Bug for sorting on track title

[jorispet]

Operating System

(Android and Windows 10)

My Question or Issue

When sorting a playlist alphabetically on track name, there seems to be a strange bug when it comes to classical music where different movements of a piece are designated Roman numerals (I, II, III, IV etc.). Quite often (but strangely enough not always), these are sorted kind of randomly (see attachment for example).
Can this bug please be repaired, since it really messes up a playlist with classical music.

kind regards,

Joris Peters

[Mihail]

Hey there @jorispet,

Thanks posting here in the Community! We'll gladly shed some light on the situation.

This is expected behavior when you sort the tracks alphabetically. Since roman numerals are represented by alphabetical characters they are also encompassed by that function.

An easy way to avoid this would be to create a playlist by adding songs in the order by which you want them to be played and then sorting it by date they were added.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

Have a nice day!
 

[jorispet]

@Mihail Thanks for your reply! However, it doesn't make much sense to me. When you order Roman numerals alphabetically, it should work just fine in most cases, since the alphabetical order of I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII etc. is exactly right with the exception of IX which will be placed between IV and V.

So, I still think there is a bug in the sorting algorithm of Spotify, especially since there seems to be no logic to the ordering of tracks with Roman numerals.

Could you please look into this again, since it seems to me to be a very basic feature to correctly sort alphabetically. If you need any specific examples, you can browse through this playlist:

[jorispet]

Is there no-one from Spotify support that can look into this problem? I feel this should be really basic?

[Elena]

Hey @jorispet,

Thank you for your reply.

Even if at first glance something seems basic it can actually take quite a lot of time and resources in order to identify the cause, develop the change and afterwards ensure that the new implementation doesn't actually conflict with another part of the app, which all in turn slows overall improvements and updates down.

For the time being, we can confirm that the sorting algorithm works as intended in 99% of the cases and one of the reasons you might be experiencing odd sorting is that titles, not the whole title is being factored in.

We again suggest to create a playlist with a custom sort order to alleviate the instances where sorting doesn't match expectations.

A really quick way to do this is by using Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+V or right clicking on the playlist and choosing create playlist to create an exact copy that can be modified at will.

We hope this information was helpful.

If you have any questions we're always one reply away 🙂

Cheers!