If you’re unfamiliar with Spotify, it’s a subscription music service that lets you listen to all the music you want with either Pandora-like “channels” customized to your taste based on the music you like, or almost any specific album you can think of, without having to purchase it. There’s a free version with ads interspersed, or a paid version with no ads.
One of the benefits of the paid version is that you can download songs to your mobile device, for playback even when you have no internet (like when you’re in the subway). You “keep” them until you stop subscribing. However, figuring out how to download them for a whole album is less than obvious. Here’s the steps:
- Press the “three lines” icon in the upper left of the Spotify Window
- Choose Search
- Search for an artist or album
- Find an album you want
- Tap the three dots icon
- Tap Save to Playlist
- Tap the Plus button in the upper right
- Accept the default playlist name (the artist and album name) by pressing Create
- Tap the back button in the upper left until you see the “three lines” icon, and press that
- Choose Playlists, and tap the Playlist you just made
- Slide the “Available Offline” button at the top of the screen to “On”
- All the tracks on the album will start downloading. the “down arrow” icon next to each will turn green once it is available offline.
Spotify makes a great compliment, or alternative, to iTunes. Rhapsody is much older and very similar, and the process above is similar for downloading songs offline in Rhapsody. But the sound quality is somewhat inferior, and it is as not as well integrated into social media, if that matters to you. Also, Spotify has a capable Mac app, and Rhapsody does not. To get either to play to speakers via AirPlay, you can use Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil.