Yeah man, that resolution isn't a resolution unfortunately.
I know it's not peoples' fault trying to come up with solutions, but this thread is going in circles - I just saw today how old it is btw - holy sh*t this was started in 2014! Lol, no wonder people are so frustrated!
Flicking back a few pages you'll see I posted an official response from Spotify from this August saying something along the lines of "this isn't in our pipeline and you're not going to see it happen soon". So there's really no point in looking for workarounds or find a way to fix it. This thread has been answered, with the answer we didn't want, and might as well be declared over and shut down.
The only real 'solution' is to ditch Spotify for a service that does have this incredibly basic but important functionality (what kind of streaming service makes it *harder* to build your own playlists???) I went for Google Play Music because I'm pretty heavily into their ecosystem (as many Android users are), but I'm pretty sure you can do it with Apple Music too and probably others like Amazon, Deezer etc although I don't know. All of them give you trial periods though so you can check out which suits you best.
And I'm repeating myself again but since Spotify has a free tier it's really no biggie - you can access all their homegrown playlists if you want (they're still better than most, especially Discover Weekly, although that's really the last truly innovative idea they've had imo and that was what - 2015?). And you can transfer your existing playlists to a new service with various Android apps if you want to listen without the ads. But in my experience you won't actually miss it as much as you might think. I only open Spotify once or twice a month really.
Fact is, the streaming market is getting more and more competitive by the day, and with the Echo and Google Home and Apple's forthcoming smartspeaker looking like the future of casual listening at home - each of which are understandably more concerned with integrating their own streaming service than a third party app (and have a lot more money to fund a loss making service) - competition is going to get even more intense. Spotify should be going all out blazing to give their customers not just a reason to stay but a reason to love them over all others. Just one example - guy I worked with thought nothing of switching to Amazon Music when he got an Echo speaker for his birthday even though he previously didn't even know it existed, and since he uses it at home now it wouldn't make sense for him to have a different thing for his commute to the office. Brand loyalty doesn't come into it, people just need one good reason to move and they'll be off before you can blink.
Anyway, my overall point is that indifference to customers' suggestions on threads like this should be something Spotify should worry about a lot, as they're no longer the only player in town and anything that is losing them custom, no matter how small-seeming, should really, really matter. The only thing they're doing differently to reach more users right now is operating a free tier, and if they lose too many premium subscribers (whether that's due to an underdeveloped Android app or something different) that bubble is going to burst very quickly. Just looking back at posts in this thread over the years, I'm not the only person who has stopped paying for something that perhaps seems minor to them. There must be many many more out there who didn't even bother writing here.
This is turning out to be a longer post than expected, more like a mini blog, so sorry about that, but it is intended to be my last word on this thread of frustration!
tl:dr - Give it up guys, this is never gonna happen - put up with it or take your business elsewhere.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random