Spotify has been in the news recently because of Taylor Swift's decision to leave the music streaming service, believing that she was getting a raw deal. But streaming music is all the vogue these days, and Spotify is just one service in a crowded field of music streaming services, which also includes Pandora, Rdio, and Grooveshark.

But Spotify rules the music streaming throne at present, and with the tens of millions of Spotify users using the service on a daily basis, third-party tools were not long in making an appearance. There are so many to choose from, and we have covered more than a few here on MUO in the past. But here are 5 great ones you should bookmark.

Your Year In Music

The first one comes courtesy of Spotify themselves, and it shows you what kind of music you have been listening to in the past year. Have you been a pop man this year, or were you more into classic rock? You get to see your most frequently played songs of the year, including the most played albums.

It's an interesting snapshot of the year's music and may throw up a reminder or two to start playing that Katy Perry song again.

Fresh Spotify [No Longer Available]

Look upon Fresh Spotify as the musical version of Google Alerts. If you sign in with your Google account, and then enter the artists you want monitored, you will be emailed whenever fresh music from that person appears on Spotify. Like Netflix, Spotify is very difficult to monitor for new stuff, so a service like this is immensely useful.

Another similar service is SpNotify.

Magnetify

This Chrome extension has two parts to it. First, you can enable it so that all Spotify links automatically open in the desktop app, NOT the web app. This is something which has annoyed me for a long time. I use the desktop app but all Spotify links were going straight to the web app. Magnetify stops this irritating behaviour.

Secondly, if you see an artist name on a website, right-click it and choose Magnetify from the right-click menu. You will then get a list of results, which you can play in Spotify. The extension remembers the last 10 you chose, in case you want to go back later and get one of the songs again.

The Pansentient League

This is a service with a very strange name, but nevertheless it is still a good service. It shows you all the new Spotify releases in the past 7 days, so you can see if there is anything good to listen to. You can choose your country and then make a search to see if your favourite artist has done anything new recently.

The Set Listener

Finally, we come to "The Set Listener" which constructs playlists of an artist, based on their last show. Enter the artist's name, and you will be told where their last gig was, and the songs they played. You can then make a playlist for Spotify. If you are a regular music concert goer, then you will absolutely love this one.

Which Spotify tools do you use to get the most out of the service?