The Broken Part of Spotify

September 09, 2012 | tech

Spotify’s Concept

I’ve had but one problem with Spotify for a long time: Its playlist philosophy. With Spotify, the playlist is what once was a mixtape. “I’ve made this awesome mix, check it out, it’s genre A and B, your favourite music and some new stuff you may like!” That’s fine and I use them like that, too.

Why it’s broken

But when you want to discover new music and/or new artists, that’s not what you need, and Spotify acknowledges that. That’s why when you click on an artist’s name, there’s his top five tracks and albums.
But this also is where hell begins. Take Elvis Presley. How many 50 song Best-Of albums do you need? Try listen to his albums in chronological order to understand how his music developed via Spotify. It’s impossible. I don’t have anything against Best-Ofs, they’re great for a quick overview of that artist’s work. But again: You don’t need twenty of them.

It’s even worse with The Velvet Underground. All the music is there, but it’s - you can’t even say sorted wrong, because it isn’t sorted at all. Again, “Top Hits”. Then, “Albums”. There’s four Best-Ofs. Then, two albums. Then four more Best-Ofs. By the way: The year in brackets behind the Album’s title is supposed to state the release date, I think. But since everything is digitally remastered by now and the most recent re-release date is shown, that information is useless.
Then, there’s a 3CD-release containing the first three albums. But without stating that anywhere but on the cover, and the albums being in.the.wrong.fucking.order.

I don’t need to continue, I think. Needless to say that the “Singles” and “Appears On” sections are useless.

I kind of need what iTunes offers with its “Smart Playlists”: An overview. And not of mixtapes, but a (small) selection of artists. When I scroll through my iTunes library, I always find something and I think “Oh, I should listen to that!”. There the “Smart Playlist” comes in handy. With Spotify, scrolling through the library is impossible because of its infinity. And “noting” an artists is impossible because of the lack of “Smart Playlists” or something similar.
You could say: Go to your “Starred” playlist and then look at the individual artists. And I think that could work. But for that to be feasible, the state described above desperately needs to change.

What we need

  • There should be an additional “Best Of” section so that the actual “Albums” section can become such.
  • The albums should be appear as albums, not as a bunch of tracks on some compilation. Spotify should get some interns to do that.
  • Albums should be sorted chronologically .
  • There should be a “Create a folder with this artist’s name and put all the albums in it” button at the artist’s page. That folder should be updated automatically, of course.

The Velvet Underground

In the meantime, I arranged the The Velvet Underground discography for you. You’re welcome.
I need to link to every album individually, by the way, because Spotify doesn’t allow me to share a folder.