• Favorite Apps Include Spotify Playlist
• Forever Favorites Spotify

My friend (and 9 Clouds’ resident tech wizard), Allen Day, has taught me a lot about getting the most out of the Internet.

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Recently, I asked him about some lesser-known Spotify features. Here are some things Allen said you should definitely be aware of while you listen.

• Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Listening is everything - Spotify.
• It means that you can easily import music from Shazam into Spotify. After you sync the two apps, try using Shazam to identify a song. You’ll see an arrow sign next to the play button. Choose Spotify in the drop down menu to play it in the app. The feature is available for both iPhone and Android. Listen To Non-Spotify Music On Spotify.
• Spotify is a digital music service that gives you access to millions of songs. Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need. Listening is everything - Spotify.
• With Spotify, you can listen to millions of songs and podcasts for free! Listen to artists you love and enjoy music in Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, and many more languages. Listen to your favourite song, artist, or album - Discover and listen to your favourite podcasts across Music, Educational, Games, Lifestyle & Health, and more - Make and share your own playlists - Choose your preferred.
• Most major apps include code that comes directly from Facebook—which means even a small flaw can upend the entire app ecosystem. “Pretty much all these apps—Pinterest, Spotify, a lot of.

My Top 8 Spotify Hacks (by Allen Day)

1. Collaborative Playlists

I started using Spotify for shared playlists while getting to know my now-wife. We later used one for our wedding.

Collaborative playlists are a great way to mark an occasion. At 9 Clouds, when Catherine was concerned she listened to too much Maroon 5, the team rallied together and built her a playlist.

How to Do It

Want to collaborate on a playlist?

Just right-click on the playlist, and choose Collaborative Playlist. Then, share it with your future collaborators.

2. Organizing Your Playlists with Folders

If you’ve been using Spotify for a while, you’ve probably accumulated quite a few playlists.

Did you know you can organize them into folders?

I didn’t, either . . . until I grabbed my wife’s phone to change up the music on a road trip and saw how organized her lists were compared to my mess.

Favorite Apps Include Spotify Playlist

Mind. Blown.

You can make as many folders as you want to organize your playlists so they make sense for you. Break them down by theme or genre — make a collection of playlists for the gym, driving, you name it.

How to Do It

Just right-click on a playlist, and select Create Folder. Once you’ve created your folders, you can drag playlists into them.

Note: You cannot create or organize folders on your phone; you’ll have to use the desktop app. Once they’re set up, though, you can still see and use them on your phone.

3. Customizing Playlists with Your Own Album Art

You’ve put a lot of listening time into your favorite playlists.

Whether you want to keep them private or share them with the world, those playlists deserve to look great and stand out in your Spotify app.

The ability to update cover art and playlist descriptions used to be limited to featured partners, but now it’s available for all playlists — public or private.

How to Do It

Open your playlist in the desktop app. Click on the cover art to upload your own photo, or click on the description to write a new one.

4. “Daily Mix” Playlists

Not sure what to listen to? Check out your “Daily Mix” playlists.

“Daily Mix” is a series of playlists with nearly endless playback that combines your favorite tracks with new songs Spotify thinks you’ll love — minus the effort that goes into creating the perfect listening session.

Spotify creates up to six playlists for you based on your own listening history. Each playlist is differentiated by a unique color and generally spans a single genre or theme.

When you’re playing one of your daily mixes, a couple new icons will appear in your player. You can ❤️ your favorite songs to add them to your Liked Songs.

5. Yearly Reflection: “Your 2019 Wrapped”

Each year, Spotify marks the holidays with a recap of what you listened to that year. For 2019, Spotify has released “Your 2019 Wrapped.”

Sign in to see your most-listened-to songs, albums, and artists in 2019.

Here at 9 Clouds, we love to compare stories and screenshots of our own “Years Wrapped.” Here’s mine from way back in 2017 (I listened to a lot of Alphaville — but in my defense, they released a new album for the first time in years, and I got to see them in concert after a 20-year wait):

6. Podcasts

The podcast industry has never been bigger. Podcasts have gone mainstream . . . which means Spotify is not just a music player anymore.

