Books and Articles by Kim Gilmour

Spotify is changing the way the world listens to music. With a Spotify account, you can listen to all kinds of music, create and share playlists, and even join the Spotify online community.Managing your spotify playlistsSpotify makes it easy for you to organize and manage the playlists in your music library and avoid wasting time hunting for your favorite tracks.

Spotify is compatible with all the iPod classic models, as well as the iPod shuffle and iPod nano. Any iPod that connects via a USB cable connection, rather than the very first model that required a FireWire connection (isn’t there a museum you can donate that to?), will work. One exception is the iPod touch: You need to download Spotify’s mobile app to listen to local tracks.

You can quickly mark a few Spotify playlists and make them available offline directly from your phone — your computer doesn’t need to be on because you download tracks directly from Spotify’s own server.Connect to a Wi-Fi network to do this procedure when possible, rather than 3G, because Wi-Fi is probably a lot faster and, depending on your data plan, should cost less, too.

Spotify Radio has undergone a massive overhaul and is now a superb way to stumble upon some great music. The feature allows you to create virtual radio stations that play similar music to the stuff you already like. Like a real radio station, you never know what tracks Spotify will line up next — but unlike real radio stations, you can skip tracks as many times as you wish if they aren’t to your fancy (and there aren’t any annoying DJs interrupting the flow).

Spotify uses several little icons to help identify certain features of a track or playlist. The following table gives you a helpful little primer on what the most common icons actually mean. Spotify Icons Symbol Descriptions Meaning Chain icon You may see this icon next to a playlist track. It means you can’t play the track’s album in your country, but Spotify has found the same track on a substitute album, which you can play.

To send music to someone's Spotify Inbox, you need to have him in your People list first. Because you can add anyone who has a public profile to your People list, you may be a stranger to your recipient (and you might receive tracks from people you don’t know). When you click the People link ion the left-hand sidebar, all your Facebook friends are displayed in the main pane, along with any public profiles you may have manually added.

Unlike the desktop application, you can force the Spotify Mobile app to go into Offline mode while still leaving other apps connected to your home or mobile network. All the lovely tracks you sync will be ready and waiting for you to listen to! Going into Offline mode with your mobile device is particularly handy if you’re on the go and won’t be around a Wi-Fi connection.

One of the questions Spotify gets asked a lot is why a payment method was declined. If paying by credit card, Spotify recommends that your credit card meets the following criteria: Able to work for foreign purchases. Enabled for e-commerce transactions, including the Verified by Visa or MasterCard SecureCode schemes.

Spotify provides a Top Tracks listing, which monitors what people are listening to within Spotify — think of it as an alternative to the Billboard Hot 100. The popularity bar that appears next to all Spotify tracks is a meter that measures how frequently a track is being listened to — the more people are listening to it, the higher the meter goes.