Music

Spotify continues to add features, making listening to streaming music more versatile across the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Sometimes there's one track that doesn't fit into an album or radio station, or that you just can't stand to hear. Hiding the song will prevent Spotify from playing it automatically by skipping that track. Once a song is hidden, Spotify will ignore that song in the album, radio station, or daily mix where it was hidden.

With Shazam linked to Spotify's massive library of content, playing tracks from Shazam is seamless. Another reason to link your Spotify account to Shazam is to keep a running playlist of the songs you've identified. Sometimes this feature doesn't work as expected, and the Spotify playlist My Shazam Tracks does not update properly.

Shazam quickly identifies unknown songs, shows, movies, and more. All the Shazam app needs is to listen to the mystery audio for 10 seconds before returning a match from its database. Shazams are collected in the app, and to listen to full tracks Shazam can be linked to a music subscription service such as Spotify. Once Shazam is linked to a Spotify account, available tracks can be played right from the Shazam app, or added to Spotify playlists.

The Spotify music player can organize and play all of your streaming and locally stored music in one place. Since iTunes has been phased out by Apple, media players such as VLC and Plex are gaining in popularity. For Spotify Premium subscribers looking to consolidate into one player, the Spotify desktop app is a free download. Spotify makes it possible to add local files for playback on the computer and the iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.