5 Spotify settings you'll wish you changed sooner

Spotify's app is designed to quickly get you listening to something, presenting you with suggested playlists and podcasts upon launch. While this approach is effective, it may prevent users from exploring deeper features such as the settings menu. Leaving these settings at default can negatively impact your music streaming experience.

To improve your Spotify experience, five key settings are worth adjusting. These settings are available to Spotify Premium users and will not be offered to free users. To access these settings, tap your profile picture in the upper left corner of the app, then select Settings and privacy on mobile, or use the Ctrl + P shortcut (Cmd + comma on Mac) on desktop.

The app's settings can be divided into submenus on mobile, whereas the desktop app presents all controls in a long, scrollable list. One crucial setting is loudness normalization, which ensures all music plays at the same volume. However, this feature comes at the cost of reduced audio quality, as it compresses quieter songs or makes loud songs quieter.

If you prefer optimal audio quality, consider disabling volume normalization. To do so, navigate to Spotify's settings, find the volume normalization toggle in the Playback section under Volume controls, and disable it. Next, consider adjusting your shuffle settings to prevent clumping of songs from the same artist or album. Spotify offers two shuffle modes: Fewer repeats, which prevents random clumping but may alter your perception of randomness, and Standard, which maintains random play.

The latter may be more random, as suggested by Steve Jobs when introducing Smart Shuffle in the iPod Nano. Lastly, Spotify has recently made lossless audio available to Premium subscribers at no extra charge, allowing for high-resolution FLAC audio up to 24-bit/44.1kHz. However, for optimal results, you'll need quality playback equipment.