As an indoor cycling instructor, you already know that music plays an important part in creating an exceptionally motivating class.
But sometimes, searching for new music and developing playlists can be time consuming and costly. Since iTunes came out with its social network, Ping in 2010, I’ve had great success finding music and sharing songs and playlists there with other instructors. In fact, I may have been happy to stay with Ping forever. Then I heard a rumor that with its new upgrade this fall, iTunes will be dropping Ping. I can neither confirm nor deny that rumor, but it did scare me enough into looking at other music options.
That’s when my search began for a new music-sharing site that would offer me the ease of finding new music, putting my playlists together and sharing them with other instructors. I knew about other social music sites such as MeeMix, , Maestro.fm, and Last.fm, and I had dabbled in Spotify before, even recreating some of my iTunes playlists and publishing them there. I had never really explored Spotify enough to see all that it had to offer though.
With the possibility of Ping not being available to me any more, I knew that it was time to jump in and give Spotify another try. This was around the same time that John contacted me to write some blog posts here at ICI/ PRO. I mentioned to him that I was dabbling in Spotify, and he said it would ‘change the way I use music in my indoor cycling classes.’ As music ‘junkie’ and someone that had become pretty adept at creating playlists, sharing them and using them in my classes, I was sure that he was exaggerating.
As the next few weeks went by, I continued to explore Spotify, upgraded to ‘premium’ membership status and gained more confidence using it. I also installed the Spotify app on my new iPhone.  In that short time, I have almost completely stopped purchasing new music in iTunes and cancelled my  $12.99/month eMusic account. I’ve  also begun to stream my playlists in my indoor cycling classes through my phone. Amazing, really, if you stop to think about it. I’m still working out the kinks in this area, but overall I’d say it’s going quite well.
To say that this was a challenge for me would be an understatement, because I consider myself just a bit technologically challenged, and I will admit that I found Spotify difficult to navigate at first. I am not someone that picks things like this up easily. I’m guessing that a lot of you reading this are in the same boat.  I’m still working on learning how to use Spotify to it’s fullest potential. While I know that I am only using a small part of what’s available to me as a premium member, I’ve already decided that John was right. It already has started to change the way I’m using music in my classes.
Let me begin by telling you a few of the things that I already love about Spotify:
- It’s inexpensive.  I know what you’re thinking.  How is $9.99 a month for a premium membership inexpensive? Here’s how: You don’t have to purchase music anymore. You have thousands of songs available for you to use. Between my monthly eMusic payment and my iTunes purchases, I was spending well over the $9.99 that I am paying per month for Spotify.
- It’s simple to create playlists. This part of the process is actually very similar to iTunes, only much simpler. You can browse new music, see what others are listening to and create your own playlists in less time than if you had to download them and drag them into your playlists. In just a few clicks, you have everything you need at your fingertips.
- You can share your playlists: Kind of like sharing playlists on iTunes only you can actually sync an entire playlist to your device and use it in your own cycling class. Sure, on iTunes you could purchase entire playlists easily, but it would cost you anywhere from fifteen to twenty dollars or more. With Spotify, you have access to thousands of songs and playlists and you can use as many as you’d like.
While I’ve learned a lot about Spotify in the few short weeks that I’ve been exploring it, I still have so many questions about it. I’m quite certain that I have not even scratched the surface of all that it has to offer me as a cycling instructor.
For example, here are few things that I’ve struggled with continued to struggle with:
- I’m finding  it hard to find other people to ‘follow’. One way to find people is to  log in through your Facebook account and follow your Facebook friends that are on Spotify, but I am specifically looking for other instructors and people with good musical taste. No offense to my Facebook friends, but most of them don’t fit into either category. It’s not as simple as ‘searching’ for people by name.
- I’m still learning the whole ‘online’/’offline’ thing. Do I want to stream my music via the Internet, or take it ‘offline’, which is a feature of the premium membership? One lesson I learned: when you are ‘online’ and your iPhone rings during class, your music will pause until you dismiss the call, unless you switch your phone to ‘airplane’ mode.
My goal until my next post is work out some of these kinks and share more of my Spotify experience with you. I would love it if I didn’t have to take this journey into the great unknow alone, so In the meantime, I will put this challenge out to those of you not yet using Spotify premium:
At the very least, try the free membership to see how you like it. If you ‘re ready to make the jump, I promise you that the premium membership will be worth every penny. I would be more than happy to entertain any questions that you may have about starting up with Spotify. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find it for you.
Until then, keep the music flowing!
Here are a few links that you may find helpful:
Try Spotify Premium Free For 30 Days!Â
Originally posted 2012-09-11 15:32:23.
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I love Spotify, and I use the off line mode a lot, as one of my clubs does not have wireless (gasp). Easy to put the phone on airplane mode, so no problem, and I have a Droid.
