Show original year of album release

[incandenza]

I'd like to be able to see the date an album was originally released, even if the current version is a re-release. So many albums are re-released that for some artists it looks like all of their albums came out in the last few years, even though some of them may actually be a decade old or older.

When this happens, I wind up just having to go to Wikipedia or Allmusic to find out the real info. But why drive me away from the Spotify experience?

[KingDick]

Release dates are extremely important to big music fans. Spotify should know this.  The years are even off for albums that haven't been reissued. One of many examples: the Rolling Stones 2005 album "A Bigger Bang" is listed as 2009. yuk.

[radiobajesus]

AGREED!!!

Sorry... had to be screamed. there's nothing useful to me about re-release dates. i hate not seeing albums listed in chronological order (or reverse chronological as the case should be). this is one of those "little" things that takes the premium polish off of Spotify and make it look like a hack job.

[jxb345]

Including the reissue dates is helpful, but more importantly, the original album's release date needs to be displayed.  Ideally, the albums are listed in chronological order, with the oldeest albums at the bottom of the list.  

Could an app be designed for this if Spotify does not implement this change?

[squint]

A lot of the time I like to check out an artist's earlier albums first, or from a particular decade.

Spotify makes this difficult because a lot of the time it shows the re-issue date or something. An 80s album will say 2005 or 2008.

I personally don't care about re-issue dates, but if you're going to keep those, could you also provide the original release dates? If you did, it'd be nice to be able to sort by original release date too. 🙂  (On mobile devices as well!)

Maybe you should have the option of seeing the original release dates instead of the re-issue dates. I'd enable that in a second

[Triphibian]

I am disappointed that more people don't find the release dates troublesome. 

Adding my voice to thread to beg for better, more accurate sorting of releases. Your service is incomplete if I have to go to Wikipedia to find out which album is a band's first album.

[jjh]

I agree! The incorrect dates are the most annoying feature of Spotify. My first destination is always the "discography" section of Wikipedia to figure out the actual release dates. Please fix release dates! It should show "Original Release Date"/"Re-release Date". As it stands, the listed dates are completely meaningless and confusing, since they are not even related to the re-release dates! Can we get a comment from Spotify on whether there are any plans to fix this?

[janpeeters]

I also agree, it's cumbersome to see an old album listed as 2012. Please show then by original release date to be able to sort them in a logical timeline. Thanks!

[bessd]

Spotify should make playlists sortable based on original release date of the albums.

[Deeb]

I also like knowing whether an album is an original or a remastered version and I can quickly find this out, by the year of release on spotify. Most remasters sound naff, due to the loudness war;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

If you're going to replace the year it was mastered, with the year the album was originally released, then be sure to retain the year it was mastered next to the copyright information at the bottom of the album page.

One of the things I love most about spotify, is how easy it is to pick the version of the album that you want to listen to (by the year it was mastered, or by explicit or censored lyrics etc. Never assume that everyone wants to listen to the same album version).

[jimmymack]

I'm a big fan of Spotify that does so many things so right, but not showing the original release dates has really bugged me for a long time.  For those of us that approach even pop music, let alone rock, jazz and the rest, as the art that it is, the original release date is really important for as many reasons as there are music fans.

Just now I was checkingn out Steve Miller's catalog and was checking out a live album dated 2010, but of course I had to Google around to see that it was really a live album from 1983 --- that's important to know!  I know not for everyone, for definitely for me and seemingly for many other commenters on this topic.

I can see arguments for sorting by the re-release date so I wouldn't insist one way or the other on that, but please include the original release date prominently when listiing the albums.

Thanks Spotify!