The streaming revolution has brought a world of convenience to music lovers everywhere. Not only can you create playlists and discover great artists you’ve never heard of before, most streaming services also allow you to download music straight to your mobile device or computer. But not all services offer the same level of connectivity options.
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- Playlists are a great way to save collections of music, either for your own listening or to share. To create one: Tap Your Library. Give your playlist a name. Start adding songs (and we’ll help you along).
- Oh, there’s the issue of your premium account not getting activated (or recognized in mobile), but that’s often just a server glitch. If local files from your Mac or PC don’t get synced with Spotify and instead, Spotify shows you ‘similar’ tracks that you can download instead, that’s going to be one big headache.
Yamaha MusicCast provides wireless multi-room control over music playback and streaming with the use of a free downloadable app called MusicCast Controller, available for iOS and Android™. This lets you focus on the enjoyment of your music (in both stereo and surround sound) and not on the technology behind it.
A wide range of MusicCast-enabled products — receivers, speakers, sound bars and even turntables — offer a variety of options to set up an easy-to-use networked audio system. For those who like to use Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri, MusicCast offers even more ways to take hands-free control of your music and entertainment. It also supports Bluetooth® streaming and Apple® Airplay® … and now, with a simple (and free) firmware update, many MusicCast devices are now compatible with the latest version of Spotify Connect too, which includes the use of a Spotify free account!
This latest update provides a major advantage in that Spotify Connect streams to your system via Wi-Fi® and not Bluetooth, offering better quality audio and a wider range, with fewer dropouts. Establishing a direct connection between your receiver and the internet means that your audio system streams music from Spotify directly, rather than via your phone, which instead acts simply as your remote control. By comparison, AirPlay (which also uses Wi-Fi) and Bluetooth stream music directly from your phone to the receiving device, which unfortunately also causes your phone battery to run down more quickly.
Spotify Connect is the brainchild of Spotify, the popular on-demand music service with more than 35 million songs. There are numerous levels of service available, including Spotify free, Spotify Premium, Premium for Family, Spotify for Students and Spotify Gaming — all of which offer a variety of free or paid tiers for your music and entertainment needs. Spotify free, as its name implies, is no-cost, although there are occasional ad interruptions, whereas Spotify Premium (price plans vary by country) offers unlimited high-quality streaming and no ads. Premium for Family allows you and up to five family members to use their own Premium accounts for one fixed price, while Premium for Students offers a 50% discount for a year. Spotify Gaming will play though your PS4™ PlayStation®.
There are a few other differences between the services. Spotify free streams AAC files at up to 160kbps, while Spotify Premium members have the option to stream their music at up to 320kbps. The Spotify Web player (which works through your browser) streams the free version at 128kbps and Premium at 256kbps, whereas the standalone desktop, mobile and tablet players stream Spotify free at 160 kbps and Premium at up to 320kbps.
Whichever service you choose, Spotify Connect will stream your music to up to three linked MusicCast devices simultaneously, all at CD-quality. This drops to a compressed format once you add a fourth device (or more). Up to ten devices can be used simultaneously at that compressed format.
Bear in mind that when using Spotify Connect with your MusicCast-enabled device, you have to connect directly from the Spotify app (not the MusicCast Controller app), as shown in the sequence below:
Note: There may be times when your MusicCast device will not appear in the “devices available” menu within the Spotify app, even when the phone and receiver are connected to the same network. This can generally be corrected by unplugging AC power for a few seconds.
For a list of Yamaha MusicCast devices compatible with the current firmware update, click here.
Click here for more information about Yamaha MusicCast.
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Spotify lets you stream helluva soundtracks and hands down has one of the biggest music streaming playlists. But, it still misses out on a few Indie singles and artists. I also don’t find many regional songs of course due to legal issues. For these exceptions, Spotify provides you an option to stream local songs on the Spotify Desktop app. And in fact, you can even sync the playlist on to other devices in Spotify and enjoy the same songs on every device. So, here’s how to Sync Local Files From Spotify desktop to any device. However, this is a paid feature and you need to be a premium Spotify user.
Sync Local Files From Spotify Desktop To Any Device
1. Firstly, you will need to attach the Music Playlist local folder on Spotify. Here, I am going to attach my local folder on Spotify Windows. To do that, go to your Spotify Account Settings.
2. In the Account Settings, scroll down to Local Files Section. To stream local files, you need to turn the slider on. Once that is done, you will see two default folder options – Downloads and Music Library. If you have your song and playlists in those folders, you can move to Step 5. Else, we will need to attach our folder. To attach a different local folder, click on “Add a Source”.
3. After you have clicked on “Add a source” button, you will see a small File Explorer window pop up. Browse to the song folder on your local machine. Select it and click OK to add the folder.
Read: Best Music App For Windows 10 Computers
4. Now once you have selected the folder, it should appear below the Local Files section. Make sure the slider is turned on else songs from that folder won’t be listed.
5. After you have attached the local folder, the songs will be available to stream on Spotify. To stream local songs, click on Local Files Library on the right-hand side. It should be present in the “Your Library” section.
Spotify Free Music App
6. Once you see your Local Files, we need to add them to a separate playlist. To do that, click on the 3 dots beside the songs. From the extended menu, move to “Add to Playlist”. An extended tray will display the existing playlist names, you can add to any of these. In case you have lots of local songs and want to stream them all, I would suggest creating a new Playlist. Here, I already have a playlist called Local Songs where I will be adding 3-4 local songs.
7. Once you have added all the desired songs to a playlist, now we can move to the other device. Like, suppose I want to stream the same songs on my Spotify mobile, I just have to download the playlist there. The only thing I have to take care of is that I am on the same Wi-Fi network as my laptop. Once you are connected on the same Wi-Fi network, go to the local songs playlist on the Spotify mobile app.
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8. After you have found the playlist, tap on it to open the playlist. You will see all the local songs within it but they will all be greyed. You cannot listen to them as of now. So, we have to download the playlist in order to stream those local songs. To do that, tap the three buttons on the top right corner and tap on Download.
Download Spotify Music Free Windows
This is just a one time process and needs to be done every time you add a new local song. Now that you have downloaded the songs, you can move on to a different network and still, you will have the playlist available. The best thing about this process is that the songs don’t take up much space. To be precise, if your download preference is set to normal, each song would take approx 2.8 MB where High will take 4.7MB per track and very high might take 9.4MB per track.
Closing Words
The thing which makes Spotify the best choice for music streaming is the enormous third-party app integration support. Also, the song recommendation on Spotify is the best I have experienced so far. If you are fairly new to Spotify, here’s our article on 10+ Spotify Tips and Tricks Every New User Should Know About.
For any queries regarding Spotify or Spotify tricks, let me know in the comments below.