I’m glad to hear my gym is not the only one that doesn’t offer free wireless. It seems crazy in this day and age. The offline mode is a great feature, I agree! Thanks for your comments. 🙂
Thank you so much for this post! I have resisted taking the plunge into premium membership and also balked at the monthly fee, but I think you’ve convinced me that it will be worth it! Keep us posted…
I promise you that you won’t regret it. I found it very difficult to navigate anything in Spotify when I was using the Free membership. Once I moved up to Premium, it is much easier. Good luck to you. I’m sure I will have many more posts about my adventures in Spotify!
Alright, I’ve spent HOURS reading about spotify, figuring out how to create a playlist, making sure I have the playlist set to offline on my ipod and my iphone (just in case!), creating the recommended 6 second crossfade, dealing with unrelated technical issues that always seem to creep up when trying to learn new technology…I think I’m all ready for tomorrow morning’s class 🙂
Good luck Kristi! Keep us updated on how it turns out. I’m sure it will be great!
Just took the plunge and for premium spotify membership myself and am absolutely LOVING it! I’ve been using the “radio” feature a lot and have found some great music that way.
Christine,
Welcome aboard.
Your post has motivated me to return to my own Spotify account, subscribe to your playlists, learn how to share mine and ultimately get extremely proficient at Spotify.
I’m ready to kick the iTunes habit (I think i have single handedly made Apple the richest company on the planet.)
In one of my earlier posts (Improving your craft part 2) I recommend Spotify as well. It is good to see – from the number of comments – that you moved the spotify needle. I look forward to more of your posts here on ICI.
Jennifer, Great tip about the ‘radio’ feature as a way of finding new music! I have to use that more.
Chuck, Thanks for the warm welcome! I’m glad I’ve motivated so many of you to check out or revisit Spotify!
Hi Christine and all, so after my bragging about how easy my journeys are with Spotify, I seem to have hit a wall, and right when I made my new playlist to say good by to one of our regulars, moving down to Fort Collins…for some reason my computer does not read my phone, the phone does not come up under “devices” and on my phone, I can not get the device off “off line” will not hook up to wifi…I just got a new computer, can this be the issue? not sure if anyone is still up…thoughts? thanks.
Did you try re-installing the Spotify app on your phone?
Hopefully someone else will chime in with some advice on this one.
My guess is it’s something to do with the new computer so hopefully it’s an easy fix for you.
Chris,
Perhaps you can address an issue. Many of us have used Mix Meister BPM to organize our iTunes library by BPM. Of course this also allows us to beat match our music with our class profiles and cue our riders accordingly. Moreover, for those of us using apps that aid the instructor in cue delivery BPM also comes in handy. Just knowing it ahead of time helps with how one choses to cue. While I agree it is not absolutely needed it sure is handy.
I’ve not seen such information on Spotify. Do you know if it is available or if there is a way to run a BPM type program.
Also I’d be interested to hear how others are dealing with this issue and/or just how they use Spotify the way it is.
Sounds like a great tool Chuck. I’ve never used Mix Meister before. I actually just tried to download it so I could investigate, but my download failed. I’ll have to check it out when I get more time.
I honestly do not know if Spotify offers such a service or if you are able to run one with Spotify.
Hopefully someone else can comment.
Chris
I love Spotify!! I tried it on John McGowan’s recommendation and I love it. Haven’t paid one red cent to iTunes since upgrading. 9.99 a mo. Is nothing if you’re a music junkie like me. Love the radio as well.
It is nice knowing you’re not spending your hard earned instuctor cash on iTunes isn’t i? I don’t know what took me so long to jump on the Spotify bandwagon, but I’m so glad I did! I’m just starting to check out the radio. 🙂 Thanks for commenting!
I have been having problems with Spotify playing more than one song when I search for a song or an artist on my iphone. Has anyone else encountered this problem? I have a premium membership. It will play the first one to the end of the song and then no more.
Hi Martha,
Here are some quick solutions to try:
*Restart your iPhone
*Switch your ‘streaming quality’ —> Spotify app>>Settings>>Stream
-your choices here should be ‘High Quality’ or ‘Low Bandwidth’, switch to the one that you
are not currently using. You can always switch this back if it gets it working again.
I hope that helps!
I never turn off my phone so that was the answer I needed thanks. Works like a dream again.
I am a new instructor and I use Spotify premium in my classes. What I can’t figure out is how to make the time/song length (count up/count down) feature big enough so I don’t have to have the phone right in front of my face to see when the next sprint or recovery will begin. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Val, I don’t believe there is a way to change the size of the time feature on your phone screen. I have had the conversation with instructors before about how they ‘time’ their songs in their classes, and everyone seems to do it differently. Many have their phones close enough to be able to see when they are teaching. I am not that lucky-mine is docked on a stereo just far enough out of my eyesight that I can’t see it. Many instructors (myself included) use a stopwatch to time their songs. So after each song, I reset the stopwatch. I add the track time on my notes and the times for my sprint/recoveries as well. I do not use the song fade option because my timing gets off if I do. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s my only other option.
Thanks for the stopwatch idea, Christine! I Was using an app called Playlist Timer. It’s a giant count down timer that worked great with my iTunes playlists but does not work with Spotify.