If you wanted to listen to a song, how would you do it? For many people using a streaming music service is the preferred way. Of all the streaming services available, my personal favorite is Spotify. In addition to over 100 million songs, 5 million podcasts, and 300,000 audiobooks, Spotify has four main features that I use and enjoy every day. Spotify helps me organize my music, helps me find new music, offers a fun social aspect, and has an intuitive interface.

Spotify offers several ways to organize the music that you already know and enjoy. I mostly use playlists to organize my music. Playlists are groups of songs that you can customize however you want. On Spotify you can even change the order of your playlists. The default setting is Custom Order which is the order in which you place each song. You can also use the Title feature to make each song in alphabetical order by title. Spotify also offers Artist and Album which organizes the songs by either artist or album. Another option is Date Added which just organizes each song in the order that you added the song to that specific playlist. Lastly, Duration orders the songs from longest to shortest or vice versa.  When you listen to a song you have the option to like the song. With every song you like, Spotify creates a playlist with each song you have liked and uses that song in their algorithm to learn about what you like and make recommendations.

Spotfy also helps you discover new music in several ways. Within one of your playlists, Spotfy recommends similar songs/artists. This same algorithm is used to create Daily Mixes – a blend of songs you have played before with songs that are similar. Similar to Daily Mixes, Discover Weekly is a playlist that Spotify customizes for each user based on the songs/genres they enjoy. Discover Weekly updates every Monday and will become more and more relevant to your tastes based on how many songs you liked from the previous week’s selections. Another way to discover more music is to select the enhanced feature that is offered on each playlist you create. The enhanced feature will add songs to your playlist that have a similar vibe. DJ is a fairly new feature that was added where a DJ named “Xavier(X)” will play 4 or 5 songs or a specific genre. X will play songs you haven’t listened to in a while and then play songs that he thinks you would enjoy. Between each group of songs X speaks on why he is choosing those songs and even will give background on them. 

One really innovative feature area is the social aspects. By connecting with your friends on Spotify, you can see what they are listening to, and they can see what you are listening to. (There is a “Private Session” feature if you don’t want to share what you are listening to.) I believe that Spotify should make it a feature that you can only see what others are listening to if you allow others to see what you are listening to. Not only can you collaborate on playlists with your friends, but Spotify also uses their algorithms to create Blends – which pull songs from both you and your friend – songs they like, songs you like, and songs you both like. Every day a new Blend is created – with 50 songs. 

While it may seem like the large number of features is overwhelming, the interface of the Spotify client is clean and intuitive. Navigating between features is easy, and unlike Apple Music, you can use Spotify on any device. I personally listen to Spotify on my Mac, my iPhone (which connects to my car), and the Alexa speakers in my house. Within the interface you see not only names of songs, artists and albums, but you also see album cover art, lyrics, pictures of the artists, upcoming live performance dates, and on certain songs, notes that the artist made specifically for that song.

I use Spotify every day. I love listening to music, and have found Spotify to be incredibly valuable for helping me organize my music, find great new songs that match my musical tastes, and connect and share music with friends. The interface is easy to navigate and is available on any device. If you are looking for a feature-rich music platform, check out Spotify. When you do, be sure to follow me at samanthabooher.