I’ve been a Spotify user since 2008, and these are the 5 tricks everyone should know

I received my invite to join Spotify back in November of 2008 — yes, back then, you couldn’t sign up by yourself; another user had to invite you with a personalized link first. I created an account, used my free trial, and finally had access to the world’s largest music streaming platform. For the first few years, though, I kept switching between Spotify and my personal music collection, canceling and restarting my subscription, until Spotify won, and it was game over for my local music library.

Since then, I’ve tried to make the most of my subscription. If I’m paying 17 Euros or so for Spotify Duo (despite having access to YouTube Music with my YouTube Premium subscription), I have to ensure I’m getting my money’s worth. So I’ve accumulated a list of tricks and tips that improve my Spotify experience. I’ll share the first big five with you here, but there are more obscure tricks coming in another article.

Avoid what you don’t want to hear on Spotify

The best part about Spotify is its recommendation algorithm. The worst part is also its recommendation algorithm. There are songs I don’t want to hear, artists I don’t like, and random music I don’t enjoy. Luckily, Spotify has settings to avoid most of these. Here’s what you can do.

When playing songs from a playlist you didn’t make yourself (either one by another user or an automated playlist like Discover Weekly or Release Radar), you can hide songs in that playlist that you don’t want to listen to. Just tap on the three dots ⋮ next to a song and choose Hide in this playlist. If I really don’t want to hear that song again, I can also select Don’t suggest this song anywhere for 30 days, which will hide it in other playlists, too.

If there’s a particular artist that Spotify likes suggesting to you because you heard one song from them a million years ago and the algorithm somehow thinks you love them, or because they’re similar to many artists you enjoy on paper but they don’t really hit your sweet spot, you can also completely block them. Go to the artist page, tap the three dots ⋮ next to the Follow button, and choose Don’t play this artist. This will stop any of their music from appearing in recommendations and radio stations, and will force Spotify to skip them in any pre-existing playlists.

There are times when I’m open to hearing what Spotify’s algorithm suggests and times when I only want to play the songs I’ve curated. One easy way to quickly do that is to tap the shuffle button repeatedly until it switches to a starry shuffle icon, which is Smart Shuffle. With it on, Spotify will fill up the current queue with similar songs that it thinks I’ll enjoy, and when I switch back to a regular shuffle, it just plays the current playlist or artist. If you dislike Smart Shuffle and never want the option to show up, you can turn it off under Settings and privacy > Playback > Include Smart Shuffle in play modes.

Listen without messing up your recommendations

Contrary to the first point, there are times when I do want to listen to random things on Spotify without them messing with my algorithm and recommendations. Like that week when I fostered a frightful dog and played relaxing dog music playlists for her, which would calm her down but also caused Spotify to suggest dog music for me for months to come. Or that one time I listened to a Nickelback song and kept seeing their music pop up in all my playlists. Luckily, I learned my lesson and started using the following two tricks to avoid this.

If there’s a particular playlist (or several playlists) you play for a specific reason, such as when falling asleep or to calm your pet, you can force Spotify to ignore it. Go to the playlist, tap the ⋮ button, and choose Exclude from your taste profile. This will force Spotify to (mostly) ignore your love for this playlist and all of its songs, no matter how often you play it, thus not influencing your recommendations in the future.

If you suddenly have an urge to binge-listen to 90s pop music, and you know it’s a one-time thing that shouldn’t influence your cool R&B / lo-fi / rock metal music profile, you can switch to a private listening session. Go to Settings and privacy > Privacy and social > turn on the Private session mode. This lasts for six hours and lets you listen to …Baby One More Time without disappointing your followers or your Spotify algorithm. If you ask me, there’s no guilty pleasure in music; you should embrace the tunes you love, but not everyone is as free-spirited as me.

Use gestures to do things faster

Like many other apps on Android, Spotify has a few hidden and sometimes unknown gestures that make my life easy when I’m using it. Once you know these, there’s no going back to tapping buttons, trust me.

My most-used gesture is to swipe left-to-right on any song to add it to my currently playing queue. It beats tapping several specific buttons to do the same thing. I use this a lot when Spotify plays a song by an artist I don’t know but that I like: I go to their page and quickly add several of their songs to the queue to see if they’re worth following.

The second gesture is to swipe left and right on the mini player to replay the previous song or skip to the next one. It’s faster to do this on the bottom of the screen than opening the full player to do the same thing, especially if I’m listening while browsing the app.

And my third favorite gesture is to swipe down on any playlist to reveal the Find in playlist box to find any song or artist in that playlist. It helps a lot in super big playlists when I don’t want to scroll to find a song.

Quickly access your favorites

Using Spotify sometimes feels like a constant struggle against the algorithm. No, I don’t know what those recommendations are doing at the top of my home screen, nor why my playlists are sorted like that. Why can’t I get to what I want to listen to faster? Well, there are three ways to speed up access to my newest musical addiction.

The easiest way is to pin favorites to the top of the library. Just go to the Your Library tab, tap and hold on any artist, album, or playlist you want to see first, and select Pin artist, Pin album, or Pin playlist. This keeps them on top of anything else in your library, no matter what sorting order you use.

My second favorite trick is to add shortcuts to artists, playlists, or albums on my Android phone‘s home screen. Spotify used to offer this option in the options menu of whatever you were listening to, but it now hides it a bit. What you need to do is first go to the artist, album, or playlist you want to create a shortcut for, and then tap to play anything there — this is a crucial step. Then go to your home screen, tap and hold on the Spotify icon, and you’ll see a new item under Search with the music you just played. This is an app shortcut on Android, and you can drag it to create a standalone shortcut on your home screen. You can repeat this as often as you want and then move these shortcuts anywhere or put them in a folder.

The last trick involves using the Spotify web or desktop app to create playlist and album folders. This isn’t possible on the mobile app, but on the larger screen, you can add a New Playlist folder to your library and organize some playlists and albums inside it. You can even put a folder into another, creating sub-folders. All your organization carries over to the mobile app, so once you do it on the desktop, you can enjoy the new order on your phone.

If you hoard a million playlists like me, if you want to group your favorite albums together, or if you want to organize the playlists Spotify makes for you, this is an excellent way to add some order to the madness. I use this, for example, to group the artist and genre mixes Spotify made for me, as well as my top songs by year, to avoid them crowding my main library.

Listen with others

While I enjoy listening to music in my own bubble, I also like to share the experience with others sometimes. Spotify has two neat ways to let me share my love of music with my husband and friends.

My husband and I tend to enjoy very similar music, but there are still different artists we each listen to a lot more. Creating a Blend of our taste profiles makes a playlist that we can both enjoy while also introducing me to songs he’s listening to that I don’t know, and vice versa. To do this, just tap the Create button > Blend > Invite and send the link to your partner or friends. When they join, Spotify will create a new playlist and add it to your library. It’ll also update it daily.

And finally, the last trick is to use live jams to let other Spotify users control music with you. When I’m playing music on my Google Nest speakers or my Samsung soundbar, I start a jam by going to Create > Jam and letting my husband scan the code to join in. This shows the current queue on his phone, too, so he can control playback, skip or rewind songs, and even add his own songs to the queue. If you often have people over or you like listening to music with your friends, and you’re nearby on Bluetooth or the same Wi-Fi network, it’s an excellent trick to let everyone contribute their own songs to the mood.

And this is where I’ll stop today with my first and most important Spotify tricks. I’ll share more obscure ones in another article soon, but in the meantime, if you have other tricks people should know, please feel free to share them in the comments.