Playlist play order

[emberins]

Plan

Premium

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows

Application Version

1.1.19.480.g7d17e3ce

My Question or Issue

A playlist's default play order is the order in which songs were added to it. Currently we only have two options when it comes to re-ordering the playlist:

1) manual click and drag (long and tedious for long playlists)

2) shuffle play (random)

Suppose I would like to quickly re-order the playlist in some ordered fashion, not just by shuffling. I am not asking for much development effort - I could use one of our sorting options: title, artist, album, time added, or even length. Would it be terrible if playlist play order in Play Queue followed the way it was sorted in the playlist window at a touch of a button/toggle/checkbox? Name the button something like "Apply sorting to Play Queue".

[Sebasty]

Hey @emberins 

You can reorder playlists by clicking on the column names too. Then, when you hit play, the songs will be played (and appearing in the Next Up queue) in that sorted order.

Or did you want to apply sorting to the Next In Queue?

Looking forward to your asnwer. 🙂

[emberins]

@Sebasty, as far as I can tell, sorting by columns in the playlist window does nothing to the play order. It does order the playlist screen, but not the Play Queue, even if I pause and resume playing.

[Sebasty · Accepted solution]

@emberins 

That's not unexpected... But it should change when you stop playback and hit play again on any song of the sorted playlist (rather than clicking play on the playlist itself).

Let me know how you get on 🙂

[emberins]

@Sebasty, that is a very good point! Clicking play on songs within the re-ordered playlist as oppose to play/pause on the playlist itself does actually affect playback order. But it is still buggy and is clearly still messing up the order 50% of the time 🙂 (for example, see the attached gif)

How on earth can Spotify get this wrong??!?

[Sebasty]

@emberins 

I tried that on my end too and I am also confused. : )

Could you try reinstalling the app (follow these steps for clean reinstall)?

Let me know how it goes!

[emberins]

I don't think reinstalling the app will help this. I hope Spotify do realise at some point that their playback sorting is out of whack - for now, I guess I can deal with a few songs being out of order.

[Cris_2946]

That happens to me too! It was driving me crazy and no, reinstalling doesn't fix it. I notified to the support team and at the end I was so tired to reinstalling that tell them it was fixed...

[emberins]

@Cris_2946, I wish I knew a way to reach them directly. I was under the impression that this is the only place where such issues are discussed and someone from Spotify may or may not pick stuff up if they feel like it.

[Cris_2946]

Try on Twitter, I contacted them from there and they will answer you in a few hours or so, and if you find the solution let me know please!

[Sebasty]

Hey @emberins and @Cris_2946 

Is the issue still affecting you?

I am no longer able to reproduce it. Whenever I sort and hit play on random song, the queue looks as expected. A new update was releaced recently too.

Let me know 🙂

[emberins]

@Sebasty, they certainly have done something around it, but not resolved completely yet. They seem to have fixed sorting songs that start with "the" and the next word is used for sorting. But there are scenarios where it still does not work correctly.

[Sebasty]

Hey @emberins 

Could you tell more exactly what doesn't work, with steps on how to reproduce the issue? 🙂

I'll look into it!

[emberins]

@Sebasty... it is actually quite simple... the same sorting mechanism that is used in the playlist window should also be applied to play queue. Currently they differ ever so slightly. Two things I noticed are definitely causing it if I sort by title:
- UTF-8 characters (e.g. https://open.spotify.com/track/5kNDc4MAumT6qyR168CaBd?si=P0ElaS_oTTOYc0wF8buh6w)
- incomplete words (e.g. https://open.spotify.com/track/5H3aDbuGz0iPrqpAOASvKH?si=y3A5Is47SKWwjlaknShoHQ)

Slightly related to this... it is also quite annoying that I cannot pause the playlist by clicking the pause button for the song currently playing... it restarts the play as if I had clicked stop and play, which I did not.

[Sebasty]

@emberins 

The play button issue sounds really weird and not something happening here. I recommend reinstalling your client, follow the steps here. 🙂

I tried adding the two songs in one of my very long playlists (>400 tracks) and when I sort by title, the queue looks as expected. Could you provide some screenshots on what's happening on your end?

[emberins]

Sebasty, it is not happening on one device. It's happening on both my home laptop and my work laptop. Both Win10. Try it on liked songs playlist.

[Sebasty]

@emberins 

Are both of these issues (the play button one too) happening on both devices?

I have to admit I don't have any issues within my Liked Songs either.

How long is yours?

You could try another account and see if the same happens there as well.

Screenshots / screen recordings are much appreciated on both issues, so I could report them 🙂

[emberins]

OK, here are 2 gifs. The first one is a random playlist that works correctly - when i press the pause button, the song stops.

Then there is a gif of liked songs - when i click the pause button, the song restarts instead of pausing.

[Cris_2946]

Yeah, I noticed that too... and only happens with the liked songs playlist.

[Sebasty]

Hey @emberins 

Please create another thread under Desktop Windows for that play button issue and add the gifs and other information (operating system, devices, exact version of Spotify) to the thread.

That happens to me as well and I'd like to get that reported. 🙂