6 tricks for getting the most out of Spotify

With more competition than the third space in a Sugababes line-up, music streaming services are going to great lengths to lure users in. According to Spotify, over 75 million active users are streaming from its shelves, making it one of the largest services around. Apple Music’s nabbed around 11 million users since its free trial began late June, but will undoubtedly catch up fast thanks to its usual aggressive marketing and elbowing of influential friends.

And sure, there are some other neat streamers to try out, such as Google Play Music and Deezer, but if you’re looking for a huge catalogue of tunes and simple, easy access, they’re the two you shouldn’t overlook.

Spotify, to the first-time user, can be a bewildering mess of UI. But once you’ve mastered it, you can easily advance to the next level with a few handy tricks up your sleeve.

1. Share snippets of songs

Want to link your friend to the exact moment the drums kick in on Phil Collins’s In The Air Tonight? (It’s a niche scenario, I will admit.) Just right-click on the song, select ‘copy Spotify URI’, then paste it into the URL bar. Then, add “#3:40”, or whatever timeframe you wish for the song to start playing from. To quote Phil: you’ve been waiting for this moment all your life.

2. Narrow your search

Looking for a specific genre, or period of a musician’s output? Using search restrictions, you can narrow the focus to just what you’re after. Try typing “year:1982-1986” into the search bar of the desktop client, or “genre:pop”. You can also use boolean syntax to eschew certain artists, such as “genre:punk NOT theclash”. Though why you’d want to exclude them is beyond me.

3. Use your phone as a remote

You wouldn’t believe how many buggy third-party solutions I tried before Spotify rolled the feature out for real. Now, if you’re playing your tunes from your laptop or tablet, Premium users can use their phones as a remote with a feature called Connect.

When music’s playing on your laptop, open Spotify on your phone and it’ll ask if you want to keep listening on your laptop. Say yes and you’ll be able to change tracks to your heart’s content, without ever getting up.

Indeed, you need never leave your bed again. Well, until your laptop needs charging…

4. Import your own offline music

From Neil Young to Prince — some major acts have pulled their wares from Spotify (or never graced it with their presence in the first place), but if you have the tracks as MP3s, you can import them into Spotify. However, they’ll only be available on the desktop version - not your phone.

To set it up, go to Edit > Preferences > Local files in Spotify desktop.

Take that, Taylor Swift.

5. Crossfade/gapless playback

You won’t want to enable this for every session, but for a house party or “DJ session” (groan) you can’t go past the crossfade or at the least, gapless playback. Navigate over to the settings, and toggle your preferred amount of track bleeding.

6. View your year in music… for last year

Were you using Spotify in 2014? Hit up this link for some mindblowing stats on your usage, along with worldwide usage. From the fact that I listen to around six hours’ Spotify on average every Tuesday, to the fact that the Rolling Stones were my most-listened-to band of Autumn, every stat will have you scratching your head and thinking “I really ought to get out more.”