New to Spotify? Follow These Easy Tips to Get Started

Listening to music on a mobile device has been all the rave since the Walkman. But until streaming services, we were all forced to listen to the music we owned or had on hand, whether they were MP3s on iTunes or CDs you kept in a binder in your backpack.

Pandora made streaming popular. Rdio made it cool. Tidal made it exclusive. But Spotify, arguably, has made it work the best so far.

When you're just starting out on Spotify, it's hard to know what to do or where to go first. Just search? Take Spotify's recommendations? Follow friends?

These tips will help you get the most out of Spotify, point you to the best features, and hopefully clear up questions about how it all works. You'll find your own groove soon enough---and once you do, check these tips to become a power-user.

The first step, obviously, is to make an account. You'll probably want to download both the desktop client and the mobile app. You'll be invited to link your Facebook account to Spotify---we recommend this if you like to post what you're listening to on Facebook. Connecting your accounts makes it seamless.

Spotify's menu is pretty basic: Search, Home, Browse, Activity (on desktop), Radio, and Your Library. If you're on the desktop app, you'll see a Your Music menu and a Playlists menu too.

But the first menu item to tap is Search. The music search engine is at the heart of Spotify. The streaming giant has a library with over 30 million songs---far too much to casually browse. Search for what you like: chances are Spotify has it, and if not, it probably has the next best thing. Once you find tunes you dig, you can start to build a playlist or add songs to your Library.

But music geeks beware: Spotify isn't you. It won't have every rare psychedelic band that recorded in Delaware between 1977-79. It also won't have a lot of your underground faves (try Soundcloud for those). Still, there are certainly a hundreds of thousands of cool oddities and deep cuts that would make any DJ nod with approval.

As you comb around Spotify's trove, you'll find albums or songs you like. If you want to save that album or song for later, you have two options. You can either "add" it to your playlist or "save" the track or the album. Let's look at adding things to playlists first

Unlike Pandora, which let's you just put in a track or artist you like and builds a playlist for you, Spotify is a bit more like a your iTunes library---you can make a playlist with only what you want on it, and you can share it like a mixtape.

Here's how to get your playlist game on:

1. To make a playlist, click on the New Playlist option the lefthand menu. Once that's created, go search for music to add.
2. To add a single song, right-click on the song title and choose "Add to playlist," then select the name of your playlist where you want it to be saved. You can add whole albums to playlists, too---right-click on the cover art and add all of the songs on the album to a playlist.
3. To delete a track, just right-click over the song in your playlist and remove it. Removing albums is as simple as deleting all the tracks.
4. Playlists are public by default, so other people can listen to them. If you want to make your playlist private, click on the ellipses next to the Play button and choose "Make secret."
5. Collaborate on a playlist with other Spotify users by choosing the Collaborative Playlist option. Once you share the playlist link with another Spotify user, that person can also edit.

If there are certain albums or artists that you like to listen to often (once a day while you're working, or once a week during Sunday dinner), then you can "Save" them. These saved items show up in your music Library, and you can save albums, songs, artists, playlists, radio stations, and podcasts. Putting those things in your library just makes them easier to find in a hurry, so you don't have to search for it. Note: The library has different names. On mobile, it's Your Library. On the desktop, it's Your Music. Same thing though.

Use the Library like a pro:

1. To add an album to your library, click on the Save button---on mobile it shows up beneath the cover art; on the desktop, the Save button shows up right next to the Play button.
2. The list of songs in your library is a mix of all the songs on all your saved albums and playlists. You can shuffle this list to listen to all your favorite tunes.
3. When you save an album, the artists automatically shows up in your Artists list inside the library too. If you want to add a favorite artist to this list, but you don't want to add a specific album, just follow that artist by clicking "Follow" next to their picture on their artist page. Then you'll have a shortcut to all of the artist's work in your library.

Spotify prides itself on the listening recommendations it generates for you. The company's employees curate playlists for specific moods (Monday Chill, Afternoon Acoustic) and specific genres (Old School Heavy Metal, Dub on the Beach). To listen to these playlists, just click/tap on Browse in the menu and you can navigate through dozens of choices.

There are also "radio stations" that are generated on the fly based on some music you like. You start with an artist, song, or album, then click on the little ellipsis menu and choose "Go to Radio." This will launch an automatic playlist of songs by the same artist, or in the same genre and mood as the one you started with. (This is very similar to how Pandora works, if you're familiar with its radio service.)

Best of all are Spotify's computer-generated playlists. Every Monday, Spotify serves up a unique mixtape called Discover Weekly. The songs in the list are based on what you've been jamming to the week before. Spotify is excellent at suggesting artists and songs that match your tastes, and Discover Weekly is generally very good for discovering new tunes. Look for the playlist at the top of the app's home screen---it lives there all week.

One thing that all new Spotify users should know is that if your Internet connection fails, your music stops streaming. However, if you're a Premium user (which just means you pay the monthly fee that also takes away the ads), you can download songs from Spotify's library to your phone. This lets you listen to music even when there's no Internet connection, and without taking the data usage hit that streaming requires.

Spotify lets you download up to 3,333 tracks to listen to in the app without being connected to the Internet. This will of course take up storage on your device, so make sure you have some room cleared out.

As you've been tapping and searching inside the app, you may have noticed that Spotify's user experience is a bit of a mess---this is especially true when you take into account the differences between mobile and desktop. (Why is your library called Your Library on mobile and Your Music on the desktop? Makes zero sense, right?) Well, there's another important distinction between the two when it comes to offline music. Mobile users can save playlists, artists, albums, songs, and podcasts. Desktop users can only save playlists. Annoying? Yep. But here's how to do it:

1. First, you need to make sure Offline mode is activated. Go to Settings > Playback> Turn Offline mode on. On desktop you'll find the option under the File option in your main menu at the top of the screen.
2. To save music in the desktop app, go to the playlist you wish to download and toggle the switch that says "Available Offline." A small circle will appear next to each track to indicate it's downloading.
3. On the mobile app, when connected to Wi-Fi, go to the item (song, album, playlist, or artist) you'd like to have available offline. Near the top of the screen on the right, toggle "Available Offline." The songs will then download.

One of the best parts about having great taste in music is sharing it and turning other people on to the best tracks. But if you're listening on a streaming app, all too often, you can only share music with other people who are using the same app.

However, Spotify lets you share tracks with non-Spotify users. It also lets you post your listening habits to social networks (it integrates seamlessly with Facebook), and it lets you follow other Spotify users to see what they're listening to, and to enjoy their playlists. Here are some social tips for Spotify:

1. Toggle your settings to share what you're listening to in real time on Facebook. Just go to your settings, turn on "Share my activity on Facebook," and Spotify will post nonintrusive, simple messages in your Activity Log with links to what you're enjoying at the moment.
2. You can also view what our friends are listening to without going to Facebook. In the desktop app, go into the View menu and click Friend Feed to see what your Facebook friends are currently listening to. A scrolling list of your friends' activity will show up on the righthand side.
3. Post to any social network by clicking on the eclipses and picking share. Then type your message and post to Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr.
4. Want to share a song with a Tidal devotee? You can share playlists with non-Spotify users by making a public web link. That link opens a browser-based web app version of the service, and the person can listen in their web browser. On the desktop, right-click on a song and choose "Copy Song Link." In the mobile app, tap on the little ellipsis menu icon, then tap on Share, then "Copy Song Link."

Ok, now that you're acquainted with Spotify, here's a playlist I made to celebrate ?