Spotify needs to become more Album "Collection" based, it's too track-focused at the moment

[philask]

Before Spotify I had (well still have, but mostly untouched these days) large MP3 collection organized into Artist/Album/Tracks folder structure.  This worked well for me and combined with Playlists meant that I maintained my personal "collection" of "Albums" as well as favourite tracks and Playlists for particular occasions / moods.

What I find these days is that I'm losing track of Albums, I have Spotify Playlists (although the flat Playlist structure tires me), but it's just not the same as having a personalized "Collection" of music.

Spotify needs to add the ability to build your own "Collection" (not Library, which is still track based), this should be organized however you like, but at least providing Artist / Album / Year drill-down structure (folders or not).  It'd be nice to match this against existing MP3 collections and Libraries.  The ability to tag playlists and collections (and/or albums) would also be a bonus.

What I'm getting at here is the missing part (for me) in Spotify is the ability to "virtualize" (cloudize?) my mental image of a music collection, which is shelves of albums sorted into some logical order (years, artists, genre, whatever), but mostly Albums, not just Tracks.

My 2 cents.

UPDATE 21/4/13: I don't seem to be "allowed" to embed images in my posts (sad).  I've recently been using Google Music on a Nexus 10 and I have to say it has almost the perfect Album / Genre / Artist interface.  I particularly love the way that in Artist view you see Albums stacked and they move subtly in 3D as you scroll.  The only thing missing here would be Year and latest-added sort/views.  Anyway here are the screenshots, this is DEFINITELY a better way to "visualize my collection":

http://community.spotify.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/298076/album-id/3824

UPDATE 16/5/13:

Google Play Music All Access does this and more

Sorry Spotify but looks like you were too slow.  Google just ate your lunch, dinner and breakfast for the next 10 years.  Google Play Music All Access has the above functionality (add any album to "my collection") and more, including a MUCH better visualization of your collection, album based browsing and a considerably better radio implementation.

UPDATE 21/5/13:

Spotify ignore albums, again

It's pretty obvious now that Spotify have no interest in the albums or the art of constructing an album, don't they realize that most artists work for years to create a "piece of work" known as an album, not just a bunch of random tracks?  Today Spotify launched their "Charts", which once again completely ignore albums... What with Google Play Music All Access and Rdio I think Spotify are going down the slippery fail slope to irrelevance.

http://charts.spotify.com/

UPDATE 1/1/14:

Looks like Spotify took this suggestion seriously and have been beta testing Collections for quite a while (yes, they made me a beta tester 😉 )  It works well and I'd imagine it'll be mainstream soon.    (Keep giving the idea Kudos to continue to support it)

[BtotheEler]

I agree wholeheartedly with this.  Every once in a while I want to find music by just looking through my collection.  This is honestly the one reason why I'm looking into swtiching to Rdio, which allows me to create a personal collection.

[corynadilo]

I agree.  This feature is a must have.  I cannot remember all the Albums/Artists I like and my playlist sitituation is becoming unmanageable.  For this sole reason I am highly considering jumping ship over to Rdio but I would rather stay here IF I can have a collection of Albums.

[nielschristianw]

Just to expand on the idea, and I know it's close to being beaten to death. 

It would be really useful if you could view the Library, Local Files and Starred lists by albums only. Right now, the album view (CMD+G on a mac) just reveals a column showing the album cover artwork. The Album view would ideally be a listing of the albums (showing the artwork for sure) and the album information (name, year, label etc.). Click on the album expands it to reveal the tracks.

The way I browse my collection is mostly by albums or artists that I'd like to listen to. Scrolling through a list of thousands of tracks just takes way to much time.

[blau]

I think this idea:

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Make-the-library-more-functional/idi-p/27359

would also solve this problem.

[rsoszka]

Can't agree more. I know the music world is strongly based on particulat tracks/ songs - ppl @ itunes often buy single track and not album. But it's not all of us - many people still likes to listen to whole album, not just one song. And it's painful not to be able to mark an artist, an album etc. as favourite. I believe it shouldn't be hard to do - after all other streaming services were able to do that (deezer, anyone?).

I've recently recommended Spotify to my friend, who so far was Deezer user and she liked the app, the selection etc. - but she said one thing she's missing is ability to star an album - and for that reason she's gonna stay with Deezer.

That's also quite important for mobile playback - I just want to be quickly able to the albums I like, choose one of them and play it whole.

[spletz]

Just a smart playlist of favorite (thumbs up, starred, favorited, etc,) track, albums, and artists would make sense.  It's simply adding two fields to the database. Binary fields at that.  (Though a starred rating system would be good too.)  Then the starred would expand to also starred albums and starred artists.  Right now I just make a favorite albums playlist and drag the album cover to it and this adds them to my library.  A bit tedious, but it works.

[amythomas]

I agree, there needs to be a better solution in terms of organization.

In my mind, it would be great to have every track you have added to any playlist (and starred) to appear in a 'My Spotify library' type of thing. In your Personal Spotify Library you can also add tracks that are not on your playlists to build up a personal collection.

Then you could look at your spotify as a collection of music as a whole and browse your collection in terms or artist, album, name, date added etc.

[shashp]

NOOOO! go join rdio if you want everything organized by rediculous albums that contain loads of stuff that never make it into someone's ears for a really good reason.  

[periodic]

Yes I agree, there need to be a way to bookmark albums. Its anyoying to have to create a playlist for every album you are interested in.

[unfoundbug]

If this is done PLEASE make it an option. I have seen and used rdio and i see that way of organising as a negative effect. I rarely if ever use a full album, this would make my collections massive and bloated when i only like 1 or 2 songs from each one.