Click To View Slideshow» Become a Spotify Power User by tapping these secret, baked-in functions.
When it comes to technology, my 60-something-year-old father maintains a lingering skepticism of newfangled beep-boop digital doodads. With one notable exception: Spotify. And why not? Spotify's a magical, minimalist piece of software that beams all the world's recorded music (well, nearly all the world's recorded music) directly to his computer. For free!
Of course, users have the option of upgrading to Spotify Premium, which ditches the ads and allows for offline and restriction-free smartphone and tablet listening. Or they can just do what upwards of 70 million Web users do (including a certain baby boomer I know) and rent out their earholes to Spotify's advertisers for complimentary access. But regardless of how you listen, you may not be taking full advantage of what Spotify has to offer.
For example, did you know that Spotify supports modifiers that allow you to filter your query of Spotify's vast reservoir of tunage? Think you can readily find Bob Marley's best-of album, Legend? It's is in there, but a mere search for "Bob Marley" will return a nearly impenetrable list of re-packaged content. Even a search for "Bob Marley Legend" still returns various re-releases alongside fake-out versions like Roots of A Legend, The Birth of A Legend, or Pop Legends, to name a few.
In order to make sense of the mess, you might want to consider the following search: artist:"Bob Marley" album:legend year:1984. And you'll be instantaneously transported back to your old dorm days in no time. If that doesn't quite make sense, fear not, we'll walk you through it.
Search modifiers are just a taste of the baked-in functionality Spotify has to offer. Click through our slideshow, and you too can be a streaming music super samurai.
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