by John | Mar 5, 2013 | Instructor Tech Help, Spotify
No idea why it took them so long, but the Spotify App for iPhones has finally added an Instructor friendly feature that Android users have had (it seems) forever.
If you are running your class on an iPhone you will recognise this frustration right away > the need to go back and forth between the Now Playing screen and the Playlist screen if you want to see what's coming next. Where you can get in trouble is there were too many places where your sweaty fingers could touch and mess everything up.
The Spotify Android App shows the Now Playing track at the bottom of the Playlist screen along with stop/start button and the option to Swipe > advance to the next track. The latest update to the Spotify iPhone App includes this feature now as well 🙂
See your playlist and swipe to advance.
Now it's still not perfect – if Spotify would add the track timer to this slider, all us iPhone users could work off of this one screen and stay focused on our classes.
In case you're wondering, those circles with the *** don't bring you to an option to change the order of songs. You still need to do that on your computer.
I don't (yet) have an iPad. If you do and see anything new/cool added recently, please let us know below.
by Christine Hawthorne | Dec 12, 2012 | Instructor Resources, iTunes & Spotify Training, Spotify
When I first upgraded to Spotify Premium back in August, I was excited to try something new, but a little disappointed and apprehensive because it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be. Change is never easy. But I kept at it and now I think I’m able to navigate it quite well. Creating and publishing playlists is the easy part. Muddling through all the little glitches with the system was a little tricky, but once I was able to figure them out, I rarely run into problems anymore. The difficult part, for me anyway, was finding people to follow and finding new music.
I don’t know about you, but I could spend hours listening to music and deciding if I think certain songs should earn a spot on my next playlist. When I first began using Spotify, I really didn't know where to begin. It wasn't like iTunes, (which I had been using forever), so I knew that I needed to find an easy way to use Spotify to get access to music that I could use in my classes. I didn't want to be tied to my computer all night searching for music because I couldn't navigate my way through this new terrain. I wanted to be able to easily find new releases and I wanted to see what other instructors were using in their playlists. So I set a goal to find some easy and time-saving ways to search for new music. I think I succeeded. Here are few tips to add to your arsenal or to help you if you’re just getting started:
- Find people to follow and subscribe to their playlists. I explain this in detail in my last ICI/PRO post.
- Don’t overlook the ‘What’s New’ Tab at the top left of your main sidebar on your profile screen. Click on this tab and you’ll find a customized page for you with new releases, top playlists, top tracks, trending playlists, and featured Spotify apps.
- Subscribe to playlists that ‘refresh’. I have found a few playlists to subscribe to that help me to keep up with the best new releases as well as the hottest songs in the country at the moment. Here are a few that I subscribe to: Billboard Hot 100; New Release Tuesdays and New Releases on Spotify
- And speaking of new releases, if you like to use them in your playlists, learn to love Tuesdays! Most of the new releases come out on Tuesdays, so check for updates on your main page and be the first one to listen!
- ‘Like' Spotify on Facebook. You'll get really great updates on new music and bands, helpful tips and general updates.
- Sign up at Sharemyplaylist.com. I have not used this service as a means of sharing my playists (yet), but they DO email me a newsletter every week with seven of their top playlists, all of which have been published in Spotify. So with the click of a button, you can listen and subscribe. I can't say enough about this resource. I always find a TON of great music here.
In addition to the ideas mentioned above, I think in the not too distant future you may see some changes over at Spotify that will make your music discovery a little bit easier. Not only has Spotify overhauled
their website, but they will very soon be unrolling some new and exciting changes. If you used iTunes Ping, you may find this to be a good replacement. See what it's all about by clicking the photo below:
How do you find music to use in your classes? If you have a great resource, please share in the comment section.
by Christine Hawthorne | Nov 13, 2012 | Instructor Tips and Tricks, Instructor Training, iTunes & Spotify Training, Music, Spotify
After some poking around and exploring, I think I have discovered the best way to find and follow other people on Spotify. Finding, following and adding people to your ‘favorites’ will in turn give you more music to explore and ultimately use in your cycling profiles.
Spotify has clearly not made the task of finding other people or cycling instructors to follow an easy one. If you were an iTunes Ping user, you remember how simple it was to find other instructors and to see their playlists and what they were purchasing and listening to. In Spotify you can do most of these things. You just have to work a little harder at it. Once you have found some people with similar musical tastes, you’ll find the process of searching for new music much simpler.
