projects, it can be hard to keep motivated sometimes, so hit it hard at the start and get launched. There’s no greater motivation than people using your service and giving you feedback.
337
338
Part V: The Part of Tens
Entering a Spotify Competition: Win Stuff! Spotify launches some very cool competitions from time to time. To be in the know, follow @spotify on Twitter, become a fan of Spotify on Facebook (www.facebook.com/spotify), bookmark the blog (www.spotify.com/ blog), and keep an eye on the What’s New feed. Competitions are diverse and could include anything from festival tickets to merchandise giveaways and free Spotify Premium subscriptions. The Ultimate Jimi Hendrix competition, back in March 2010, required entrants to compile an ultimate Jimi Hendrix playlist to commemorate his posthumous release, Valleys of Neptune. Winners received a limited edition iPod touch preloaded with Hendrix’s back catalogue. Another giveaway was a signed, framed vinyl copy of Kings of Leon’s album Come Around Sundown — all people had to do to be in the running was sign up to the official Sony Kings of Leon playlist.
Tidying Up Spotify’s Catalogue With 15 million tracks and counting, there are invariably going to be mistakes in Spotify’s library when it comes to artist biography pages and correctly matching artists with album releases. Right now, Spotify doesn’t have an automated tool for reporting and correcting problems, which creates a manual backlog for Spotify staff and is frustrating for paying customers who want accuracy in their playlists and in the listening data recorded at the music-recommendation service Last.fm. One problem is that Spotify receives and relies on track information provided from record labels, some of which isn’t tagged or labeled correctly, causing it to be filed in the wrong places. Spotify could manually fix the problem, but they would then be back to square one next time they refresh the data provided to them by the labels. NASA (as in the National Air and Space Administration) is mixed up with at least two European bands, and I had a hard time finding recordings of the space missions on Spotify as a result. And sometimes, track remixes are all named after the original song, rather than the remix. But the biggest controversy, which has been going on for at least two years, is related to complaints from people who are upset that British electronic dance outfit the Prodigy is missing the the from the listings and therefore gets mixed up with a hip-hop act named simply Prodigy. (For the whole long and complicated saga, see http://getsatisfaction.com/spotify/topics/wrong_artist_ name_for_the_prodigy.)
Chapter 19: Ten Great Ways to Use Spotify So what can you do? The technical and logistical problems mean it might be a while before a reported correction sees the light of day, but you can still inform Spotify about content problems via its contact form. Go to www. spotify.com/help/faq/content/how-can-i-report-contenterrors, where you can find a link to the contact form, as well as details about the information you need to provide Spotify. In addition to filling out the contact form, make sure you sign into the official Support forums at www. getsatisfaction.com/spotify to have your say (and bond with other annoyed people).
339
340
Part V: The Part of Tens
Index • Symbols and Numerics • %20 web code, 174 %22 web code, 174 %27 web code, 174 * (asterisk) symbol, 83 .3g2 file extension, 118 .3gp file extension, 118 7Digital store, 55, 329
•A• AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) file format, 32, 118, 120 accuracy restriction, 22 AC/DC, absence from Spotify, 73 Add to Playlist option, 258 Added sort field, 131 advertising in Open accounts, 217 overview, 23–24 targeted, 26 age restrictions, 22 aggregated listening data, 18 agreements, 22–23 AirPlay technology, 260 AirPort Express device, 260 Alarmify application, 277 Album title sort field, 131 albums comedy, 333 finding, 312–313 linking to, 172–173 making into playlists, 106–107 missing from Spotify, 72–74 parameter, 80 as resources, 168 titles, 258 viewing cover art, 133–134 alert services, 322
Amazon website discovering music, 25 getting signed with Spotify through, 329 music recommendations, 96 American Express card, 222 AND search term, 81 Android devices Android Market, 241, 246 music library, organizing, 266–267 performing actions on, 264–265 playlists on creating, 268 editing, 268 sharing, 262 Spotify Mobile app, 241 in Spotify window left sidebar, 52 syncing offline playlists from mobile devices, 301–302 tracks, sharing, 262 troubleshooting phones, 304–305 API (application program interface), 185 Apollo missions albums, 333 Apple AirPort Express device, 260 applications. See also Spotify Mobile Alarmify, 277 desktop, 27 developing, 336–337 Foursquare, 193 Greasemonkey, 324 ListeningNow, 323 Lyrify, 323 mobile, 219 MSearch, 277 remote controls, 322 ReSpot, 292 Search option, 238 Shazam, 89 Artist page, 85–86 Artist Radio, 86, 87–89 Artist sort field, 131
342
Spotify For Dummies artists Artist Radio, 87–89 biographies, 86–87 finding, 312–313 information in Spotify Mobile app, 240, 258 linking to pages of, 172–173 missing from Spotify, 72–74 paying, 25 reading profiles, 85–86 as resources, 168 artwork, Spotify Mobile application, 240 asterisk (*) symbol, 83 audio books, 333 default file search location, 63 digital bitrates, 32–33 overview, 32 speakers, 33 dramas, 333 file formats, 32 guides for, 334 auto-correct feature, 83 automatic updates policy, 45 automatically renewed subscriptions, 223
•B• Badges feature, 196 bands, getting onto Spotify, 329–330 bandwidth, 14 The Beatles, absence from Spotify, 73 Better Spotify Links tool, 324 biblify website, 187 Biography tab, Artist page, 86 bitly website, 175 bitrate bits, defined, 32 download quality, 140 overview, 32–33 Spotify Premium, 220–221 streaming music, 19 BitTorrent program, 24 Bjork, absence from Spotify, 74
BlackBerry device, 243 blocking messages, 182 Blog feature, 196 Blogger website, 336 blogs overview, 201–202 Shiny Shiny, 223 soundofus website, 202 SpotiDJ website, 203–204 Spotify Classical website, 202 Spotinews website, 202–203 starting up, 335–336 bookmarklet tool, 327–328 books (audio), 333 bots, 200 BRITify website, 186–187 browsing album symbol, 263 bundles, download buying, 140–141 using before expiration, 141 burning CDs from downloaded songs, 332–333 buying credits, 54 download bundles, 140–141 tracks, 54, 145–147 By Country view, 184
