Hidden Spotify Features

Spotify Group Sessions

This feature may remind you of shared playlists or jukeboxes. The concept is similar: have a group of people collaboratively play the music.

The feature is a bit hidden in the Spotify app, but you'll find it under the Listen On view. That's the same view you would use to play Spotify on a Sonos for example.

To start a group session, get to the page that shows a barcode:

To join, a guest needs to scan the barcode. The app will take them through these steps:

Once the guests join they have pretty much full control over the music. So, make sure you have a conversation with them beforehand about queueing, not just playing.

Could be fun for a party, but also messy business. 😉

Spotify Article about Group Sessions

Spotify Blend

Spotify Blend creates a shared playlist that combines the music you and a friend listen to. The cool thing about Blends is that they happens only between two people, so they avoid the multi-person Group Sessions which can get messy.

Blends are updated daily, so you'll have something new to listen to every day.

Again, getting to them is a bit tricky, but you'll find them in the Made for You section. For me, this was all the way at the bottom of my Spotify Home screen:

From here the process is pretty simple.

Spotify creates a unique link that you will send to your friend. They join and the playlist will appear as Their Name + Your Name in the same Made for Two section.

Spotify Blend Stories

Bonus feature for Spotify Blends – after a few days, you will have access to a Blend story. This takes the form of the Spotify Year in Review, and presents a few statistics between you and your friend.

Catalist.fm

I built catalist.fm as a middle ground between Group Sessions and Blend.

Group Sessions can get a bit messy, because everybody controls the music, and while Blend is great, it only works between two people.

catalist.fm will create a common playlist between you and your (many) friends. It's super easy to set up (uses QR codes) and it automatically adds everybody's favorite songs to a common playlist. That way you cover everybody's tastes, but are still in control of the music. Works great at parties and get-togethers.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Customized Playlists

One more hidden feature before this blog post turns into a novel.

"On Repeat" Playlists

Similar to the Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists, the On Repeat playlist is customized for you. On Repeat, as the name suggests, contains your most played songs over the past 30 days.

You access it by searching for On Repeat:

Add this playlist to your library by pressing the heart icon!

This is a great way to have the playlist handy and have access to your most listened songs.

Of course, don't listen to just this playlist, otherwise:

Find out more about On Repeat and its cousin Repeat Rewind in this Spotify post.

Conclusions

We think Spotify is a great application with a lot of awesome features, even if some of them are a bit hidden.

Hopefully, with this post, they'll get more users, and you in turn will enjoy Spotify even more.