Spotify is my one stop destination for music, playlists, and collaborating with my friends. But if you are someone who only uses Spotify to stream music or create playlists, you are missing out on some of its best features.
Use Spotify’s Own “TikTok”
TikTok’s rise to fame brought short-form vertical videos to the limelight, with other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube quickly jumping on the bandwagon with their renditions. Spotify, too, has its in-house TikTok-style feed that lets you preview songs, albums, playlists, audiobooks, and more.
You can use Spotify’s scrollable feed from the Spotify Home page, with specific feeds for music, podcasts, and audiobooks. After previewing, you can directly save content to your library and download it for offline listening or share it with friends. You can also find song previews under certain album covers and playlists.
Sometimes, music previews also come with a button to find tickets to the artist’s upcoming live event next to you.
Take Advantage of Spotify Podcasts
My longest road trips always require a nice, long history podcast that keeps my attention for my journey, and Spotify has never missed in delivering just the right shows. Spotify Podcasts are one of the music service’s best offerings, with over 6 million podcast titles to choose from, spanning different genres.
While I usually stick to news and history-related podcasts, Spotify has something for everyone, including entertainment, horror, and mystery. If you listen to podcasts, you might also see your podcast stats on your Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year.
If you are new to Spotify Podcasts, two features that you might want to take advantage of are Spotify’s Sleep Timer (which will pause your podcast after a set period) and the ability to share podcast episodes from any time stamp you choose.
You can find the Sleep Timer under the episode title (once it’s playing). Episodes can be set to be turned off after your chosen time intervals or at the end of the episode to prevent autoplay.
When sharing a podcast episode with the “Share” button, you have an option to either share it from the beginning of the episode or from the time stamp you paused at.
Listen to Audiobooks
Apart from podcasts, Spotify has another feature that lets you indulge in something apart from music. Spotify Audiobooks lets you explore more than 250,000 titles spread over genres like sci-fi, romance, and horror.
With a Spotify premium subscription, you can get up to 15 hours of audiobook listening time every month. Even without a Premium account (or if you have hit the monthly limit as a Premium user), you can listen to individual audiobooks on Spotify by purchasing titles through the Spotify Web Player. There are over 375,000 audiobooks to explore, and you can listen to your purchased audiobooks on any device from your library.
You can browse through audiobooks of different genres from the home or search tabs.
Discover Live Events
While Spotify can get you to delve deep into an artist’s discography, it also helps you know when and where your favorite artists are performing.
Spotify’s search tab is home to a “Live Events” category, which lets you browse live concerts near you. You can filter concerts by location, genre, and date, which can help you narrow your search to shows you are interested in. This feature has prepared me for the inevitable presale rush hours and long queues and notified me about my favorite artists’ concerts that could’ve easily flown under the radar.
Once you find a live event of interest, you can then add it to your library to view later, find and buy tickets on the host website, and share it with your friends.
Check Out Charts
Spotify has many discovery features, such as song stations and Smart Shuffle, which can help you find new music outside your library of comfort. One underrated way to find new, trending music and view stats is Spotify’s Charts. These chart playlists are also a good place to see what people in your country are listening to, or which famous artists or songs in your preferred languages you might have missed out on.
Spotify also has Podcast Charts, so you can see the shows that are trending and discover new ones. While charts can be seen on the Spotify app, I also like to scroll through Spotify Charts’s web version to view what’s trending in cities near me.
Use Spotify’s News Feed
Being in the loop with updates, new releases, and activity from your favorite artists does not require you to stray too far away from where you stream music.
Spotify has a feed that shows updates and new music, podcasts, or shows from those you follow. To scroll through your news feed, go to the Spotify Home tab and click on your profile picture. Then, tap “What’s New.” From here, you can filter and check for recently uploaded music and podcasts and save or download them directly to your library.
Using Spotify is, of course, a highly personalized experience. But these features, in addition to your regular music streaming and playlists, can help elevate your app experience and make the best out of all its features.
