Spotify walkthrough (photos)

Upon installing Spotify's desktop application (Mac/PC), the software immediately goes to work importing your local music and playlists, including content from iTunes and Windows Media Player.

Spotify's 'What's New' panel is the default landing page when you open the application. From here you can browse Top Lists (pictured here), music shared from your friends (filed under Feeds), and popular new releases.

Many artist pages on Spotify include a full biography, along with images and related links out to similar artists.

A Related Artist tab offers a visual directory of other bands and artists that are commonly associated with the artist you're listening to.

Any track on Spotify can be shared across multiple social networks. The resulting link will pull up the full song stream for existing Spotify users, or prompt new users to download the software.

If you elect to connect your Facebook account to Spotify, you can quickly view your friend's favorite tracks and playlists.

If you prefer that your connected friends can't see all of your listening habits, you can selectively enable what songs and playlists they are able to view from your profile.

Apart from Spotify's unique music streaming features, the software can also be used as a handy manager of your local music files. By right-clicking on any of your imported local music files you can directly edit the ID3 metadata for any track.

Spotify allows you create playlists of your favorite songs--even those from its streaming catalog. Premium account holders can enable their playlists to cache offline on their computer or mobile devices. Your Spotify friends can also subscribe to playlists you make.

Spotify's Preferences pane can be found under the File menu. Here you can link your Last.fm account, dictate what files from your local collection are imported, and alter settings for stream quality, automatic volume leveling, and others.