Spotify is unique in the way it delivers ads, and the quality is generally good. They basically stand to ruin the presentation of their music content if the commercial or promotional interruptions are too abrupt or don’t sound good. We – and our partners – use cookies to deliver our services and to show you ads based on your interests. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy.
Music fans are plenty familiar with Spotify, the online streaming service that lets users listen to millions of songs on-demand for free or with a no-advertisement subscription.
However, with Spotify’s myriad settings and apps that extend its functionality, you might not be using it to its full potential. Here, TIME rounds up 8 tips that will help users see Spotify in a whole new light:
Apr 27, 2018 Spotify’s free tier isn’t really free; it’s ad-supported. Companies are paying Spotify to make you listen to ads every few tracks. Spotify makes less money per-play from ads than they do from Premium subscribers, so to encourage people to upgrade, the free tier is limited in certain ways.
Hide Your Guilty Pleasures From Friends
The ability to follow friends’ musical habits is one of Spotify’s best features. But maybe you don’t want everyone to know exactly how many times you listened to “All About That Bass” this summer.
On the desktop version, you can select “Private Session” from the main Spotify menu to stop broadcasting your musical selections for a certain period (the same setting is found on the “social” menu within settings on the mobile version). To permanently stop sharing your listening choices, go to the “Spotify” menu, then “Preferences,” and uncheck the boxes for “Share my activity and what I listen to with my followers on Spotify” and “Share my activity and what I listen to on Facebook.”
Improve Your Search Queries
Navigating Spotify’s massive catalogue can be a chore. Next time, try using qualifiers to narrow your search. They work much in the same way as Google search queries. You can specify searches based on artist, title, genre or year. So if you’re looking for just Jay-Z’s output in 1997, “Jay-Z year:1997” to pull up the desired results. Here’s a full list of the search qualifiers you can use on Spotify.
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Use Folders to Organize Your Music
One criticism of Spotify is that people’s music collections often devolve into a jumble of playlists and favorites songs. Consider using folders to provide more order for your playlists. On the desktop app, go to “File” and then “New Playlist Folder” to create a new folder. Then you can place any playlists you like within the new folder.
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Toggle High-Quality Streaming On or Off
Spotify Premium users have the option to enable “high-quality streaming” from the Preferences menu on the desktop, which plays songs at a bitrate of 320 kbps rather than the standard rate of 160 kbps — making everything sound better.
On mobile, songs automatically play at a lower bitrate of 96 kbps to conserve data. All users can bump that figure up to 160 kbps, and premium users can also use the 320 kbps setting. Just be careful, since a higher bitrate will eat into your mobile data plan faster.
Add Songs That Aren’t on Spotify And Listen to Them Offline
Spotify’s catalogue is hardly comprehensive, but users can easily add songs from outside sources to their libraries and listen to them within the Spotify interface. Simply go to Preferences and enable showing tracks from local sources. Those sources can include iTunes, the Downloads folder on your computer, or specific folders that you select.
Even better, if you have a playlist filled with non-Spotify songs and toggle on the “Available Offline” option at the top of the playlist, you can download the songs to your phone for offline listening.
See the Lyrics to Every Song
Trying to prep for your next karaoke session? Turn on the musiXmatch app (you can find it in the “App Finder” tab on the left-hand sidebar) and you can see the lyrics of most songs as they’re playing within Spotify. There are lots of other handy apps in the “App Finer” menu, including recommendation apps that offer features like curated music lists from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone.
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Add a Visualizer
How Bad Are Ads On Free Spotify Account
If you miss the cheesy visualizers from your days using Windows Media Player or Winamp, Spotify has you covered. In the search bar, just type in “spotify:app:visualizer” to bring up a range of different visual options that will play in time with your tunes.
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Link to a Specific Part of a Song
Want to send a friend “Free Bird,” but skip the pretenses and get right to the guitar solo? Spotify makes that pretty simple. If you’re sharing the URL of a song (a special kind of Spotify-specific link that only works within the Spotify app), add a “#” sound to the end of the character string and then the timestamp you want to zoom to. To get to the “Free Bird” solo at 4 minutes and 25 seconds into the song, for example, you’d write this: spotify:track:1xt1TX045OgURfw0MAcVNF#4:25.
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For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.Method 2: Block Ads on Spotify with AudFree Software
Instead of upgrading to premium plan on Spotify, another way is to download Spotify music and playlists as local files so that there is no way for Spotify advertisement. When it comes to downloading Spotify tracks to local files on computer, free users need to look for a professional third-party Spotify downloading tool.
Here, we can meet AudFree Spotify Playlist Downloader, which is not only a Spotify music downloader and converter but also a Spotify ad blocker. It is capable of downloading songs and tracks from Spotify for offline playback and converting them to MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, M4A and M4B while removing ads and preserving high-quality local audio files, even if you are using a free Spotify account.
AudFree Spotify Playlist Downloader
- Download Spotify songs and playlists for offline playback
- Convert Spotify music to MP3, AAC, FLAC, M4A, WAV, etc.
- Block ads on Spotify while removing DRM protection
- Work at 5X faster speed, edit music quality and parameters
Download Ad-free Spotify Music with AudFree
Step 1. Launch AudFree program on your computer with Spotify opened. You can drag and drop tracks from Spotify the main interface or copy and paste the URL of Spotify files to the search box of AudFree.
Step 2. To get high output audio quality, you’d better to open setting window by clicking Preference -> Convert option, in which you can customize bit rate as 320 kbps. Also, you can set output format as you need.
Step 3. Now, you just need to hit on the ‘Convert’ button, and AudFree software will start to download Spotify files to destination folder blocking the ads. After conversion, you can listen to Spotify songs on all devices without ads.
Note: If you are using AudFree Spotify Playlist Downloader for Windows to skip ads, you’d better to login the 30-day free trial premium account. And then it will download ad-free Spotify playlists to MP3 or other common audio files successfully.