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Switching from Rhapsody to Spotify; I just don't get Spotify's genre search

Switching from Rhapsody to Spotify; I just don't get Spotify's genre search

Rhapsody has many genres you can browse.  They are the usual categories you'd expect--Oldies, Rock, Classical etc.  When I attempt this in Spotify I'm frustrated.  First there are all the "mood" lists.  OK, it's cute, but not helpful for me.  So let's say I want Oldies.  Well that's not in the genre list.  Type it in the search box and you get albums with the word "oldies."  So that doesn't work.  Let's say I want Classical or Jazz.  Well yeah they're there, but I click them I first get a list of playlists--nice, but I really don't care about what others have created, though I may go back after creating my own and look for things to add to my list.  Then there's a list featured artists or composers.  Really I just like an alphabetical list of all Classical composers or Jazz artists.  Or if I simply could get an alphabetical list of all Jazz Albums, and a quick way to get to a letter and pick an album title.

 

Am I missing how to do this or does Spotify simply not offer this most rational way to find music?

Reply
1 Reply

@theoldman

 

Hello:

 

I am going to offer a few search suggestions to try and narrow down you search issues. When you state oldies, what genre of oldies? As oldies is a broad term now in music. Do you mean golden oldies of say the swing jazz era? Or oldies from the WWII era of big band golden oldies, or maybe oldies from the rag time era of music? Or the oldies from the beginnings of rock 'n' roll like Chuck Berry and Elvis? Oldies is a tough nut to crack when it comes to searching.

 

Here, try these search options just copy and paste into the search window of the Spotify desktop app and hit enter on the keyboard, and look under ARTISTS, ALBUMS, and PLAYLISTS areas: spotify:search:jazz you can also use keyword searches and do this by year like this spotify:search:year:1920-1950

 

 

Here is some general information on using search terms to try and find the music you are looking for:

 

You must start your search like this spotify:search: and then you can refine your searches in Spotify by adding extra terms into the search box. Note: search terms are not case sensitive.

Search by artist

artist:Radiohead – lists all tracks by Radiohead

Search by track

track:"My Sound" – lists tracks with the name My Sound

Search by album

album:Loveless – lists the album Loveless
album:”Many Faces Out Of Focus” – use quotes when the keyword contains spaces

Search by year

year:1969
year:1989-2013
year:1989-2013 NOT year:1993

Refine your search with AND, OR, and NOT.

Kyuss AND Green – lists results with keywords ‘Kyuss’ and ‘Green’
Zeppelin OR Floyd -- lists results with keywords 'Zeppelin' or 'Floyd'
Metallica NOT Anger – lists all Metallica tracks except with the word ‘Anger’

Instead of using AND or NOT you can also use a plus sign (+) or a minus sign (-).

Further search options
genre: Displays music in the genre matching keyword. See the list of all genres, for example genre:blues, genre:"rock and roll".
label: Displays music released by the label matching keyword.
isrc: Displays tracks matching ID number according to the International Standard Recording Code.
upc: Displays albums matching ID number according to the Universal Product Code.
tag:new - Lists the most recently added albums. ‘Tag’ won’t return results for any other keywords.

 

You have to use a keyword combination like this for the search to work right and be fine tuned to what you are looking for, like this:

spotify:search:genre:blues

spotify:search:genre:jazz

spotify:search:genre:ragtime

spotify:search:genre:classical

 

You can also try doing search patterns along these lines as well. Using keywords as before, copy and paste into the search window and hit enter on the keyboard, note you will have to look under the areas of ALBUMS and PLAYLISTS here, but these are usually decent playlists created, also albums of note, and pointed out by the Spotify service that are of note here:

The sound of [blues]

The sound of [jazz]

The sound of [ragtime]

The sound of [big band]

The sound of [classical]

 

If you notice here under the PLAYLISTS section of each of these The sound of [genres], there are sub divisions of other styles of music here under the main playlist title, these can be clicked on and which will take you to other styles of music along these lines. The sound of [genres] substitute the word genres with the genre word of music desired being searched about i.e. classical, jazz, blues, rock, etc.

 

Hopefully this information will work for you. I know all of this might seem allot at first, but some of the power users on Spotify use these search patterns to get at what they are looking for.

 

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