There are a few ways to go about searching for and finding people to follow in Spotify:
- Since Spotify and Facebook are connected, you can follow friends that are already on Facebook. While this one is simple, it’s my least favorite option. First of all, you actually need to be ON Facebook. I realize that most of you probably are, but I’m sure there are some of you that either don’t have a Facebook account, or, like me, use it very sparingly. Another reason I’m not a fan of the Facebook method is because your Facebook friends may not be listening to the kind of music you want to use in your cycling playlists. You’re looking for other instructors with similar musical tastes. I suppose you could ‘friend’ all of the cycling instructors in the world on Facebook, but then you have a bunch of people you don’t even know looking at your personal Facebook page. If that doesn't bother you, then I guess using Facebook is one way to find friends to follow in Spotify.
While the above mentioned techniques will surely work, I think I’ll stick with my highly un-scientific, yet effective (not to mention easy and fast) way to find people to follow on Spotify:
- Find one person that has a playlist you like and head on over to their profile. Let’s use my profile to get you started: http://open.spotify.com/user/chrispins
- Once you have arrived on my profile page, take a look at some of my ‘published’ playlists. Not only will you see my original playlists here, but you will also see playlists that I have subscribed to. These are playlists from other members. Here is a picture of part of one of my original playlists, posted on my profile page:
- In the upper right corner of these profiles, you can click on the ‘subscribers' and a drop down list will appear with the profiles of all of the people that have subscribed to my playlist. There you go! 23 new people (mostly cycling instructors) to follow! Click on their names to go to their profile pages, and check out what they are publishing and subscribing to. If you like what you see, click ‘add’ in the upper right hand corner of their profile. This will allow you to see what they are listening to and publishing in a scrolling list on the side of your profile. Hint: After you click ‘add’, you will have an option to add them to your ‘favorites’. I recommend doing this because it allows you to access their profile even if they are not actively listening to or using Spotify at the same time that you are. Their latest activity will always be available in the upper right side of your profile.
- Now that you have found some other profile pages, you can continue to explore the ‘followers’ of the playlists that they have published or subscribed to. Many people have not published many playlists, but have ‘subscribed’ to other people’s playlists. In this case, you can go directly to the profile of the person that created the original playlist by clicking their user name next to the playlist title as in this example: This is a partial shot of a playlist that I subscribed to by John MacGowan:
- Just click on John's name next to the playlist title to go directly to his profile.
- Here are some links with some basic tutorials that you might find useful:
Can I Add Any Spotify User To My People List?
How To View A Profile From Within Spotify
Spotify Social Basics
So, what are you waiting for? Give yourself a little time and start exploring more music on Spotify. Once you start finding people to follow, you might find it hard to stop!
**Feel free to share your Spotify profile link in the comment section to get the ball rolling!
by John | Oct 27, 2012 | Best Practices, iTunes & Spotify Training, Spotify
LifeTime Instructor's have a super secret community at LTPulse.com. I've been trying to help my fellow LTF Indoor Cycling Instructors there get up to speed with Spotify. In the process they've alerted me to some additional problems that you maybe having as well.
One Instructor, who I believe had reviewed some of our past How To articles about Spotify, expressed some frustration that I'm seeing now was completely my fault 🙁
In the latest version of Spotify (0.5x) the little pencil edit icon appears to have disappeared. All my earlier tutorials showed version (0.4x) which I'm still running on my 3g Spotiphone so I can show you the difference with these screen shots.
Here's the old version:
And here's the latest version – note the change:
Click the three dots icon and you'll find the edit option to change the order or delete songs. When changing the order of tracks, be sure to double check that you don't end up with duplicates. I'm not sure why it happens, but duplicates seem to appear everytime I try to reorder my playlists on my device.
Here's the Playlist I used if you're interested Thursday.
by Christine Hawthorne | Oct 9, 2012 | iTunes & Spotify Training, Music, Spotify
In my last post, ‘Why Try Spotify’, I put out a challenge for you all to give Spotify Premium a try. My hope was that you would begin using it to create and share your playlists and deliver music to your cycling classes. Judging from the overwhelming response that I have received here, on my own blog and through private messages, I’d say many of you rose to the occasion.
