Plan
Premium
Country
US
Device
n/a
Operating System
Windows 7 desktop, version 1.0.84.344
My Question or Issue
I have hundreds (maybe 1000?) playlists. I normally sort playlists by artist (and chronologically within an artist). I did that for my vinyl records, and for my CDs (approx 1300). I like Spotify and it's been my primary music source for about 5 years now (always disliked iTunes). What I need is: sorting my library of playlists alphabetically, which I presume will sort them by artist (since artist comes first in the playlist name). I've created playlist folders A-Z to drop the artist in the folder (because the artists themselves are a large number). For example, the ultimate outcome would be a folder called "W", which contains a folder "The Who" (with "Wilco" sorted after "The Who"), and within The Who's folder, the album Tommy is sorted before Quadrophenia because that's their chronological order. (FYI, I think chronological order is important, such as it would be for The Beatles, Bruce Springteen, Depeche Mode, and any artist where they change/matured over time.)
I am NOT asking for Spotify to do all of the above work. I'm just asking for the first step: sorting the playlists in the library (not the songs within a playlist) to be sorted alphabetically by artist.
Overall, I think Spotify's UI (on all platforms) has been designed for a user with a 100 songs and 20 playlists, it's designed poorly for a user with 20,000 songs with 500 artists and 2000 playlists. Really, if us users behave the way Spotify wants us to behave (regularly hearing new music, saving to a playlist, and playing the new music), then after a couple years of use you'll have 500 artists, 2000 playlists, and 20,000 songs.
The mechanics and data structures are there (folders and subfolders), but the UI layout and controls (sorting, copy-pasting, etc.) are missing for libraries at this scale. For example, if Spotify had a way to map the library into the Windows Explorer interface (not necessarily the best solution, but it demonstrates how this feature could be provided), then I'd have all the sorting strategies (sort by artist, date, etc. via extended Windows Explorer columns), and I could cut-copy-paste from one Windows Explorer window to another Windows Explorer window. Again, not necessarily the best technical solution, but it would work.
How I listen to music: I almost never listen to an individual song - even a new song. I presume that the artist put an album of songs together for a reason, and that's part of the appreciation and perception of the artist and their art: it's not just an individual song. I recognize that some people who just like individual songs (that's fine), but Spotify should recognize there are other use-cases of users' listening habits. Although I listed some artists in the Rock/Pop genre, I'm guessing this same kind of artist/"album" listening structure would be important for listeners of Jazz and Classical genres.
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random