•C• cache default size, for Spotify client, 30 keeping music in, 28 overview, 65–66 canceling Spotify Premium account, 232 subscriptions, 225 catalogue selections, 14–15 tidying up, 338–339 CD Baby website, 330 CDs burning from downloaded songs, 332–333 ripping, 119
Index cellphones. See mobile devices; Spotify Mobile charges, 222–224 Charts feature, 196 Choose Install Location dialog box, 38 Chrome Extension, Spotify, 325 Cleanify website, 175, 323–324 Clear Recent Searches option, 50 Click Play Queue button, 51 clicking search results, 50 clinc website, 195 cloud defined, 236 playlists stored in, 247 codes, 313–314 collaborative playlists, 178–179 comedy albums, 333 community, Spotify BRITify website, 186–187 clinc website, 195 Equalify website, 192 getting help, 204–209 Gigero website, 189–190 Last.ify website, 187–188 music blogs overview, 201–202 soundofus website, 202 SpotiDJ website, 203–204 Spotify Classical website, 202 Spotinews website, 202–203 Overhere website, 191–192 overview, 185 Pitchify website, 188–189 Playlistify website, 194 ShareMyPlaylists website app downloads, 198–200 features, 196–197 overview, 195 registering on, 197 submitting playlists to, 197–198 Spotibot feature, 200–201 Spotisquare website, 193 Topsify website, 190–191 truShuffle website, 193 Tubufy website, 190 Viral Music List website, 193–194
competitions, 338 computational resources, use of by Spotify, 23–24 computers compatible systems, 29–30 Linux distributions, 40 downloading Spotify for, 40–41 Mac default audio files search location, 63 default store folder, 65 downloading Spotify for, 39–40 firewall, allowing access over, 312 Growl tool, 325–326 security software, 32 shortcuts, creating, 137 necessary specifications, 30–31 offline listening on, 219–220 offline mode, using on, 294–297 overview, 29 shortcuts, 135 Spotify Mobile, downloading using Android Market, 246 iTunes Store, 245–246 overview, 245 syncing offline playlists with Wi-Fi from, 297–298 updating software, 44–46 Windows default audio files search location, 63 default store folder, 65 downloading Spotify for, 37–39 firewall, allowing access over, 311 security software, 31 7 system, creating shortcuts in, 136 Connect feature, 196 connections with Facebook, 154 phone to Wi-Fi, 271 to Spotify Mobile, 250–251 troubleshooting overview, 157 Spotify appearing in Facebook, 157–158 contacting Spotify, 234 copying track URL, 260
343
344
Spotify For Dummies countries differences by, 21–22 restrictions in, 74, 316 where Spotify operates, 21, 34 country-specific web pages, 22 cover art, viewing, 133–134 Create Icons for Spotify on the Start Menu and on the Desktop check box, 38 Create Your Account page, 35 Ctrl+A shortcut, 111 Ctrl+F shortcut, 83, 114, 177, 180 Ctrl+G shortcut, 105, 133 Ctrl+Q shortcut, 127 Ctrl+right arrow shortcut, 88 Ctrl+V shortcut, 172 Ctrl+Z shortcut, 113 currently playing tracks, 257–258 customer service, 234
•D• data listening, 18–19 personal, 24–26 usage of, 29 Data tab, 99 default audio files search location, 63 default cache size for Spotify client, 30 default download folder, 139 default ordering of search results, 133 default play queue mechanism, 76 default posting from Spotify to Facebook, 162 default profile privacy, 153 default store folder, 65 deleting playlists, 113 tracks from library, 99–100 from Play Queue, 77 from playlist, 113 Delicious bookmark manager, 137 desktop application, 27 developer tools, 323
Devices feature, 52–53 digital audio bitrates, 32–33 overview, 32 speakers, 33 digital rights management (DRM), 119, 140, 332 disabling posts, 162–163 disconnecting from Facebook, 164–165 discovering music artist biographies, 86–87 artist profiles, reading, 85–86 Artist Radio, 87–89 Last.fm service deleting tracks from library, 99–100 finding new music, 97–98 overview, 93–94 privacy, adjusting, 98–99 Recommendations page, 96–97 signing up for, 94–96 listening to Spotify Radio, 90–93 overview, 25, 85 What’s New page, 89–90 displaying album tracks, 264 artist information, 264 artist’s work symbol, 263 cover art, 133 downloaded tracks, 54 full playlists, 177 iPod free space, 284 subscribed users to playlists, 177 tracks in main pane, 53 Ditto Music website, 330 Do You Want to Allow This Website to Open a Program on Your Computer? message, 176 download folder, default, 139 Download Spotify for Windows page, 37 downloaded songs, 332–333 downloading Spotify for Linux computers, 40–41 for Mac computers, 39–40 non-Premium account, 237–238 overview, 37, 235
Index Premium subscribers, 236–237 Spotify Mobile accessories, using, 248 Android Market, 246 iTunes Store, 245–246 login restrictions, 248 overview, 245, 247 playlists, viewing, 247 for Windows computers, 37–39 downloading tracks bundles buying, 140–141 using before expiration, 141 missing tracks, buying, 145–147 overview, 139–140 payment methods, 141–142 privileges with purchased tracks, 147–148 tracks, buying, 142–145 Downloads feature, 53–54 dragging albums into playlists, 106 dramas (audio), 333 DRM (digital rights management), 119, 140, 332
•E• Edit Your Profile page, 56 editing playlists on Android devices, 268 on iPhone, 267–268 in iPhone version of Spotify Mobile app, 266 overview, 267 in Spotify Mobile app, 239 editing profile privacy, 159–161 Enable Hardware Acceleration option, 63 enabling 3G in mobile devices, 251 posts, 161–162 secure browsing in Facebook, 158 Equalify website, 192 error messages, 313–314 Events feature, 98 Everywhere view, 184
expiration dates, 141 explicit warning labels on tracks, 23 extending bundle expiration date, 141
•F• F2 key shortcut, 111 Facebook connecting to friends, 154–155 disabling posts, 162–163 disconnecting from, 164–165 enabling posts, 161–162 limiting access to information, 163–164 official page of, 163 overview, 161 sharing music through, 172 Spotify appearing in, 157–158 FAQ page, 318 features. See also playlists; Spotify Mobile auto-correct, 83 Badges, 196 Blog, 196 Charts, 196 collaboration, 178–179 Devices, 52–53 Downloads, 53–54 Events, 98 Friend Finder, 98 Inbox blocking unwanted messages, 182 marking Inbox tracks, 182 overview, 52, 179–180 reading messages, 181–182 sending tracks, 180–181 starring Inbox tracks, 182 instant music, 10 Library managing music in, 128–129 overview, 128 in Spotify window, 53 listening on devices, 11 local files, 53 Lyrics feature, 196
345
346