So many instructors contacted me to let me know that my post had motivated them to either try Spotify for the first time, or to re-visit their existing Spotify account and/or upgrade to premium status (because that IS where the magic happens.)
Many instructors simply wrote to tell me that they have been using Spotify for a while and that they have been very happy with it.
The overwhelming response is that people are extremely pleased with the ease of using Spotify in their classes and with the money that they are saving now that they don’t have to pay for music on iTunes or other music sites anymore.
Along with all of the enthusiasm about starting up with Spotify came A LOT of questions! Most of them were the very same questions I had when I first started using Spotify.
For those of you just starting out, here are a few of the most frequently asked questions I’ve received, along with my answers.
**Disclaimer #1: I am no Spotify expert, nor do I claim to be. I am simply interested in learning as much as I can about using it, so helping others navigate Spotify is one way for me to do that. If my answers don’t work for you, it may be that there is more than one solution. I am simply telling you what I’ve found to work for me.
**Disclaimer #2: All of the questions and answers that I am writing about in this post are directed at the use of Spotify Premium. If you are using Spotify Free of even Spotify Unlimited, some of the tips and tricks will not work for you. (Click here if you’d like to compare features from all three products that Spotify offers. You can see that Spotify Premium is the only choice for use in your cycling classes.)
Can you use a regular iPod, iPod Nano or iPod Shuffle with Spotify?
Yes and no. Mostly, no. Because Spotifiy is a music streaming service, you do need to have an Internet connection to sync your music and stream it on your device. (Exception: sort of-any music that is in your local files, which is music that you already own, can be synced to your iPod, just as with iTunes. Also, any music that you purchase from Spotify can be synced as well.) As far as the music that you are ‘borrowing’, you will need an Internet connection. But you don’t need an iPhone. Click here for a link that lists all of the devices that are compatible with Spotify.
Do you actually own the music that you get on Spotify?
No. Think of Spotify as a huge music library. You are just borrowing the music. But you can use it any time and anywhere you’d like. The great part about that is the songs don’t take up a bunch of computer space, so it’s just as good, if not better than owning them.
Why would I need to take my playlists ‘offline’ and how do I do it?
This is by far my favorite feature that Spotify offers. Before I figured this one out, I was streaming my playlist live during one of my classes and my phone rang, interrupting my connection! ‘Offline’ mode is great for when you don’t have an Internet connection, or you just don’t want your connection interrupted during your class. Here’s how it works: Simply click ‘available offline’ (the box will turn green) at the top right on your playlist page and on your device. **You will also need to go to your phone settings and change to ‘airplane mode’ to ensure your music will remain uninterrupted.
What do all the little icons next to the songs mean?
Did you ever notice that some songs on your playlists have little icons after the album information? Spotify uses icons to identify certain features of a track or playlist. Here’s a link to a chart that will show you what each icon means.
Why does Spotify ‘not allow’ certain songs from my playlist when I sync it to my device?
This one is usually a pretty simple fix. The songs that are ‘not allowed’ are most likely from your Local Files. This just means that these are songs that were already existing in your music library. If you search for the same songs in Spotify’s music library and then replace them in your playlist with the same song from your local file, it should sync.
Why are the songs on my playlist playing out of order?
You may think you are no longer in ‘shuffle’ mode when you actually are. John explains the answer to this question quite well in this post. Thanks for the helpful photos John!
Why does Spotify play only one song and then stop, rather than playing the entire playlist?
My suggestion to this problem was to restart the device. It was as simple as that. I’m not saying this will always work, but it’s worth a try for this particular problem, and probably for a few that I haven’t mentioned. If you seem to be having any connection problems, I would always suggest restarting your device first.
How do I find people to follow on Spotify?
Oh boy, this one is tricky. I have no problem admitting that I have not found an easy way to find people to follow on Spotify. I’m also finding it frustrating that while we can see who has subscribed to our playlists, we really have no way of knowing who is following us or who has added us to their favorites. I have to say that this has been my biggest frustration with Spotify so far. If they were to ask me for my two cents, I would tell them to find a way to make finding and following others more user-friendly.
You know I love a challenge though, so I have come up with a few resourceful ways of finding friends to follow on Spotify, which I will be sharing with you in my next post.
Until then, keep the Spotify questions coming and the tunes flowing!
