Displaying album credits

[Peppe]

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.

[Byzze]

This is similar to the idea of making writer and producer data availble. For all who are much in to music it is very interesting to know who for instance the musicians on the recordings are, and be able to follow them. This is something that I always read on the CD covers... but now I never buy CD:s when I have Spotify! Thanks for this fantastic smörgåsbord of music!!!!

[fluidminds]

Can't believe this hasn't been implemented yet.  One of the common complaints from people who don't want to switch to streaming from CDs and Vinyl is that they like looking at the artwork, reading the liner notes etc.  The credits/art add real value and more reasons for people to join

Also having an official space for music creators to get due credit.  You guys have authority.  

Lead the future Spotify and get on this.  What are you waiting for?  Be the best service and make it happen.  

[Dreamzwalker]

I'm not an artist but I'm always very interested in knowing who was involved in producing a song and/or an album. It would be REALLY nice to have the same experience we had when we used to open a new album on cd or cassette and explore the work we're listening to. This is a MUST! 

[sidfinch]

Spotify, as you have helped bring about the demise of physical product, it is only right and fair to all the musicians, producers, engineers, and writers that you please display song and album credits. It's not trivial who played what instrument on a track, or who wrote a song, it's ESSENTIAL information. Otherwise, how do I know who all the players are on Lady Gaga's new song? Or who wrote a Michael Jackson song? By not showing all this information (which is readily available through AllMusic.com) you're leaving the next generation of teenage music listeners in the dark. Not good for the future of music. This is not trivial, it's essential if you care at all about music beyond the dollar signs. Please do it. Not doing it is a grievous sin of omission.

[keving2367]

Absolutely. Well stated and mostly easily done. The creatives need to be acknowledged not only for posterity, but so they can parlay their work into more gigs and fans.

[neverhomemusic]

Spotify now displays lyrics and behind the scene stories for many songs. I think producer / writer credit is long overdue!  

[mattvillacarte]

It's rather surprising that this has been open for what appears to be at least 5 years, especially given the general availability of this information online. One may say that since it's readily available, why worry about it? That point-of-view is dismissive of the creatives (songwriters, producers, engineers, graphic designers, etc.) behind making the music and the albums. Please reconsider bridging that information gap because by not doing so, you're normalizing user behavior that completely overlooks and ignores the individuals behind each and every song on your platform. And if plans for this are already in flight, thank you. It can't come soon enough! 

[kelley_loftus1]

I too would appreciate liner notes, song and musician credits...

[HaroldB]

To bad Spotify is not interested in showing the musicians playing on an album. It would make so much sense...

[Xoundboy]

This is a really nice idea for a new feature. I would personally use it a lot if it were impemented. But for Spotify it would be a significant piece of work, not so much adding the functionality, but more adding all of that meta data, or integrating with other existing services that can provide it.

So, what's in it for Spotify? How could they ever justify the expense of developing this? If it is to support the career development of contributors (musicians, writers, engineers etc) then I don't believe they would be interested. If they were really interested in that kind of thing, then they would probably divert more of their revenue back to paying the rights owners. But it's possible they might see the addition of album metadata as a long term goal in order to stay ahead of the competition. I suspect they already have the feature planned and maybe even parked, ready to release if they need to. It's just that right now, they don't need to.