Forever Favorites Spotify

For years, I’ve tried recommending podcasts to friends and acquaintances. Too often, the response is that the podcast sounds interesting, but they don’t know how to use podcasts.

Now, I can just point people to Spotify. While it’s not my podcast app of choice, I am extremely excited to see Spotify offering them as a gateway to podcasts.

7. “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar”

Spotify has a couple of weekly playlists custom-tailored just for you.

Every Monday, the first thing I listen to is my “Discover Weekly” playlist. This playlist is a mix of familiar tunes from your own playlists, plus new music Spotify thinks you’ll like. “Discover Weekly” tends to be pretty hit-or-miss, but it hits enough that I keep coming back.

The other weekly playlist I look forward to is the “Release Radar.” Similar to “Discover Weekly,” this playlist is based on your listening history. It features the newest releases by artists you listen to or follow.

If you haven’t already, search Spotify for “Release Radar” and “Discover Weekly.” Once you find yours, click the Follow button to add them to your playlists for easy access. They update every Monday and Friday, respectively.

8. Creeping on Your Friends

Want to see what your friends or coworkers are listening to?

Check out the Friend Activity panel in Spotify on your Mac or PC desktop. (Don’t see it? Turn on the right sidebar under the View menu.)

Of course, this goes both ways — your friends can see what you’re listening to, as well.

If you don’t like the idea of broadcasting your listening preferences to your friends, you can disable it in the Spotify settings. Toggle on Private Session to temporarily hide what you’re listening to, or disable Share my listening activity on Spotify to turn off your public activity for good.

Bonus: What Does Spotify Suck At?

Sure, we’re biased — we know a thing or two about superb targeting online.

Still, despite its awesome data, Spotify’s ad targeting could use a lot of work.

Only Spotify would advertise Chick-fil-A to me in a town hundreds of miles from the nearest restaurant — and always while I’m running. It should totally know I’m running because of data . . . and my playlist with the word Running in the title. C’mon, guys.

…Okay, It’s Matt Again Now

Thanks, Allen!

Before we put this post together, I didn’t know a thing about the “Release Radar,” and there are a few more features in here I definitely have to check out.

If you want hacks for more than just Spotify, 9 Clouds is always learning about new things and then passing that knowledge along. To get articles about marketing and playing better online, subscribe for our blog’s email updates.

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Google’s Android is a powerful and versatile mobile operating system that people have found all sorts of neat stuff to do with. This is especially true on Android-powered tablet computers, which combine the convenience of touch-screen controls with the punch of desktop-grade capabilities. But with a whole network of apps out there on the Google Play Store, which ones do you choose?

To answer that question, we combed some of the leading tech publications out there on the web. What we came back with is a list of 15 various Android tablet apps that the experts trust most, for the functions that people ask for the most, including:

• Texting and messaging your friends
• Getting weather reports
• Enhancing your device’s camera
• Listening to music or podcasts
• Keeping track of events with a calendar
• Sending and receiving e-mails
• Saving your device’s battery life
• Keeping your device secure
• Increasing your productivity
• Having fun with games
• Getting up-to-date news
• Editing photos and videos
• Watching TV, movies, and other videos
• Preparing to travel out-of-town
• Finding your way with GPS and other navigation tools

You may not need all of these apps all of the time, but they’re among the best at what they do. So if you have them on your device, you’ll be set for all sorts of situations and tasks. You may not even have to download some of them – they may come pre-installed on your device!

Best Android tablet texting and messaging app: Facebook Messenger

Already one of the biggest online social networks in the world, Facebook released their own chat app in mid-2011, though you don’t need a Facebook account to use it if you’re on an Android device. And it’s packed with features that go way beyond sending simple text messages to your friends and others. You can make voice and video calls, have private conversations, let friends know where you are, play games, share a day in your life in photos and videos, and so much more!

Price: free
Download: Facebook Messenger

Honorable mentions:

Snapchat – a pioneering private message service where text and video messages automatically erase themselves shortly after they’re viewed.
Instagram – a very popular social network that consists of sharing, captioning, and commenting on photos and short videos.

