Spotify is one of the world's most popular music streaming services, with 157 million active users ( as of December 2017 ) and over 35 million songs. Originally born in Sweden, it quickly gained popularity as it expanded outside of its home country. Frankly, it's hard to believe that Spotify hit U.S. shores almost seven years ago. For many who were accustomed to mainstays at the time like Pandora and iHeartRadio, Spotify represented something different. And to some of us, its disparity to those other services was off-putting. I was one of those people who was initially excited about it, then quickly became frustrated with it when I tried to use it like Pandora, which was my go-to back then. Fast forward to the very recent past and I decided to give Spotify another try — at the behest of Artem, no less. When I sat down to figure out how to best utilize it, I wanted to learn how to not only get going, but how to use Spotify to the best of its abilities in both the free ...