Spotify For Dummies features (continued) Members, 196 Merchandise, 196 for mobile devices Now Playing button, 239–240 overview, 238 playlists, 239 Search, 238 settings, 240–241 What’s New, 238 overview, 9–10, 48–49 People list, 55–56 Play Queue controlled by Spotify, 76–77 History tab, 77–78 manually adding tracks to Queue, 77 overview, 51–52, 75–76 playing local files, 11–12 Playlist Generator, 196 Playlists, 196 Radio, 51, 90–93 search bar, 49–50 sharing music, 12 Spotify Social adding extra profiles, 156 connection troubleshooting, 157–158 editing profile privacy, 159–161 Facebook, 154–155, 161–165 overview, 26, 151–153 sharing profile, 158 viewing profile page, 155–156 third-party resources, 12 What’s New, 51, 238, 255–256 Feed section, 51, 153 Fetching More Results option, 132 file formats AAC, 32, 118, 120 FLAC, 118 lossless, 118 .m4a extension, 32, 118 .m4p extension, 118 .m4r extension, 118 .m4v extension, 118 Mobile Terms of Use, 21 .mov, 118 MP3, 32, 118, 140 MP4, 32, 118
OGG, 32, 118 Ogg Vorbis, 14, 33, 118 .wav, 32 WMA, 32, 119 files, local importing Gracenote music database, 122–124 overview, 117–119 tagging tracks, 120–122 Windows Media Player files, 119–120 overview, 63 playing, 11–12 in Spotify window, 53, 63 Terms of Use, 23 file-sharing technology, 24 Filter toolbar, 131 filtering music overview, 128 search results, 132–133 Spotify Library, 132 playlists, 177, 268–269 searches, 83 finding audio, 333–334. See also searching Firefox tool, 327 firewalls Mac computers, 312 overview, 41 troubleshooting in syncing process, 304 Windows computers, 311 five-play limit, 115 FLAC file format, 118 folders creating, 108 reordering, 109–110 For Me view, 184 forgetting usernames/passwords, 310–311 formats, file AAC, 32, 118, 120 FLAC, 118 lossless, 118 .m4a extension, 32, 118 .m4p extension, 118 .m4r extension, 118 .m4v extension, 118 Mobile Terms of Use, 21 .mov, 118
Index MP3, 32, 118, 140 MP4, 32, 118 OGG, 32, 118 Ogg Vorbis, 14, 33, 118 .wav, 32 WMA, 32, 119 forums Get Satisfaction, 205–206 Last.fm, 98 Wine, 41 Forward button, 88 Foursquare application, 193 FoxyTunes tool, 324–325 Free account, 20, 48, 115, 230–231 free disk space, 30 free trials, 232–233 freshspotify tool, 326 Friend Finder feature, 98 friends connecting to, 154–155 making at Spotify, 331–332 From field, Spotify Inbox, 179
•G• gapless playback, 60 genres, 78–79 geographical location detection, 56 Get Missing button, 145 Get Satisfaction forums, 205–206 gift, giving Spotify as, 226–230 Gigero website, 189–190, 194 Google website Google+, 60 Maps, 189 Voice Search, 252 Gracenote music database, 120, 122–124 Greasemonkey app, 324 Growl for Mac tool, 325–326
•H• handsets downloading app to phones, 243 manually entering, 244 overview, 241–243 hardware acceleration, enabling, 63–64
hiding People bar, 156 high-quality streaming, 64 History tab, 77–78 host proxy name, 67 Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), 158
•I• icons, 117, 125–126 images, adding to queries, 206–207 importing local files Gracenote music database, 122–124 overview, 117–119 tagging tracks, 120–122 Windows Media Player files, 119–120 local music library, 23 playlists from iTunes, 129 Inbox feature blocking unwanted messages, 182 marking Inbox tracks, 182 overview, 52, 179–180 reading messages, 181–182 sending tracks, 180–181 starring Inbox tracks, 182 information, limiting access to, 163–164 internal exception error, 314 International Standard Recording Code (ISRC), 80 Internet Protocol (IP), 34 Internet Service Provider (ISP), 29 invitations free trials, 232–233 overview, 230 Spotify Free, 230–231 iOS operating system, 249, 260 iPads, downloading Spotify for, 243 iPhones downloading Spotify for, 243 music library, organizing, 265–266 performing actions on, 263 playlists creating, 267–268 editing, 267–268 sharing, 260–261 syncing offline, from mobile devices, 300–301
347
348
Spotify For Dummies iPhones (continued) in Spotify window left sidebar, 52 tracks on, sharing, 260–261 troubleshooting storage limits, 305 iPods downloading Spotify for, 243 iTunes, 284–286 overview, 281 syncing to, 52, 281–284 viewing free space, 284 ISP (Internet Service Provider), 29 ISRC (International Standard Recording Code), 80 iTunes getting signed with Spotify through, 329 Media Library, 124 playlists, 129–130 reverting to, 284–286 Store, 244, 245–246 Ivy converter, 129
•J• jobs at Spotify, 330–331
•K• Kazaa software, 16 Kbps (kilobits per second), 19, 32 keyboard shortcuts. See shortcuts kilobits, 32 Klout website, 230
•L• La Roux, absence from Spotify, 74 Language section, 62 Last.fm service deleting tracks from Library, 99–100 finding new music, 97–98 overview, 62, 93–94 privacy, adjusting, 98–99 Recommendations page, 96–97 signing up for, 94–96 Last.ify website, 187–188
latency, 28 Latest News section, 238 Led Zeppelin, absence from Spotify, 73 Left sidebar, 48 Library feature deleting tracks from, 99–100 filtering, 132 managing music in, 128–129 organizing playlists on Android devices, 266–267 creating playlists, 267–268 editing playlists, 267–268 filtering within playlists, 268–269 on iPhone, 265–266 overview, 265 overview, 14, 53, 128 limitations Spotify Free account, 20 Spotify Open account, 19 links, sharing music using albums, linking to, 172–173 artist pages, linking to, 172–173 Facebook, 172 knowing which links to use, 174–176 Microsoft Messenger, 170–171 overview, 14, 168–169 profile pages, linking to, 174 search results, linking to, 173–174 Share button, 169–172 specific parts of songs, linking to, 174 tracks, linking to, 172–173 Twitter, 170 Linux computers distributions, 40 downloading Spotify for, 40–41 ListDJ plug-in, 186, 323 listening data, 18–19 on devices iPods, 281–286 Logitech Squeezebox Touch music player, 286–287 mobile devices, using as remotes, 291–292 Onkyo players, 287–288
Index overview, 279–281 Sonos music system, 289–290 wireless streaming without Premium account, 290–291 limits to, 316 to Spotify Radio, 90–93 to worldwide music, 335 ListeningNow application, 323 local files importing Gracenote music database, 122–124 overview, 117–119 tagging tracks, 120–122 Windows Media Player files, 119–120 overview, 23 playing, 11–12 in Spotify window, 53, 63 Terms of Use, 23 logging in and out Spotify, 41–42 Spotify Mobile app overview, 240 restrictions, 248 Logitech Squeezebox Touch music player, 286–287 lossless file formats, 118 Lyrics feature, 196 Lyrify application, 323
