Imagine accessing my playlists and using them in your classes immediately!

Intriguing concept?! I make a playlist and post the link, you click the link and BAM! It’s instantly available to put in your iPod; you can then teach my profile with those songs. Then you share one with me, or with other ICA members and we’ve all got loads of new music. Holy cow, what an amazing way to save tons of time and money!

I’ve got more information for you on Spotify! This is going to blow you away….it is a new way to acquire and use music for your classes (and for every other reason you love music), potentially saving you hundreds of dollars or more per year, not to mention many, many, MANY hours of your time searching for new music on your own, or even searching for and acquiring the music we tell you about! In a word….it is brilliant!

Last week I wrote about Spotify, a new music service that just was released in the US after a very successful few years of growth in Europe. I’ve been researching it more and more and the opportunities are simply amazing!

I’m learning more, but here are the benefits I see for Indoor Cycling Instructors like you:

• I (or any other instructor) can create a playlist and post it on Facebook, Twitter, my blog, my website, in an email, etc. (I can also post the accompanying profile, but that is separate from Spotify, but imagine having it all right there…)
• You, or any other instructor who is a Spotify member (free or premium member) can click that link and immediately you will have access to my playlist.
• You can put that playlist on your mobile phone (iPhone or Android) or even put it on your iPod (the latter is new). You do NOT have to pay for those songs – because you are just accessing the songs, you don’t own them. (But if you want to buy them, it’s really easy on Spotify).Yes it is legal – Spotify is paying for the rights to the songs – and they count on their premium memberships to more than pay for that.
• You take your iPhone or Android or iPod to your class and teach that class with those songs!
• That playlist is in your account, so if you wanted to make changes to it, you can.
• All of your own songs in your iTunes (or whatever music player you use) will also show up in your own Spotify account, so you can use those for your own playlists too if they are not on the primary Spotify library. (Note – they won’t be accessible to other Spotify users unless they are on the Spotify library however, but at least you can mix what you already have with what you can access from Spotify – ONLY about 13 million songs!)
• You take your Spotify with you wherever you go – and it doesn’t take up any space on your mobile phone or computer because it’s in the “cloud”. You can always have access to it as long as you have wifi (and even without wifi if you have the premium membership).
• You can share playlsits with your friends and students, and they can share theirs with you on just about every social media forum there is! Hmmm, or maybe we don’t want students to share their playlists that easily…..;-)

Here is another great feature we can use at ICA for Collaborative Playlists:

• I can create a collaborative playlist, for example I create a “Best Climbing Songs Ever” playlist and invite certain people (like all ICA members who are on Spotify – free or premium) to access that particular playlist.
• You then add your own favorite climbing songs.
• That collaborative playlists grows and grows – and anytime changes are made, you have immediate access to all the new ones added! No need to be sent a reminder or redo it. 
• We can have a collaborative Best High Cadence Climbing Songs, Best Fast Flat Songs, Best Cool-down Songs, Best High Energy Final Push to the Top of the Mountain songs, Best Introspective Mind-Body Endurance Songs, Best Sprint Songs, Best Pop Songs for Climbs, etc.
• We can collaborate on Theme Profiles – like I did for the 4th of July, Summer Songs, End of the World songs and more. Everyone can add their ideas to it!

Here is an example of sharing a profile: I made an End of the World as We Know It profile on my blog this past May for the doomsday prediction that the world was going to end on May 21. (Well, we’ve apparently got a redo for that doomsday coming next October, as well as 12/21/12, so we’ll all need this playlist again)! To test the Spotify playlists, I created the End of The World Spotify Profile. If you are a Spotify member, click that link and you should be able to open it up and have instant access to the songs. There are 22 tracks. (Note, this is not a “collaborative playlist” that the special invitees can make additions to, just a regular Spotify playlist. I found about 95% of the songs form my list on Spotify).

Imagine if that was a playlist to one of my Audio Master Classes? Imagine how EASY that would be? Imagine how much time you would save searching and searching for music! If you don’t like my music as much as Kala’s, for example, imagine if Kala posted her Spotify playlists here on ICA with more mainstream music that you can access immediately – how cool would that be?

Sooooooo, those are the amazing benefits. I know there are more, I’m just discovering them!

There are a few disadvantages (though not enough to not join Spotify):

• 13 million songs is a lot – more than any other music resource out there. But still, I’ve found a few that are not there. I made a playlist of the Friday Favorites so far and only found about 70% of them. I did find about 95% of the Monday Mainstream Music tunes however. They claim to have a goal to have every song in the world in their library eventually….
• You cannot access the songs to alter them in any way on Mixmeister. (But, you still can do that with your own songs in your own library)
• If you have the free account, you will be subject to ads. In fact, you may even have an ad play in the middle of your class if you have your mobile phone hooked up to the stereo and are using your Spotify playlist! The premium memberships do away with all ads.
• They are requiring that you get an invitation to join Spotify for the free membership. You can get one from someone who is already a premium member (premium members get 10 invites to give out) or you can ask Spotify for one. That is what I did and it took just over 24 hours and I received mine. who knows if this will take longer as they grow. They are trying to make it seem exclusive. (Of course, you can avoid all that if you join for either the $4.99 or $9.99 a month version).
• Only the $9.99 version lets you have offline access to the songs, meaning that if you want to use it in your club and there is no Internet access, then that is your only option. (But with the $ you save on music, it seems worth it to me).
• Sorry, it still isn’t available in some countries yet, like Australia. (They say their goal is to be in every country eventually).

So, what are you waiting for? At least try out the free version and see what it can do for you. Get Spotify Here.

Here at the Indoor Cycling Association I will create Collaborative Playlists for just about every situation you could use for your classes, and break them up into genres so if you hate electronic music you won’t waste your time scrolling through electronic songs to find what you like (or vice versa with pop music). This will be 1,000X better than any Top 200 Indoor Cycling songs list – because it will be constantly growing and tailored just to you! The Collaborative playlists will be just for ICA members (because on Spotify you have to individually designate who can access it). But well also make other playlists available to everyone!

I (and the other MIs who create profiles for ICA) will try to create Spotify playlists for as many of the profiles as possible. I can’t guarantee ALL of the songs will be in their library, but for the ones that won’t be, we’ll still do the same as we always do – give you the best sources to find it.

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE POSSIBILITIES??!!