This post originally appeared on Spotiguide.

So you’ve created a killer Spotify playlist. But how can you share the playlist with friends, or make it available to a wider audience of Spotify users? There are a number of ways to do this, and the good news is that they’re all really easy.

The most basic way to share a Spotify playlist is to share its HTTP link or Spotify URI. To do this, either drag and drop or copy the link. To drag and drop, left-click and hold on the playlist name in your playlist pane on the left-hand side of the Spotify client, and drag into an email, Twitter message etc. To copy the link, right-click on the playlist name and select “Copy HTTP link” or “Copy Spotify URI”.

Spotify also has an in-built feature for sharing playlists (or artists, tracks or albums) via social networks. Just right-click on the playlist name and select “Share to”, then select Facebook, Twitter or Delicious.

Don’t forget that it you want your friends to be able to add and remove tracks to and from your playlist you’ll need to make it collaborative by right-clicking on the playlist title and selecting “Collaborative playlist”.

So it’s easy to share your playlists with friends, but what about sharing your hard work with the entire Spotify community?

As it happens, there are more than 20 websites dedicated to sharing Spotify playlists. To see a list of all of them go to Spotify’s Resources Page.

ShareMyPlaylists.com features more than 14,000 Spotify playlists, and you can browse by genres and ratings. The website has a community feel, with groups and user blogs to participate in. You can see Spotiguide’s playlists here.

Other Spotify playlist-sharing websites include the UK-based Spotifyplaylists, Spotylist, Shared Playlists, Spotyshare, and Myspotify.com.

Music, Technology Spotify

This post originally appeared on Spotiguide.

Spotify playlists are a great feature, but once you have more than a handful they become very difficult to organise. As of yet, there is no in-built feature to organise playlists, other than the very basic playlist panel on the left hand side of the Spotify client. However, there is a very simple workaround that can help.

The first thing to do is to make your playlist panel as big as possible. To do this, click the minimise button on the Now playing box at the bottom left of the screen, and right-click and delete any previous search terms that appear in the panel. You should be left with your Home, Radio, Play queue and Purchases links, and then your list of playlists.

Now to organise those playlists. Each playlist can be dragged and dropped into any order you choose, we’re going to suggest you use the time-honoured Artist A to Z sorting system, although of course you could sort by genre, label, hair length or anything else that floats your boat.

Make sure that each playlist is correctly named – just right click and select Rename. Here at Spotiguide we name our playlists by artist, and often include several albums by the same artist in a single playlist. If you’re really fussy, you might want to rename to put surnames first, so “Ryan Adams” becomes “Adams, Ryan”.

You can then drag and drop your playlists into A to Z order. Then, to add further organisation, you can create some blank playlists and use them as sorting labels. For example, click + New playlist, and name it “A”, “B”, “C” etc.

You can further sort your playlists into your own compilations, collaborative efforts, playlists created by friends, and more. Just create a blank playlist for each sorting category. You can use symbols such as * and – to make your labels stand out, for example “- – -My Playlists- – -” or “***Party Playlists***”.

The great news is that all of this reorganisation will automatically port across to mobile devices for Spotify Mobile users.

Until Spotify introduces an integrated playlist organiser, this is a simple and effective solution. Of course, once you begin to rack up hundreds of playlists you’re going to have to put in some effort to keep your playlist panel from becoming unwieldy. So spend a while spring-cleaning your playlist panel and you’ll soon be able to find your music faster and easier.

Music, Technology Spotify

This post originally appeared on Spotiguide.

According to research from Government-backed watchdog Consumer Focus, only 2 percent of UK adults are aware of Spotify. The research also found that 4 out of 10 people were unable to name any legal online music service. Of those that could name a service, 85 percent had only heard of iTunes and Amazon. Only 1 percent had heard of Last.fm or 7Digital.

The research, which was carried out among a “representative” selection of 1995 UK adults aged 15-plus, concludes that more must be done to make consumers aware of legal online music services in an effort to combat illegal downloading. That’s fair enough, but can it really be true that only 2 percent of UK adults are aware of Spotify?

Spotify has well over 2 million UK users – that’s more than 3 percent of the UK population right there. And the current invitation system is restricting the number of users in this country. Every Spotify user has probably got at least a handful of friends and family who they’ve told about Spotify, but who haven’t yet signed up. So the real number of UK adults who have heard of Spotify is actually much higher than the percentage figure offered by this research.

The problem comes with the fact that the survey covered that “representative” selection of the population. Among that selection would no doubt have been many people who had no interest in either the internet or music. Those people are about as likely to illegally download music as they are to pop to the moon for a platypus sandwich.

The survey would have been much more useful if it had covered internet users, or more specifically internet users who consume music online. Among their number, it’s likely that a vast majority would have heard of Spotify, and the other online music services. Whether they are likely to use them rather than illegally downloading is another matter.

The chief executive of record industry trade body the BPI, Geoff Taylor has criticised the tax payer-funded research, and is quoted in The Telegraph as saying, “It’s just not credible to suggest that people who are downloading illegally haven’t heard of iTunes, Amazon or other legal music services.”

The BPI and Ovum launched separate research on the same day concentrating on how UK Internet Service Providers could launch bundled digital music services. The BPI report concludes that online music services could earn UK ISPs £100 million by 2013.

Music, Technology Spotify