Happy birthday @bobdylan! 71 tracks to celebrate an incredible 71 years. http://t.co/P6YZfK0G
The Spotify Play Button can power up your website or blog with music! Learn how to get started with this tutorial - http://t.co/0vueoqNo
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Swedish Spotify users - win an exclusive meet & greet with @justinbieber and tix to his show! Enter now - http://t.co/0ZjOC57p
My favourite Australian artist is ________________________
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Kia Ora New Zealand. Spotify here. http://t.co/ZeSJbbpi
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RIP Robin Gibb, he was a truly talented songwriter. http://t.co/k24MzEpE
Search Smart
One of the core features of Spotify is searching. You just type the name of an artist or a song into the search bar and off you go. Normally that’s all you need to get the Spotify experience: you know, when you think of some music and literally seconds later you’re listening to it.
There are cases, though, when you need to refine your queries. Perhaps you don’t want to search for “madonna”, because you’re not looking for the artist Madonna, but rather songs whose titles include the word “madonna”. Then you can search for “title:madonna”.
Similarly, you can search for “album:madonna” and “artist:madonna” to find only matching albums and artists, respectively.
Refining your Searches
To further refine your searches (or to indulge in some nostalgia or browse through a new musical genre), you can search for a year, a range of years, or a genre - ie: “year:1969″, “year:1994-1996″ or “genre:soul”.
Logically, you can use combinations to search for techno from the early ’90s or Grateful Dead songs from the late ’60s. Simply type in “genre:techno year:1990-1995″ or “artist:”grateful dead” year:1965-1970″. In the latter example, you see how you can use quotes to control to what parts of the search string a keyword applies.
Searching by Genre
Searching by genre, such as “genre:jazz”, is very popular but a lot of people are unaware of what genres they can search for. To help you get more out of your searches we’ve put together a list of all the genres in Spotify. Some of the genres contain two words in which case you need to add quotation marks to the search for it to work properly. For example to find Appalachian Folk music you need to search for “genre:”Appalachian Folk”".
Have a look at this Google Doc to see all 944 genres listed. Not all of them may be available since we may not have all genres of music yet but you should be able to find the majority of them.
Searching by Record Label
Searching for a label is just as easy; just type “label:” before the label name in the search box. An example would be label:warp. If the label you’re searching for contains a space, you must enclose it in quotation marks, like in label:”rough trade”.
36 responses to “Search Smart”
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This is very helpful, but I think everyone would benefit greatly if there was a way to browse through genre's through the interface of the app without having to know about the secret google doc list of them.
So why does it stop working correctly after 4 searches? I had a list of artist-song combinations I wanted to add to a Playlist and after I found the first four, all I found was "song recorded in the style of." The songs were there - I found them by searching for the artist - but it was time-consuming. Is there a reason your search method works that way?
seriously
Great idea! Too bad it doesn't work. I just tried searching for several genres... first including the year and then taking the year out. Got absolutely nothing.
Seriously, this method of searching is ridiculous. You're putting all the burden on the users, when you could easily create a UI that simplifies everything.
What ^ kompakter said!!
How bout you go in and fix every single release date to the correct year? About 50% of the albums on Spotify have the incorrect release date attached. I assume the release date that's posted for each album is actually the year it was added to the Spotify library? Searching for year ranges is a complete waste of time with the way the system is setup today.
I know we're not talking about a perfect scenario here as it's ever evolving, but in addition to agreeing with everyone above (the idea that these genres and years should be available to access on the application rather than having to guess at or type them in). ALSO, another issue. Even if you do a search, for example, like "year:1992-1996" it's not really a true list of songs from those years. If you look at that search, for example, the 2nd and 3rd songs are from the Grease Soundtrack, followed by Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" a little further down. These songs were in different compilations or greatest hits that were re-released during the years of 1992-1996, even though they did not originally come out then. For the future / long-term project, Spotify could add another category to the back-end of their database that contains the original year of each song. That way, regardless of what album they appear on -- original, greatest hits, compilation, etc. -- it would provide a better user experience. Overall though, no major complaints with the service, it's still better than most out there.
Wow. Some people are just never satisfied.
Something is wrong here.... genre:"contemporary country" year:2008-2011 returns plenty of results. genre:"contemporary country" year:2009-2011 returns nothing. same thing for genre:country year:2008-2011 (returns) genre:country year:2009-2011 (no results) Is this just a bug?
paying $10 a month for a service, you'd expect it to have basic features like correct dating (which is very impt) in cataloging music...