•M• .m4a file extension, 32, 118 .m4p file extension, 118 .m4r file extension, 118 .m4v file extension, 118 Mac computers default audio files search location, 63 default store folder, 65 downloading Spotify for, 39–40 Growl tool, 325–326 security software, 32 shortcuts, creating in, 137 Main pane, 48 Make Collaborative option, 266 Mango system, 246
manually copying iTunes tracks, 129 manually entering handsets, 244 manually syncing music on devices, 283–284 market analysis, 26 marking favorites, 54 Inbox tracks, 182 mashing up features, 185 MasterCard, 222 Media Player files, Windows, 119–120 Members feature, 196 Menu bar, 48 Merchandise feature, 196 merging music, 14 Merlin website, 15, 72 messages blocking, 182 reading, 181–182 Messenger program, 170–172 metadata, 120 Metallica, absence from Spotify, 73 Microsoft Messenger program, 170–172 Microsoft Security Essentials, 31 mini controls in Windows 7, 58 minus symbol, 81 mobile devices. See also Android devices; iPods; Spotify Mobile listening to music on, 11 Logitech Squeezebox Touch, 286–287 offline listening on, 220 as remotes, 291–292 syncing offline playlists from, 298–302 .mov file extension, 118 moving playlists, 110 MP3 file format, 32, 118, 140 MP4 file format, 32, 118 MSearch application, 277 multi-room listening, 221 music. See also playlists; sharing music; tracks availability of missing artists and albums, 72–74 overview, 71–72
349
350
Spotify For Dummies music (continued) blogs overview, 201–202 soundofus website, 202 SpotiDJ website, 203–204 Spotify Classical website, 202 Spotinews website, 202–203 discovering artist biographies, 86–87 Artist Radio, 87–89 Last.fm service, 93–100 listening to Spotify Radio, 90–93 overview, 85 reading artist profiles, 85–86 What’s New page, 89–90 finding, 42–44 instantly playing, 10 keeping in cache, 28 Library feature deleting tracks from, 99–100 filtering, 132 managing music in, 128–129 organizing playlists, 265–269 overview, 14, 53, 128 manually syncing on devices, 283–284 merging, 14 new, discovering, 25 overview, 71, 167–168 ownership of, 17–18 Play Queue, 75–78 searching for AND search term, 81 auto-correct feature, 83 filtering, 83 genres, 78–79 multiple search strings, 82–83 NOT search term, 81 OR search term, 81 overview, 78 special searches, 79–80 wild card searches, 83 top lists, 182–184 MySpace website, 13
•N• Napster website, 15 NAS (network attached storage), 287 navigating Spotify window, 47–48 Neighbors tag, 98 New Releases section, 238 new tracks alert, 181 new tracks parameter, 80 newsletters, 45 Next Track option, 58, 88 NME magazine, 92 non-Premium accounts, 237–238 NOT search term, 81 Now Playing button, 239–240
•O• offline listening on cell phones, 220 on computers, 219–220 in Spotify Premium account, 219 Offline mode on computers, 294–297 forcing into, 302–303 troubleshooting, 311–312 offline syncing, 11 OGG file format, 32, 118 Ogg Vorbis file format, 14, 33, 118 on-demand lyrics, 322 Onkyo players, 287–288 Open accounts advertisements, 217 as music discovery tool, 223 overview, 19–20, 215 roaming restrictions, 217 time restrictions, 216–217 OR search term, 81 ordering of search results, default, 133 organizing music library on Android devices, 266–267 creating playlists, 267–268 editing playlists, 267–268
Index filtering within playlists, 268–269 on iPhone, 265–266 overview, 265 Overhere website, 191–192 Overview page, 43 Overview tab, artist page, 85
•P• P2P (peer-to-peer), 24, 27, 28 paid-for services. See also Spotify Premium; Spotify Unlimited comparing, 221–222 contacting customer service, 234 free trials, 232–233 giving Spotify as gift, 226–230 overview, 213–215 payment options, 222–226 Spotify Free, 230–231 Pansentient League website, 202 parent folder, 108 passwords forgetting, 310–311 Proxy Settings section, 67 resetting, 310 saving, 65 pausing tracks, 57–58, 315–316 paying artists, 25 payment options overview, 16, 222 payment methods, 222–224 Premium account, creating, 225–226 purchasing tracks, 141–142 troubleshooting, 314–315 Unlimited account, creating, 225–226 upgrading accounts, 224–225 PayPal accounts, 141, 222, 315 PC computers. See Windows computers peer-to-peer (P2P), 24, 27, 28 People bar, 156 People list overview, 55–56 in Spotify window, 48 personal data, use of discovering new music, 25 keeping services, 25
market analysis, 26 overview, 24–25 paying artists, 25 Spotify Social feature, 26 targeted advertising, 26 Terms of Use, 24 personal playlists, 104–106 personal use only restriction, 22 phones. See also mobile devices; Spotify Mobile connecting to Wi-Fi, 271 downloading Spotify Mobile to, 243 Pink Floyd, absence from Spotify, 73 piracy, 16–17 Pirate Bay website, 16 Pitchify website, 188–189 Play Queue feature controlled by Spotify, 76–77 History tab, 77–78 manually adding tracks to queue, 77 overview, 51–52, 75–76 playback area, 48 playback functions, 259 playing local files, 11–12 tracks, 57–58, 253–255 Playlist Generator feature, 196 Playlistify Anything bookmarklet tool, 327–328 Playlistify website, 20, 194 playlists albums, making into, 106–107 on Android devices, 268 authors, 115 collaborative, 178–179 converters for, 322 creating, 267–268 deleting, 113 downgrading accounts, 313 editing, 267–268 filtering within, 268–269 folders creating, 108 reordering, 109–110 viewing, 108–109
351
352
Spotify For Dummies playlists (continued) on iPhone, 267–268 iTunes, 129–130 making available offline, 272 on mobile devices, 252–253 moving, 110 overview, 10–11, 55, 101–103 personal, 104–106 published, 153 rearranging tracks, 110 renaming, 111–112 reordering, 110 as resources, 168 sharing on Android devices, 262 on iPhones, 260–261 overview, 260 shuffling, 255 sorting, 113–115 Spotify Mobile overview, 239 viewing, 247 stored in cloud, 247 submitting to SMP, 197–198 subscribing to, 176–178 syncing from mobile devices overview, 298–300 using Android device, 301–302 using iPhone, 300–301 tracks, deleting, 113 Winamp, 194 Playlists feature, 196 Play/Pause button, 58 Please Send Me Spotify News by E-Mail option, 36 Please Send Me Spotify News by SMS option, 36 plus symbol, 81 popularity bar, 182 Popularity sort field, 131 port number, 67 Posterous website, 336 posting from Spotify to Facebook default, 162 disabling, 162–163 enabling, 161–162