Best weather app for Android: Weather Underground

Weather Underground employs a community of weather enthusiasts across the globe to give you weather forecasts as close to home as you can get them. But that’s not even close to all it can do. Interactive radar and satellite maps, severe weather alerts, interactive forecast and precipitation charts, and tons of other weather-related information. You can even make your own report to help make your local forecast more accurate!

Visit our Weather Underground course for an intro to some of the cool stuff this app is capable of!

Price: free; premium features cost money
Download: Weather Underground

Honorable mention:

Google News – your personalized news and weather, all in one place!

Best Android camera app: Microsoft Office Lens

This is a handy app that powers up your camera into a full-fledged scanner. Scan pictures of documents, whiteboard doodles, business cards – any kind of written material, really – and quickly digitize them into Word, PowerPoint, or PDF files. Then save them on your local device, or to Microsoft OneNote or OneDrive if you need to collaborate.

Price: free
Download: Microsoft Office Lens

Best music app for Android: Spotify

One of the giants of music streaming, Spotify actually works better on tablets than it does on phones! Instead of having to listen to an artist, playlist, or album on shuffle, you can play any song at any time you want from Spotify’s vast library. You can also create your own playlists or “radio station” mixes, follow your favorite artists and groups, and more!

Want to see more of what you can do with Spotify? Check out our Spotify course!

Price: free; premium features cost money
Download: Spotify

Honorable mentions:

Pocket Casts – one of the best podcast apps for Android, with great visuals and powerful organization and playback tools, but it costs $2.99.
Google Play Music – listen to ad-supported custom mixes, store your own collection of music, or upgrade to get on-demand access to songs.

Best calendar/schedule app for Android tablets: Evernote

Evernote is, quite simply, the app that keeps everything you ever need to remember in one place. Need a little mental note for something? Write it down, take a picture of it and add a caption, start a checklist, and more! Then sort your notes with tags and “notebooks” so you can find them again, and set yourself time-based reminders so you actually get them done on time.

If you’d like a guided tour of Evernote, our Evernote course has you covered!

Price: free; premium features cost money
Download: Evernote

Honorable mentions:

Trello – a task-oriented organization system that lets you delegate jobs, set reminders, add comments, and more! We use it at TechBoomers!
Any.do – if you want a calendar, to-do list, reminder service, and a daily planner all in one app, this is a great one too!

Best e-mail app for Android: Inbox by Gmail

The appeal of Inbox by Gmail is that it’s an email app that’s functional, but also does most of the heavy lifting for you. It organizes your emails into “bundles” based on similar topics, so all of your emails regarding special offers, shopping, travel plans, and so on show up in the same place. Plus, you can view photos and other important details in emails without even opening them. Plus, if there’s an email that reminds you that you need to do something, you can set a timer for when you want to be nudged again.

Price: free

UPDATE: As of April 2, 2019, this app is no longer available.

Best battery saver app for Android tablets: Greenify

There’s almost nothing that will slow your tablet down and drain its battery faster than forgetting (or not even knowing) that you have a power-hungry app running in the background. Greenify can fix that by helping you to identify apps that are still running but aren’t making themselves particularly useful. Then, you can use it to put those apps in “hibernation,” shutting them down and preventing them from running again until you explicitly choose to start them. That way, your tablet only runs the functions that you need it to, taking a load of its processor and battery!

Price: free; can make donations to developer
Download: Greenify

Honorable mention:

DU Battery Saver – optimizes your tablet’s battery usage with just one tap, getting rid of junk files and shutting down power-consuming apps so they don’t overheat your device!

Best Android tablet security app: LastPass

One of the big dilemmas of cyber-security is the “password paradox”: you want to make your passwords unique and difficult-to-decipher to keep your online accounts from being hacked, but then how are you supposed to remember them all? LastPass is here to help by storing all of your passwords in a vault that only opens with a master password. So you can go ahead and create as many crazy passwords as you want for all of your other accounts (and LastPass can help you with that); as long as you remember the master password, LastPass will remember the others so you don’t have to.

Price: free; premium features cost money
Download: LastPass

Honorable mention:

Avast Mobile Security – this app not only protects and cleans out hazardous files from your device, but it also includes other features such as call blocking, web security, Wi-Fi safety, and more!

