I understand that including all album artwork is considered a premium feature, but at the same time, all people who participated in the making of an album should be credited for their work. Musicians, composers, producers, engineers and everybody involved - plus all the "special thanks" - people, deserve to be credited.
This could be implemented by simply displaying the album credits in text form, along with the original front album cover and tracklist. No lyrics, pictures or bonus features, just the credits. Not linking, but displaying the credits along with the album front cover + tracklist by default, in all versions of Spotify. The complete album artwork could still be a Spotify Premium-feature, with this approach.
This is not a feature for the listener - most people don't care much about songwriters or who plays bass on track five of this album, but from the perspective of the music creators, this is very important - their (ok, our) careers depend on these little things. Being associated with the music you've recorded (or written, engineered for et c) is still a very important part of building a career in this business.
Updated on 2018-02-05
Hey folks! We’re very excited to announce the launch of the first iteration of Spotify’s new songwriter credits feature.
Spotify users around the world can now view songwriter and producer credits for tracks on the desktop platform and on iOS.
On desktop, simply right-click on a track and select “Show Credits” from the menu of options to view information on performers, songwriters and producers.
To read more about the information we're sharing please click here.