preferences cache, 65–66 Language section, 62 Last.fm service, 62 local files, 63 overview, 61–62 proxy servers, 66–67 purchases, 65 sound hardware acceleration, 63–64 overview, 63 setting sound level, 64 streaming in high-quality format, 64 Premium accounts high bitrates, 220–221 for mobile devices, 236–237 multi-room listening, 221 offline listening on cell phones, 220 on computers, 219–220 offline mode, using on computers, 294–297 overview, 20–21, 218–219, 293 playing tracks without web connection, 294 Spotify Mobile forcing into offline mode, 302–303 overview, 297 syncing offline playlists from computers with Wi-Fi, 297–298 syncing offline playlists from mobile devices, 298–302 streaming music on phones, 219 syncing issues freeing up space for Android phones, 304–305 iPhone storage limits, 305 missing tracks, 305–306 overview, 303 reaching mobile device limits, 306 syncing suddenly stops, 305 Wi-Fi not working, 303–304 upgrading to, 214 wireless streaming without, 290–291 Previous Track button, 58 pricing restriction, 23
Index privacy. See also personal data, use of of Last.fm service, 98–99 overview, 24–25 profile, 153 Privacy tab, 99 privileges with purchased tracks, 147–148 Profile page, 99, 155, 174 profiles Facebook, 153 Spotify Social adding, 156 linking to, 174 sharing, 158 viewing page, 155–156 promotional offers free trials, 232–233 overview, 230 Spotify Free, 230–231 proxy servers, 66–67 published playlists, 153 purchases, 65
•Q• queries, adding images to, 206–207 Queue list controlled by Spotify, 76–77 History tab, 77–78 manually adding tracks to Queue, 77 overview, 75–76 quitting Spotify, 127
•R• Radio feature, 51, 90–93 radio shows, 334 Radiofy website, 186 Radiohead, absence from Spotify, 74 Random mode, 77 randomizing tracks, 59 reading Inbox messages, 181–182 real names, in profile, 153 rearranging folders, 109 tracks, 110 receiving SMS, 244
recent searches, 50 recommendation tools, 322 Recommendations page, 96–97 record label parameter, 79 Re-Downloads column, 147 registering in Last.fm, 94–95 on SMP, 197 in Spotify, 35–37 Related Artists tab, artist page, 86 Remember Me option, 41 Remember My Spotify Password option, 65, 142 remote controls, 291–292, 322 removing tracks in Android version of Spotify Mobile, 264 in Last.fm library, 100 renaming playlists, 111–112 reordering folders, 109–110 playlists, 110 Repeat One Song option, 60 Repeat option, 59, 259 repeating tracks, 59–60 resetting passwords, 310 residence restriction, 22 resources computational, 23–24 overview, 168 third-party, 12 ReSpot application, 292 restrictions, Spotify Open roaming, 217 time, 216–217 ripping CDs, 119 roaming restrictions, Spotify Open, 217 Rovi website, 86
•S• saving passwords, 65 scanning local files, 42 Scrobble to Last.fm option, 62 Scrobbler tool, 96 scrobbling, 62, 78, 93, 240
353
354
Spotify For Dummies searching auto-correct feature, 83 filtering results, 132–133 linking to results, 173–174 for music AND search term, 81 filtering, 83 genres, 78–79 multiple search strings, 82–83 NOT search term, 81 OR search term, 81 overview, 78, 81 special searches, 79–80 wild card searches, 83 as resources, 168 results screen, 42 search bar, 49–50, 156 Search feature, 238 for tracks, 251–252 security software Mac computers, 32 overview, 31 PC computers, 31 sending multiple tracks, 181 track URL using e-mail, 261 tracks to Spotify People, 261–262 services, developing, 336–337. See also paid-for services Set the Same Sound Level for All Tracks option, 64 settings access to Facebook account, 164 audio, 40 audio files location, 63 cache location, 66 cache size, 65 country code in Spotify URL address, 22 firewalls on Mac computers, 32 MP3 format for ripping, 120 offline playlists, 294 payment method, 142 real-time scrobbling, 95 Remember My Spotify Password option, 142 scrobbling, 77 Spotify Mobile, 240–241
star albums, 135 star tracks, 135 store folders, 65 stream quality, 277 streaming, 277 syncing, 277 volume, 256 7Digital store, 55, 329 Share button Facebook, 172 Microsoft Messenger, 170–172 overview, 60–61, 169 Twitter, 170 Share Spotify page, 231 ShareMyPlaylists.com (SMP) website app downloads, 198–200 features, 196–197 overview, 194–195 registering on, 197 submitting playlists to, 197–198 sharing music using links albums, linking to, 172–173 artist pages, linking to, 172–173 Facebook, 172 knowing which links to use, 174–176 Microsoft Messenger, 170–171 overview, 14, 168–169 profile pages, linking to, 174 search results, linking to, 173–174 Share button, 169–172 specific parts of songs, linking to, 174 tracks, linking to, 172–173 Twitter, 170 overview, 12 playlists, 266 with Spotify People, 264 tracks on Android devices, 262, 264 on iPhones, 260–261 overview, 260 parts of, 174 in Spotify Mobile app, 259 sharing profiles, 158, 174 sharing search results, 173 Shazam application, 89 Shiny Shiny blog, 223
Index shortcuts to access music, creating, 135–138 Ctrl+A, 111 Ctrl+F, 83, 114, 177, 180 Ctrl+G, 105, 133 Ctrl+Q, 127 Ctrl+right arrow, 88 Ctrl+V, 172 Ctrl+Z, 113 F2 key, 111 in Mac, creating, 137 overview, 126–128 in Windows 7, creating, 136 shorteners, URL, 322 shouts, 98 Shuffle option, 59, 259 shuffling playlists, 255 signing up. See also paid-for services for Last.fm service, 94–96 for Spotify, 34–37 Similar Artists tab, 97 skipping tracks, 57–58 smartphones. See mobile devices; Spotify Mobile SMP (ShareMyPlaylists.com) website app downloads, 198–200 features, 196–197 overview, 195 registering on, 197 submitting playlists to, 197–198 software security Mac computers, 32 overview, 31 PC computers, 31 updating, 44–46 songs. See also music; tracks downloaded, burning CDs from, 332–333 linking to specific parts of, 174 Sonos music system, 289–290 Sophos website, 32 sorting playlists, 113–115 sound hardware acceleration, 63–64 overview, 63 quality of, 14 setting level of, 64 streaming in high-quality format, 64 troubleshooting sound cards, 317
soundofus website, 202 speakers, 33. See also listening, on devices special searches, 79–80 Spot My Video website, 190 Spotibot feature, 200–201 SpotiDJ website, 203–204, 262 Spotify developing services or apps for, 336–337 finding jobs at, 330–331 overview, 1–6, 9 as platform app, 157 website, consulting, 208–209 Spotify Chrome Extension, 325 Spotify Classical website, 202 The Spotify Experience Is Better if We Know a Little about You page, 36 Spotify Free, 20, 48, 115, 230–231 Spotify Mobile accessories, using, 248 apps for, 277–278 connecting to, 250–251 currently playing tracks, 257–258 downloading, 245–246 forcing into Offline mode, 302–303 handsets, compatible, 241–244 login restrictions, 248 music library, organizing, 265–269 non-Premium accounts, 237–238 Now Playing button, 239–240 overview, 235, 247, 249–250, 297 performing key actions with, 263–265 playing back tracks, 253–255 playlists overview, 239 sharing, 260–262 shuffling, 255 using, 252–253 viewing, 247 Premium subscribers, 236–237 Search feature, 238, 251–252 Settings page, 240–241 streaming settings, 277 syncing local tracks over Wi-Fi, 269–270 offline playlists from computers with Wi-Fi, 297–298 offline playlists from mobile devices, 298–302 settings for, 277
