Review Wednesday: Spotify

A little more than a month ago I took the SPINNING® teacher training. Soon after that I took the test (and passed), which made me a certified SPINNING® teacher.
One of my indoor cycling teachers has been my mentor and personal cheerleader through me becoming a yoga teacher and now an indoor cycling teacher.
One of the things he recommended was Spotify for my music for classes.
I have a good and varied selection of music in my iTunes library. But as a teacher of any sort of exercise class you need to keep it new and fresh. Buying songs regularly can get quite pricey.
I had heard of Spotify but had never used it. (It is now on my iPhone, iPad mini and laptop.)
You can use Spotify for free. But there are ads and you can’t play your music offline (meaning, if you aren’t on wifi you can’t play the music). Neither of those work for teaching an exercise class.
If you want to play your music offline, you have to hit the available offline button on each device for each playlist, including your song library.
Spotify gives you a free week of premium (no ads and you can play playlists offline).
During my free week, Spotify sent me an e-mail telling me if I signed up for premium I could get the next three months for 99 cents each (instead of the regular price of $9.99 a month, which I will start paying in March).
On Spotify you can create your own playlists, which I have done. There are already many designed playlists. There are new releases, top lists, genres and moods, etc.
You can share playlists with friends. Though I haven’t figured that one out yet. A friend sent me a playlist through Facebook and and I can’t figure out how to access it in my Spotify account. (That’s likely operator error.)
I have to say, 10 bucks a month is a great deal.
Most songs these days cost more than a $1 each. For an hour class I have anywhere from 14-17 songs. That’s gonna add up pretty quick.
And there are times when I buy the wrong version of a song or just the wrong song. On Spotify it’s no big deal if I grab the wrong song. It doesn’t cost anything extra. If I really don’t want it, I just hit delete.
According to the Spotify website, Spotify gives you millions of songs at your fingertips. The artists you love, the latest hits, and new discoveries just for you. Hit play to stream anything you like.
Every song and or artist I have looked for has been on Spotify.
According to my teacher John the only artist that he knows of not on there is Taylor Swift. I think I will be OK without her on any of my playlists.
John told me sometimes his playlists will start to shuffle. I haven’t had that happen.
But I did make a playlist of songs to play before class starts. The first time I taught an official class the first song played and then it jumped into my song library. But that has only happened once and could possibly have been operator error.
I had trouble finding out just how long my playlists are, which is important when you have a class that is an hour.
Spotify on the computer it was clear as day when I actually looked for it. It took a little longer to find on my iPad and iPhone. I took another look and after about 10 seconds of searching I found the length of time of each playlist.
Even if you aren’t an exercise instructor I think Spotify is pretty awesome. Spotify to me is like a long term rental. As long as you have your account the music is “yours.” And the price is great, too.