Some Spotify tips.

Music Spotify isn't very good at suggesting new music listening ideas yet. There are playlists and what have you but they only really tease out variations on the kind of thing you like, which doesn't really work if you tend to like everything. Here are some of the methods I've been using to find the surprising and unusual. Some Spotify tips.

Subscribe to music blogs and news feeds. As I said in my original article, Spotify adds an interactive option to reading about music on and off line -- you can now listen to it at the same time and unlike many of the services I talk about below, you're more likely to find ideas related to genres other than rock.

At lunch time today, The Guardian published this article about The Black Keys. Sure enough, here they are on Spotify. In the past I would have seen a post like that but might not have gone out of my way to hear the work itself. But I was listening to their new album in seconds. It's really rather good, even if or because the lead singer sounds a bit like Bono. It doesn't always work -- there's often a delay before new albums appear, so no The Airborne Toxic Event yet.

The Spotify Blog is much the same thing, but indicates when new music has definitely been uploaded and links directly to the album using a Spotify URL. Also, has links to other useful sources including Add To Spotify, a Digg-style suggestion engine reminding the creators of the application about omissions to their database and has a 'fixed page' for when a gap has been filled. Hello, the Sugababes's first and best album, One Touch, which has finally appeared.

This Twitter search for 'spotify' is often filled with people looking for invites and mentioning they've discovered the application. But keep an eye on the page and after a while you begin to notice users recommending music that they like and sometimes, musicians with Twitter feeds pointing to their albums, which is how I discovered Sofia Talvik's beautiful Blue Moon.

If you have a Twitter client, this becomes even easier and more social.



Tweetdeck has an option to set up a column based on a particular keyword search which then updates whenever it's mentioned somewhere in the network. This afternoon I added a search column for Spotify and watched the reviews and links flow upwards, even helping a new user to get to grips with the in-application recommendation engine. If it hadn't been for this I would never have heard Go Go Ninja Dinosaur and my day would have been a fraction less joyful.

As for playlists, Topsify generates links to various music charts which is like listening to a commercial radio station without the distraction of DJs. Listiply, Spotify Lists, Spotify Playlists and Spotylist collect user generated playlists which is about as hit and miss as you'd expect but there's often something good. Google Blog Search is similarly useful.

And don't forget the feeling listless soundtrack, my own playlist which I'm still constantly updating with new discoveries.