Examining a Playlist’s Anatomy

Playlists you create are all stored in the fluffy Internet cloud, on Spotify’s

servers — the large, always-connected computers that host content. So, if you

log into a friend’s computer that’s running Spotify, you can access your play-

lists at any time (as long as your friend is in one of Spotify’s launch countries,

or you’re a Spotify Premium customer and allowed to log in from anywhere in

the world).

Despite playlists being stored centrally in the cloud, your experience with

them may differ slightly, depending on whether you’re online or offline, the

country you’re in, or the computer or device you’re using. Here, I outline dif-

ferent playlist features and situations you may encounter:

✓ Synced playlists: Playlists I’ve already synced to my computer for offline

listening (a Spotify Premium feature; see Chapter 16 for more on how

to use it) have a symbol next to them shaped like a green circle with a

white down arrow inside it. I know that when I don’t have an Internet

connection, I’ll still be able to play tracks from these playlists from

within Spotify.

✓ Viewing playlists when offline: Playlists I haven’t previously synced

for offline listening, such as the one I selected in Figure 6-1, may have

some tracks displayed in gray and others in white. The white tracks

have a file symbol next to them, which means they’re local files stored

on my computer, and I can still play them, even when I’m not online. The

gray tracks are unplayable at the moment because I’m not connected to

the Internet and can’t stream them from Spotify’s servers. If a playlist

doesn’t contain any local files, then none of the tracks are playable.

✓ Regional differences: You may also see a gray track in a playlist when

you’re online — it means the song isn’t in Spotify’s database or isn’t avail-

able to play in your region. But it’s still playable if the file is locally stored

on your computer; you can tell whether you have a local copy of the track

by seeing whether the file symbol is displayed next to the track listing.

✓ Reaching your limit: Those of you on a free, ad-supported Spotify

Open plan can stream a track only five times before you have to buy

it or upgrade your account to Unlimited or Premium. After you hit the

five-play limit, an alert bar appears at the top of your Spotify window,

informing you that you’ve reached the play limit. A pop-up window that

includes links to either upgrade or buy the track also appears.

✓ Playlist authors: You can subscribe to other playlists created by other

Spotify users, as I explain in Chapter 10. After you do, their usernames

appear in gray next to the playlist names in the left sidebar. To access

more playlists by a user, select his playlists and click his username,

which appears at the top of the playlist. If he chose to enable Spotify’s

social networking features (see Chapter 9 for more on Spotify Social),

you see any other playlists he’s made public.

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