19 Spotify tips and tricks to make you a streaming music master

Spotify Premium subscribers, who pay $9.99 per month, can download music to listen to when they're not connected to the internet. This can come in handy when you want to use the app but don't have an internet connection.

At the top of any playlist or album, just toggle the "Available Offline" button to on and Spotify will start downloading the included music. Any song that you've made available offline will have a tiny green icon next to its track name.

You can sync a maximum of 3,333 songs offline per device and stay offline for up to 30 days at a time, according to Spotify.

If you'd like to use Spotify as your sole way of consuming music, you can import downloaded tracks from your computer's hard drive, including what you have on iTunes. This can be useful if you own music that may not be available to stream on Spotify.

The ability to import your own music into Spotify requires a paid premium subscription. On Spotify's desktop app, open preferences and scroll down to Local Files. Select which sources you want Spotify to import tracks from, like your iTunes folder.

The Local Files tab under "Your Music" in the Spotify app will display all these tracks.

On the desktop, click the "Offline Mode" option under the main Spotify tab to only have the app show you music you have downloaded locally.

In the mobile app, tap the filter option at the top of a list (like your saved albums) and select "Available Offline" to only show offline tracks.

Spotify doesn't require you to download an app to listen to music. The service offers a convenient (albeit inferior) web player you can use to log in from any computer and access your account.

Spotify allows you to quickly switch between devices that are logged into your account and play music remotely. So if you have the Spotify app up and running on your Mac at home, you can open Spotify on your iPhone and control playback on your Mac.

The technology also works with a host of speakers, like those from Sonos, as well as with some newer TVs.

Spotify sounds fine by default for most people, but if you want to listen at a higher quality, you’ll be happy to learn that Premium subscribers can enable 320 kbps audio playback. (Spotify's default bitrate ranges from about 96 kbps to about 160 kbps depending on the device and connection.)

Enable the setting under "Music Quality" in Spotify's preferences. Be warned that steaming in higher quality will use more data, so be cautious if you're worried about using too much of your phone's data plan.

Spotify's desktop app has built-in lyrics support, which means you can play a song and read the lyrics without leaving the app. Lyrics playback can even sync up with the progress of a song, so you can sing along with your favorite artist.

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You can "touch preview" music in Spotify's iPhone app to get a quick listen of music without lifting your finger. It's a great way to explore a new playlist you may be interested in without opening it.

Unless you hide your activity, your profile displays your recently played artists and public playlists at: open.Spotify.com/user/

If you're unsure what your username is, go to this address and log into your account.

Did you know that Spotify has a built-in messaging tool for sharing music and communicating with other Spotify users?

When you go to share an album or playlist, select the "Send To..." option and enter the name of the Spotify user you're trying to reach. You can add text to accompany the message, and your inbox will show when the person has listened to the song you've sent them.

Other Spotify users can subscribe to your playlists. It's easy to invite them — just right click on the playlist and select "Share." Then send it to anyone on Spotify and they'll have the option to follow it.

If you want to make a playlist with someone else on Spotify, you can make it collaborative by clicking the little "..." icon next to "Following." Anyone who's editing the playlist will get a notification whenever music is added.

If you're dealing with playlist overload, organize them into folders to help make sense of the chaos. On the desktop, go to "File" and then "New Playlist Folder" to get started.

Looking for rock songs from 1983? How about songs with "Madonna" in the title, but not necessarily by the artist Madonna?

Spotify lets you chain together search filters on the desktop to get more exact results. So you could search for “title:Madonna," “album:madonna,” “artist:madonna" or something as specific as "genre:techno year:1990-1995."

If you'd rather not let the world see what you listen to, you can hide your activity by un-checking "Publish my activity on Spotify" in the desktop app's preferences.

You can also start a private listening session for temporary privacy under the main Spotify window from the desktop — good for naughty jam sessions.

If you want to make individual playlists private, you can do so by right clicking its title and selecting "Make Secret."

If you want to get a deleted playlist back, log into your account on Spotify's website and select the "Recover playlists" option.

Spotify's main Browse menu has a "Discover" tab that's personalized entirely for you based on what you already listen to. So instead of new releases that everyone else sees, you'll see new albums Spotify thinks you'll like.

Older albums and artists are also suggested based on artists you like.