To clear the confusion about the search: You can't add any spaces in your search and everything has to be lower-case for it to work. Hope that clears up why some searches are buggy. Example: Wrong: genre:alternative pop/rock; Genre:AlternativePop/Rock; Genre:alternative pop/rock Right: genre:alternativepop/rock
Can we also search for Starred tracks? Tip: You can build a query via http://sss.pansentient.com/
I have never been able to get genre:rock to work among others. I have tried from two different Macs running Chrome browser. However, genre:soul works just fine. Not using caps. Thanks! Overall I love the service.
yeah, doesn't work. Why isn't there a "genre:alternative"????
This is terrific. However, it still needs some refinement. First few times it didn't work at all on W7 PC, then began working fine. Couldn't get it to search at all on Android phone. Don't give up!
Yes I agree, the search functionality is a little off but once you get the hang of it, it's much easier afterwards. Mostly on my Droid but no probs at all via pc. I'm going to print out that Google doc and have myself a scavenger hunt later! :D
You need to add Dubstep as a genre. :)
When I type "genre:"rock"" nothing comes up. I don't think the search is working.
I understand that the advanced search is powerful, but as a user, it is difficult to use. I would love a way to simply browse through a GUI.
A tutorial for how to search for classical music on Spotify: http://www.spotifyclassical.com/2011/07/how-to-search-for-classical-music-on.html
By the way, I think it takes less time to design an advanced search page for the Spotify client, than to write up a post telling the users how to do it all by themselves.
Using Grateful Dead as an search example is a bad idea: 1, You tagged them wrong. There are "Grateful Dead" and "The Grateful Dead" on Spotify, same band, different catalog, and amazingly, they are not even "related artists". 2, GD is a live band. Spotify have an awesome catalog of their live recordings, including all 36 Dick's Picks, and all tracks are tagged properly with live dates. So in this case, simply search for "grateful dead 1972" is better than "grateful dead year:1972".
I agree with above comments. Spotify need to start using original release dates, instead of re-release dates or others! Also, a drop down menu for advance search.
Yeah, this type of search function seemingly has some issues to be worked out. When I do a search for a label (label:"sub pop records") I get a single album/artist displayed, but the artists list above that shows the acts signed to that label. So Spotify kind of gets what I'm looking for, but doesn't display it very well.
The genre search does not work. Your product sucks. The only thing you have up on Pandora is the ability to hear full albums from a specific artist. But you are losing to them in every other facet of the business. Back to Pandora for me. I've heard enough crappy voice over ads today.
Hmm. This product does not suck. And there's always room for improvement. Anyways, haven't had a chance to work with the search yet, but if it's as faulty as some of the comments have mentioned, then hopefully this is being fine tuned. I'm liking the ability to search by year/years, that's a rad feature. Another suggestion I'd like to add for playlists is the ability to preface a mix with some text (optional of course).
How about adding a feature to sort playlists and local files in the Spotify app by genre? Would be great!
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2011/08/top_5_reasons_spotify_kind_of.php
There should be a way to add custom fields, such as genre, to the general Library filter sorting bar. I've meticulously tagged my entire library of music based on genre so that if I ever want to, let's say, play a random playlist of Metal/Industrial, i can do it in one click. Quite frustrating to have such a jumble of music as the default when this type of sorting is freely available in iTunes.
you guys should have a page focused on user suggestions, unless there's one i'm not finding?
This search function just simply does not work. I have tried putting in genre:appalachian folk just like it says in this "tutorial." I have tried all kinds of different ways to put it in (no caps/spaces, quotation marks/no quotation marks, etc.) yet it still does not work. I am still enjoying my premium membership; however, there are DEFINITELY some things that must be worked out. Its especially frustrating that this site gives information that is simply not accurate.
Searching year seems to work great but the genre search is very broken. Im trying to use the search terms from the google doc and at least half of the ones i have tried dont work. That's a little frustrating...
Okay, I got it. Almost everyone is upset because the search feature in Spotify is unforgiving and demanding as far as proper formatting of the search request. To greatly relieve the drudgery this forces on the user, try a web-connected app called "Spotify Super Search." Problem solved for me. http://sss.pansentient.com/
Searching for years after 2008 and in a genre don't work. Looking for music in a genre from the current year seems like an obvious thing to do. Coming from every other music service ever, having no robust genre browsing is just plain weird.
Searching for genres after the year 2008 returns NOTHING. Anyone have a solution? For example genre:rap year:2011 returns no hits, yet genre:rap year:2008 returns appropriate hits.