I am an avid Spotify user. I have had my account since middle school and have expanded my profile to include thousands of songs and hundreds of artists in that time. While Spotify has faced criticism concerning its business model’s treatment of artists, as a user, the platform has many benefits and incredibly useful features. Here are a few of these features and how to use them to make your streaming experience better.
Spotify Premium
Spotify offers two different tiers for users to choose from: Free and Premium. The Free tier is good, but Premium—as implied by its name—is better. For $9.99 a month, Spotify Premium lets you listen to music with no ads, which makes all the difference for a student trying to study with minimal distractions. It also gives you unlimited skips per hour, as well as the ability to download songs and playlists so you can listen offline and the ability to play any song from any album rather than shuffling through them like you would with Spotify Free.
And for students, Spotify Premium is offered at a discounted rate with Hulu and Showtime bundled with it! The user experience is elevated significantly with a Premium account, so I highly recommend subscribing.
Blocking Artists
We all have artists that we hate. Sometimes they are people with fundamentally disagreeable views and bad track records, sometimes they are people who just make terrible music. Whatever your reason, Spotify gives you the option to block them so you never hear them on the platform.
There are a couple ways to do this:
On desktop, your only option to do this is through the Discover Weekly playlist. If someone you don’t want to listen to appears in your Discover Weekly playlist, hit the little minus (-) button in front of the time stamp and you will be given the option to either mute the song or mute the artist.
On mobile, it is much easier to mute artists. All you have to do is visit the artist’s page, click the three dots under their name, and hit “Don’t play this artist”. This function allows you to take complete control of your listening experience so you never have to listen to anyone unless you want to listen to them.
Curated Playlists
Spotify’s algorithm regularly creates multiple unique playlists for each user. There are playlists that are updated every day, including the Daily Mixes that curate music channels based on artists you listen to frequently. The Discover Weekly playlist is updated every Monday and compiles music from artists Spotify believes you would like, while on Fridays, the Release Radar compiles new releases you may be interested in so you never miss a drop. And of course, at the end of the year, Spotify Wrapped comes out. Along with it, a playlist of your top songs of the year so you can see what you vibed with most. But in the meantime, Spotify’s daily and weekly playlists are fantastic ways to discover new songs and artists that you may not have found on your own. Take advantage of Spotify’s algorithmic generations to expand your listening profile!
I hope this helps you get the most out of your Spotify account so you can enjoy it as much as I do!