355
356
Spotify For Dummies Spotify Mobile (continued) track information, finding, 258–260 tracks, sharing, 260–262 troubleshooting problems, 274–276 volume, controlling, 256–257 What’s New feature, 238, 255–256 Wi-Fi, 270–274 Spotify Open advertisements, 217 as music discovery tool, 223 overview, 19–20, 215 roaming restrictions, 217 time restrictions, 216–217 Spotify Premium high bitrates, 220–221 for mobile devices, 236–237 multi-room listening, 221 offline listening on cell phones, 220 on computers, 219–220 Offline mode, using on computers, 294–297 overview, 20–21, 218–219, 293 playing tracks without web connection, 294 Spotify Mobile forcing into Offline mode, 302–303 overview, 297 syncing offline playlists from computers with Wi-Fi, 297–298 syncing offline playlists from mobile devices, 298–302 streaming music on phones, 219 syncing issues freeing up space for Android phones, 304–305 iPhone storage limits, 305 missing tracks, 305–306 overview, 303 reaching mobile device limits, 306 syncing suddenly stops, 305 Wi-Fi not working, 303–304 upgrading to, 214 wireless streaming without, 290–291 Spotify Radio, 51, 90–93 Spotify Search for Firefox, 327
Spotify Social adding extra profiles, 156 connection troubleshooting, 157–158 Facebook connecting to friends, 154–155 disabling posts, 162–163 disconnecting from, 164–165 enabling posts, 161–162 limiting access to information, 163–164 overview, 161 Inbox feature, 52, 179–182 overview, 26, 151–153 profile privacy, editing, 159–161 sharing profile, 158 viewing profile pages, 155–156 Spotify Unlimited, 20, 214, 218 Spotify.dmg file, 39 SpotifyInstaller.exe file, 37 Spotinews website, 202–203 Spotisquare website, 193 Spotlib for Spotify application, 278 Spotrecord website, 188 Starred feature, 55 starred tracks, 134–135 starred track symbol, 263 starring Inbox tracks, 182 Start Spotify when the Installation Is Complete option, 38 store folder, default, 65 stream quality high-quality format, 64 on phones, 219 settings, 277 in Spotify Mobile app, 240 over Wi-Fi, 250 streams, 25 subfolders, 108 subscribing to playlists. See also paid-for services overview, 176–177 seeing people subscribed to playlists, 177–178 support, contacting, 208 switching to Playlist view, 105 from Premium to Unlimited account, 226
Index syncing in Android version of Spotify Mobile, 272 in iPhone version of Spotify Mobile, 272 to iPods, 281–284 offline playlists from computers with Wi-Fi, 297–298 from mobile devices, 298–302 process of, 271–273 quality of, 240 settings, 277 tracks to mobile device, 297 overview, 272–274 troubleshooting freeing up space for Android phones, 304–305 iPhone storage limits, 305 missing tracks, 305–306 overview, 303 reaching mobile device limits, 306 syncing suddenly stops, 305 Wi-Fi not working, 303–304
•T• tagging tracks, 120–122 targeted advertising, 26 technologies AirPlay, 260 file-sharing, 24 used by Spotify, 13–14 Terms of Use advertising, 23–24 agreements, 22–23 computational resources, use of, 23–24 differences by country, 21–22 local files, 23 overview, 21 personal data, use of, 24 Spotify Mobile, 247 third-party resources, 12 threads, 205 .3g2 file extension, 118 .3gp file extension, 118 Time field, Spotify Inbox, 179 time restrictions, Spotify Open, 216–217
Time sort field, 131 timestamps, 168 toggle Offline mode, 240 tokens of invitation, 230 tools Better Spotify Links, 324 Cleanify website, 323–324 filter, 131 FoxyTunes, 324–325 freshspotify, 326 Growl for Mac, 325–326 ListDJ plug-in, 323 overview, 321–323 Playlistify Anything bookmarklet, 327–328 Scrobbler, 96 Spotify Chrome Extension, 325 Spotify Search for Firefox, 327 Wine, 29, 40 Top Lists tab, 51, 182–184 top tracks and artists, in profiles, 153 Top Tracks section, 183, 238 Topsify website, 190–191 Track field, Spotify Inbox, 179 Track sort field, 131 tracks availability of, 115 bundles of, 140–141 currently playing, 257–258 deleting from Library, 99–100 from playlists, 113 downloading bundles, buying, 140–141 bundles, using before expiration, 141 buying from Spotify, 142–145 missing tracks, buying, 145–147 overview, 139–140 payment methods, 141–142 privileges with purchased tracks, 147–148 explicit warning labels on, 23 finding, 312–313 information on, finding, 258–260 linking to, 172–173 manually adding to Queue, 77 marking, 182 missing, troubleshooting, 305–306
357
358
Spotify For Dummies tracks (continued) organizing album cover art, viewing, 133–134 filtering music, 128–133 Library feature, 128–129 managing playlists, 129–130 overview, 128, 130–131 shortcuts to access music, creating, 135–138 starred tracks, 134–135 overview, 57 pausing, 57–58 playing on mobile devices, 253–255 overview, 57–58 without web connection, 294 randomizing, 59 rearranging in playlists, 110 repeating, 59–60 as resources, 168 searching for, 251–252 sending, 180–181 sharing on Android devices, 262 on iPhones, 260–261 overview, 260 Share buttons, 60–61 skipping, 57–58 starring, 182 syncing, 272–274 troubleshooting, 316 volume, 59 troubleshooting connection overview, 157 Spotify appearing in Facebook, 157–158 consulting official website, 208–209 error messages and codes, 313–314 firewalls Mac computers, 312 overview, 41 in syncing process, 304 Windows computers, 311 forgetting usernames or passwords, 310–311 Get Satisfaction forums, 205–206
giving help, 208 images, adding to queries, 206–207 internal exception error, 314 iPhone Spotify Mobile app, 240 Offline-mode problems, 311–312 overview, 274 paused tracks, 315–316 payment options, 314–315 sound cards, 317 support, contacting, 208 syncing freeing up space for Android phones, 304–305 iPhone storage limits, 305 missing tracks, 305–306 overview, 303 reaching mobile device limits, 306 syncing suddenly stops, 305 Wi-Fi not working, 303–304 track, 316 updating Mobile apps, 274–276 truShuffle website, 193 Tubufy website, 190 Twitter program, 170
