'Appears on' section now jumbled

[demaydadon]

Plan -Premium

Country - U.K

Device

IPhone & PC

Operating System

IOS and Windows 10

My Question or Issue

The 'appears on' section on an artist page used to be a good way to find the latest tracks an artist has appeared on, or guest featured in. The dates used to be chronological, with the newest showing up first. Now you've jumbled the whole lot and you have to search through upto 100's of features across the decade to find the '2020' ones. Same thing on the app and desktop version. Why have you done this and why is there no way of filtering?

[Mario]

Hey @demaydadon,

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community. 

The Appears On shelf used to be sorted chronologically by release date, which resulted in recent compilation lists being the primary focus. It is now sorted by popularity, so more relevant content (e.g. the most frequently looked up content in connection with the particular artist) should be prioritized in the view.

Hope you'll find this info useful. Let us know if there's anything else we can help with.

Have a nice day!

[Mrod84]

This is terrible, impossible to keep up with artists latest appearances.. If you have any interesst in i.e. rap/Hip-Hop where featurings are essential it's truly hopeless.. Try to find Snoop, Method Man or any popular feature artists latest appearance.... impossible....

Please re-evaluate this change.. I do get the list 'problem', but it's a much smaller problem in my opinion and a minor bother.. Maybe try separating lists out in something separate if at all possible..

[Mrod84]

Please vote here

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Discover-Option-to-order-the-quot-Appears-...

[future3]

This is a classic case of ‘Spotify isn’t Netflix’.

When you watch something on Netflix, you can’t easily abstract another similar show as each product or artist or director doesn’t always produce similar material. Sorting by popularity helps in this context to find relevant similar content based on what others have found.

I believe what Spotify have done here is used a similar principle, however this doesn’t work for music as it’s more predictable and artists produce the same or similar music throughout their lifespan. If they appear on a release in 2019, or an extremely popular release in 1999, it’s highly likely both are equally relevant as it’s the same music. In this case, the ‘relevant content’ issue isn’t an issue, so it’s simply a case sorting by date.

[Margip]

The problem for me is that the popularity filter makes actually interesting albums disappear in a sea of "Best of" or "Sad songs" or whatever compilations. What I want to find in the "Appears On" feature is which collaborations or features the artist did on other albums, not on how many Valentine compilations his one popular song features again and again.

So, before, when the "Appears On" used to be chronologically ordered, I scanned all the albums there and found the important ones. Next time, I just had to look if there were any new ones at the top since the last time I checked. It wasn't easy but it was workable.

Now I have to go and scan the thousands of albums every time I want to know if the artist has made a new collaboration. So for me, the problem is still there and is even made worse by ordering it by popularity.

I hope this makes sense and I hope you now see the value of rethinking this. It's sloppy and not user friendly. Who even bothers with the "Appears On" nowadays? I'm considering to let it go, though it would mean I would miss a lot of interesting music.

[barrymougie]

Bring back chronological sorting!! Tired of this being the new normal as popularity doesn't equate to what I like. My search is based off relating a time to the sound of music an artist was making during a given period. Or give us the option to sort by category on the desktop app and mobile version. These are simple fixes that bring greater functionality for advanced long time users. Thanks