How do I add music to Spotify?

Spotify makes it easy to create playlists and discover new artists, but what about the precious MP3s lingering on your machine? Wouldn’t it be great if you could roll those into Spotify too? Well, you can: here’s how to add music to Spotify.

This might sound basic, but the first step is to find the local files you want to add. After that’s done, it’s worth moving them to a new, easily accessible folder on your desktop or in Music. (Bear in mind that, if you move the folder, you’ll have to go through the process below again.)

Note that all the instructions below assume you have Spotify installed on your PC or Mac.

How to add music to Spotify

Open Spotify, click the dropdown arrow in the top-right of the window and select Settings.

In the Settings page, scroll down to the Local Files sub-heading. This will give you options to automatically import songs from iTunes (if installed), Downloads and My Music.

You can suck in all songs from these sources by toggling their on/off switch, but you may end up with a lot of cringeworthy songs from ten years ago cluttering up your Spotify. A tidier route is to create a new dedicated folder and click “Add a source”.

Select a folder (in a bold creative move, I named mine “Music for Spotify”) and it will appear in the “Show songs from” list. Simply toggle the slider to start enjoying your old MP3s through the Spotify interface.

But the good news doesn’t end there: you can even “transfer” the local files to your smartphone to listen to while you’re out and about.

The process is simple: open the Spotify app on your phone and tap the playlist or album containing your imported songs. Download the playlist by toggling the slider and, finally, you’ll be able to listen to that 2005 Britney Spears mixtape on the move…

Final note: when you add MP3s to Spotify, they aren’t re-encoded. That means that the quality should be exactly the same as when you play them through iTunes or a different media player.

However, some users have reported that local files actually sound louder than normal Spotify tracks. If that’s an issue for you, go to Settings and then toggle the “Normalize volume” option under the Music Quality subheading. This will set the same volume level for all songs, whether they’re local or not. 

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