•U• unavailable tracks, 316 Uniform Resource Indicator (URI), 169 Uniform Resource Locator (URL), 14, 168, 169 Universal Product Code (UPC), 80 Unlimited accounts, 20, 214, 218 unlimited listening time, 218 Unlimited Terms of Use, 21 unprotected WMA tracks, 120 unsigned bands, 329–330 UPC (Universal Product Code), 80 updating metadata information overview, 120–121 using Gracenote, 123–124 Mobile apps, 274–276 software, 44–46 upgrading accounts, 224–225 URI (Uniform Resource Indicator), 169
Index URI playlist link, 190 URL (Uniform Resource Locator), 14, 168, 169 URL shorteners, 322 User sort field, 131 usernames forgetting, 310–311 Proxy Settings section, 67
•V• View Account option, 56 View as Album List option, 105 View Your Eligible iTunes Plus Upgrade Items link, 119 viewing account details, 56 album cover art, 133–134 folders, 108–109 playlists offline, 115 Spotify Mobile, 247 profile page, 155–156 Viral Music List website, 193–194 virtual private network (VPN), 34 Visa card, 222 volume controlling, 59, 256–257 normalization, 64 settings, 59 VPN (virtual private network), 34
•W• .wav file format, 32 web browser add-ons, 322 web services, 322 websites Amazon discovering music, 25 getting signed with Spotify through, 329 music recommendations, 96 biblify, 187 bitly, 175 Blogger, 336
BRITify, 186–187 CD Baby, 330 Cleanify, 175, 323–324 clinc, 195 Ditto Music, 330 Equalify, 192 Facebook connecting to friends, 154–155 connecting with, 154 disabling posts, 162–163 disconnecting from, 164–165 enabling posts, 161–162 limiting access to information, 163–164 overview, 161 sharing music through, 172 Spotify appearing in, 157–158 Gigero, 189–190, 194 Google Google+, 60 Maps, 189 Voice Search, 252 Klout, 230 Last.ify, 187–188 Merlin, 15, 72 MySpace, 13 Napster, 15 official Spotify, 208–209 overhere, 191–192 Pansentient League, 202 Pirate Bay, 16 Pitchify, 188–189 Playlistify, 20, 194 Posterous, 336 Radiofy, 186 Rovi, 86 ShareMyPlaylists.com app downloads, 198–200 features, 196–197 overview, 195 registering on, 197 submitting playlists to, 197–198 Sophos, 32 soundofus, 202 Spot My Video, 190 SpotiDJ, 203–204, 262 Spotify, 208–209
359
360
Spotify For Dummies websites (continued) Spotify Classical, 202 Spotinews, 202–203 Spotisquare, 193 Spotrecord, 188 Topsify, 190–191 truShuffle, 193 Tubufy, 190 Viral Music List, 193–194 Wikipedia, 178 Wordpress, 336 YouTube, 13, 194 What’s New feature, 51, 238, 255–256 widgets, 264 Wi-Fi connecting phones to, 271 overview, 270–271 playlists, making available offline, 272 syncing local tracks through, 269–270 offline playlists from computers with, 297–298 tracks, 272–274 troubleshooting, 303–304 Wikipedia website, 178 wild-card searches, 83 Winamp playlists, 194 window (Spotify) account details, viewing, 56 features Devices, 52–53 Downloads, 53–54 Inbox, 52 Library, 53 Local Files, 53 overview, 48–49 People list, 55–56 Play Queue, 51–52 playlists, 55 Radio, 51 search bar, 49–50 Starred, 55 What’s New, 51 navigating, 47–48
overview, 47 preferences cache, 65–66 Language section, 62 Last.fm service, 62 local files, 63 overview, 61–62 proxy servers, 66–67 purchases, 65 sound, 63–65 tracks overview, 57 pausing, 57–58 playing, 57–58 randomizing, 59 repeating, 59–60 Share buttons, 60–61 skipping, 57–58 volume, 59 Windows computers default audio files search locations, 63 default store folder, 65 downloading Spotify for, 37–39 security software, 31 shortcuts, creating in, 136 Windows Media Audio (WMA) file format, 32, 119 Windows Media Player files, 119–120 Wine forum, 41 Wine tool, 29, 40 wireless restrictions in syncing process, 304 wireless streaming without Premium accounts, 290–291 WMA (Windows Media Audio) file format, 32, 119 Wordpress website, 336
•Y• year search parameter, 79 Yes, Share My Information with Third Parties option, 36 YouTube website, 13, 194
Apple & Macs
Computer Hardware
Digital Photography
Hobbies/General
iPad For Dummies 978-0-470-58027-1
BlackBerry For Dummies, 4th Edition 978-0-470-60700-8
Digital SLR Cameras & Photography For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-46606-3
Chess For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-8404-6
Computers For Seniors For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-53483-0
Photoshop Elements 8 For Dummies 978-0-470-52967-6
PCs For Dummies, Windows 7 Edition 978-0-470-46542-4
Gardening
Laptops For Dummies, 4th Edition 978-0-470-57829-2
Organic Gardening For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-43067-5
iPhone For Dummies, 4th Edition 978-0-470-87870-5 MacBook For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-76918-8 Mac OS X Snow Leopard For Dummies 978-0-470-43543-4 Business Bookkeeping For Dummies 978-0-7645-9848-7 Job Interviews For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-17748-8 Resumes For Dummies, 5th Edition 978-0-470-08037-5 Starting an Online Business For Dummies, 6th Edition 978-0-470-60210-2 Stock Investing For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-40114-9 Successful Time Management For Dummies 978-0-470-29034-7
Gardening Basics For Dummies 978-0-470-03749-2
Cooking & Entertaining Cooking Basics For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-7645-7206-7
Green/Sustainable Raising Chickens For Dummies 978-0-470-46544-8
Drawing Cartoons & Comics For Dummies 978-0-470-42683-8 Knitting For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-28747-7 Organizing For Dummies 978-0-7645-5300-4 Su Doku For Dummies 978-0-470-01892-7 Home Improvement Home Maintenance For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-43063-7
Wine For Dummies, 4th Edition 978-0-470-04579-4
Green Cleaning For Dummies 978-0-470-39106-8
Diet & Nutrition
Health
Dieting For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-4149-0
Diabetes For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-27086-8
Nutrition For Dummies, 4th Edition 978-0-471-79868-2
Food Allergies For Dummies 978-0-470-09584-3
Living the Country Lifestyle All-in-One For Dummies 978-0-470-43061-3
Weight Training For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-471-76845-6
Living Gluten-Free For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-58589-4
Solar Power Your Home For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-59678-4
Home Theater For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-41189-6
Available wherever books are sold. For more information or to order direct: U.S. customers visit www.dummies.com or call 1-877-762-2974. U.K. customers visit www.wileyeurope.com or call (0) 1243 843291. Canadian customers visit www.wiley.ca or call 1-800-567-4797.
