Spotify For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Spotify makes it easy for you to organize and manage the playlists in your music library and avoid wasting time hunting for your favorite tracks. Here are some tips for keeping tabs on your playlists:

• Create playlist folders by selecting File→New Playlist Folder from the menu bar. Click and drag your playlists into these folders.

• In the left sidebar, click and drag folders and playlists into your chosen order.

• Categorize folders by giving them meaningful names, such as genre, artist, or year.

• Get an overview of all tracks in a folder by clicking a playlist folder to view them in the main pane.

• Find your favorite playlists quickly by dragging them to the top of your list, for easy viewing.

Spotify is fast, but you can make it run even faster by using keyboard shortcuts to perform certain functions. The most common tasks are outlined in this table. Hold down Ctrl while pressing the appropriate letter. (For Mac users, hold the Command button instead of Ctrl.)

When you’ve created a Spotify playlist you want to share with the world, here are some tips on how to get that playlist seen by the Spotify community:

• Right-click a playlist and select Copy HTTP Link from the pop-up menu that appears to get a link that you can share through e-mail, Word documents, websites, Twitter, Facebook — you name it. Type Ctrl+V (Command+V on a Mac) to paste the link.

• Join ShareMyPlaylists.com to submit your playlist.

• Connect your Spotify account to Facebook to enable Spotify Social and start sharing music.

• Right-click a playlist and select Publish to send it to your profile page.

Spotify automatically publishes your listening habits, including playlists, to your profile page and on Facebook. You can turn this function off by choosing File→Preferences (Spotify→Preferences on the Mac) and deselecting the Automatically Publish New Playlists check box in the options that appear.

Apart from typing text into Spotify’s Search text box, you can refine your Spotify search by using different parameters or syntax. These more advanced search techniques can help you hone in on just what you’re looking for.

Remember, you can add more text to a parameter search to narrow it (for instance, year:1960-1969 “Rolling Stones”). This table gives you the different search types you can use.

You can also use the common search syntaxes AND, NOT, and OR in Spotify’s search bar (and use quotes around phrases or names you want to include or exclude):

• AND: When you want both terms to be included (Radiohead AND live)

• NOT: When you want to include one term but not the other (Cher NOT Sonny)

• OR: When you want either term to be included in a search (Michael Jackson OR Jackson 5)

You can use Spotify to sync (or copy) a selection of local tracks from your computer to an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, or Android device. Just follow these steps:

1. Open Spotify on your computer and create a playlist that contains the local tracks you want to sync.

2. Make sure both your computer and your mobile device are hooked up to the same Wi-Fi connection.

3. On your mobile device, open Spotify.

   The device now appears on your computer below Devices in the Spotify window’s left sidebar.

4. On an iPhone, browse to the playlist that you want to sync and swipe the switch that appears at the top-right of the screen to Offline.

   On Android devices, tap Edit Offline Playlists, select the check boxes next to the playlists you want to sync, and tap Done.

Many great Spotify-related websites and tools can make music recommendations, convert iTunes playlists into Spotify ones, and much more. Here are a few useful third-party-resource destinations:

• BRITify: Listen to music played on BBC radio programs.

• Pansentient League: Discover useful and fun Spotify tips.

• Playlistify: Convert track listings into Spotify playlists.

• Spotibot: Get automated music recommendations and more.

• Spotify Classical: Your friendly guide to classical music on Spotify.

• Tubufy: Converts Spotify playlists to related YouTube videos.