Best Android tablet app for productivity: Google Drive

At its core, Google Drive is like a second hard drive for your tablet. You can move files on your tablet into Google Drive; that way, they don’t take up space on your tablet, are safe if your tablet breaks, and can be accessed from anywhere else you can log into your Google account. But Google Drive can do so much more. You can actually create new office documents right on Google Drive, and share files with friends and colleagues. You can even edit some files at the same time as those you share them with – great for team collaboration!

Our Google Drive course can show you how easy it is to get this app up and running!

Price: free
Download: Google Drive

Honorable mentions:

Dropbox – similar to Google Drive, but works better with Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) files. Also includes a document scanner. TechBoomers approved!
AirDroid – a neat app that allows you to control your tablet from another computer!

Best game for Android tablets: Minecraft

Since its release in mid-2011, Minecraft has gone on to become one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed video games ever. Enter a vast, pixilated world where there are few limits besides your imagination! Gather various types of resources and use them to build whatever strikes your fancy. Or challenge yourself to build shelter and stay alive as you fight off hordes of monsters. Or just play around in worlds that others have built. In Minecraft, if you can dream it, you can build it!

Price: $6.99; some additional content costs money
Download: Minecraft

Honorable Mention:

Asphalt 8: Airborne – a racing game featuring real-world luxury sports cars and motorcycles, as well as courses inspired by real-world locations!

Best news app: Flipboard

Flipboard is your news, your way. Pick what you’re interested in reading about, and Flipboard will pull stories from top publishers and social media websites around the world into a custom digital magazine that you can flip through with ease. From there, you can further personalize your news feed by filtering stories based on their source, author, tags, and more!

Price: free; registration for service required
Download: Flipboard

Honorable mention:

ESPN – if it’s happening in the wide world of sports, you’ll know about it through the ESPN app.

Best Android photo/video editing app: Snapseed

While it’s easy to think Adobe has the market cornered on multimedia creativity software and apps, Google’s Snapseed proves that isn’t quite the case. It’s a simple yet powerful photo editing app with over 25 filters and tools to help your pictures look their best. You can even save a set of filters that you like and apply them to photos that you take in the future!

Price: free
Download:Snapseed

Honorable mention:

Adobe Photoshop Express – a rich photo editing app with over 60 filters and correction tools. Easily share your creations to social media with it, too!

Best TV/movie/video app: Netflix

Watch the best in movies and television wherever you take your tablet with Netflix. With an average of over 2000 titles in each of its media libraries worldwide, you can watch yesterday’s classics or today’s blockbusters and must-see TV whenever you want and as often as you want. And it only costs a small monthly fee.

Our Netflix course has all the basic details if you’re interested.

Price: free; service subscriptions cost money
Download:Netflix

Honorable mention:

YouTube – the pioneering video-sharing app has lots of great music, movies, TV episodes, and original works… if you don’t mind the ads!

Best travel app: Uber

Need to get somewhere in a hurry, but have limited transportation options? Put the Uber app on your tablet and you’ll be able to hail one of Uber’s taxis from pretty much anywhere you are, anywhere in the world. The app will tell you exactly where your taxi is at all times, and how much your ride will likely cost you. Plus, it will automatically charge your credit card when the ride is done – just get out at your destination and carry on!

We have a course on how Uber works if you want to see it in action.

Price: free; services provided through the app cost money
Download: Uber

Honorable mention:

DuoLingo – one of the easiest and quickest ways to learn up to 15 new languages if you’re going somewhere where you don’t speak the native tongue.

Best GPS and navigation app: Google Maps

Know where you’re going, no matter where you are on Earth, with Google Maps. Browse and switch between topographical and satellite imagery maps, and get information about local points of interest. You can even tell Google Maps where you are and where you want to go, and it will show you how to get there using various forms of transportation – and even how long it will likely take!

If you have trouble getting around Google Maps, our Google Maps course can point you in the right direction.

Price: free
Download: Google Maps

Honorable mention:

Transit – get real-time updates on the transit system in any city so you’ll never miss a bus or train again! Also includes trip-planning functions!

Those are some of the best apps for doing cool things on your Android tablet!