Internet
Math & Science
Parenting & Education
Sports
Blogging For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-61996-4
Algebra I For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-55964-2
Parenting For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-5418-6
Baseball For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-7645-7537-2
eBay For Dummies, 6th Edition 978-0-470-49741-8
Biology For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-59875-7
Facebook For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-87804-0
Calculus For Dummies 978-0-7645-2498-1 Chemistry For Dummies 978-0-7645-5430-8
Web Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-37181-7
Microsoft Office Excel 2010 For Dummies 978-0-470-48953-6
WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-59274-8
Office 2010 All-in-One For Dummies 978-0-470-49748-7
Language & Foreign Language
Office 2010 For Dummies, Book + DVD Bundle 978-0-470-62698-6
French For Dummies 978-0-7645-5193-2
Word 2010 For Dummies 978-0-470-48772-3
Italian Phrases For Dummies 978-0-7645-7203-6
Music Guitar For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-9904-0
Spanish For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-87855-2
iPod & iTunes For Dummies, 8th Edition 978-0-470-87871-2
Spanish For Dummies, Audio Set 978-0-470-09585-0 Making Everything
™ Easier!
Piano Exercises For Dummies 978-0-470-38765-8 3rd Edition
Facebook Learn to:
• Create a Profile, navigate the site, and use privacy features • Find friends and post messages • Add applications and upload photos to your Facebook page • Build a fan page or get the word out about an event
Leah Pearlman Carolyn Abram
Making Everything
™ Easier!
Type 1 Diabetes For Dummies 978-0-470-17811-9 Pets Cats For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-5275-5 Dog Training For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-470-60029-0 Puppies For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-03717-1 Religion & Inspiration The Bible For Dummies 978-0-7645-5296-0 Catholicism For Dummies 978-0-7645-5391-2 Women in the Bible For Dummies 978-0-7645-8475-6 Self-Help & Relationship Anger Management For Dummies 978-0-470-03715-7 Overcoming Anxiety For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-57441-6 Making Everything
® Microsoft
Office 2010 BOOKS IN
• Common Office Tools • Word • Outlook® • PowerPoint® • Excel® • Access® • Publisher • Office 2010 — One Step Beyond
Peter Weverka Author of PowerPoint All-in-One For Dummies
Easier !
Golf For Dummies, 3rd Edition 978-0-471-76871-5 Web Development Web Design All-in-One For Dummies 978-0-470-41796-6 Web Sites Do-It-Yourself For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-470-56520-9 Windows 7 Windows 7 For Dummies 978-0-470-49743-2 Windows 7 For Dummies, Book + DVD Bundle 978-0-470-52398-8 Windows 7 All-in-One For Dummies 978-0-470-48763-1 ™
™
iPad
N E A L L- I N - O
81
Basketball For Dummies, 2nd Edition 978-0-7645-5248-9
Learn to: • Set up your iPad, use the multitouch interface, and get connected • Surf the Web, listen to music, watch videos, and download apps • Turn your iPad into a portable game console
IN FULL COLOR! Edward C. Baig Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus
™
ART IS TK TO BE INSERTED DURING
Windows 7 ®
Learn to: • Personalize your Windows 7 desktop with your own photos • Speed up Windows with built-in shortcuts • Customize Windows warnings to onl y give the notices you want • Move your files from your old PC to a Windows 7 computer
ROUTING Andy Rathbone
Author of all previous editions of Windows For Dummies
Available wherever books are sold. For more information or to order direct: U.S. customers visit www.dummies.com or call 1-877-762-2974. U.K. customers visit www.wileyeurope.com or call (0) 1243 843291. Canadian customers visit www.wiley.ca or call 1-800-567-4797.
Wherever you are in life, Dummies makes it easier.
From fashion to Facebook ®, wine to Windows®, and everything in between, Dummies makes it easier.
Visit us at Dummies.com
Get More and Do More at Dummies.com ® Start with FREE Cheat Sheets Cheat Sheets include • Checklists • Charts • Common Instructions • And Other Good Stuff!
To access the Cheat Sheet created specifically for this book, go to
www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/spotify
s p p A e l i Mob
Get Smart at Dummies.com Dummies.com makes your life easier with 1,000s of answers on everything from removing wallpaper to using the latest version of Windows. Check out our • Videos • Illustrated Articles • Step-by-Step Instructions Plus, each month you can win valuable prizes by entering our Dummies.com sweepstakes. * Want a weekly dose of Dummies? Sign up for Newsletters on • Digital Photography • Microsoft Windows & Office • Personal Finance & Investing • Health & Wellness • Computing, iPods & Cell Phones • eBay • Internet • Food, Home & Garden
Find out “HOW” at Dummies.com *Sweepstakes not currently available in all countries; visit Dummies.com for official rules.
There’s a Dummies App for This and That With more than 200 million books in print and over 1,600 unique titles, Dummies is a global leader in how-to information. Now you can get the same great Dummies information in an App. With topics such as Wine, Spanish, Digital Photography, Certification, and more, you’ll have instant access to the topics you need to know in a format you can trust. To get information on all our Dummies apps, visit the following: www.Dummies.com/go/mobile from your computer. www.Dummies.com/go/iphone/apps from your phone.
