[Playlists] Ability to link together Tracks in Playlists

[bvacaliuc]

Hi,

Wouldn't it be great if you could "pair"/"link"/"lock" or "chain" tracks together in a playlist? Then even if you shuffle-played, certain songs would always play together.

mock-up of how linking/pairing a song might work.

This idea was actually started by @Sartoris in 2012:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Ability-to-link-together-tracks-in-playlists-also-for-...

But in 2015 it was closed as not having enough votes. Coincidentally, about the same time, I signed up for Spotify premium.  As I listened to all the songs I've "liked" with shuffle, the one thing that kept coming into my mind was the terrible feeling you get when a song that is meant to follow another is not played.  You get the feeling of being violated; it is a terrible experience.  As I searched for this feature, I saw that idea was marked inactive and decided to open it again.

That idea had gotten 138 likes in 2015 and as of January 2020 has gotten another 116 for a total of 255.  There were another 18 ideas then that all linked to the one above (see attached). So I re-submitted this idea in 2015 and since then you wonderful people have given it over 880 votes! Thank you!

From the rules, we see that we needed to have over 500 votes to keep the topic alive in monthly discussions (check!). We also see that we need 100 votes per year to keep it alive (check again!). So we're in good shape on that front. Now we have to see what we need to do to get it moving forward from "Not Right Now" to "Under Consideration".

Again, from the rules above, Spotify says that they use these criteria:

• Helping artists.
• Data and other information we've collected.
• Information from research testing, focus groups, and surveys.
• Feedback in the Community and other support channels. (That's us!)
• Our overall short- and long-term business strategy.

Hmm. Ok. So I would say that playing tracks that are meant to be together really helps the artists because their work is rendered in the correct way that they intended. I'm wondering how many artists are dying inside when their specially arranged songs are cut up because someone shuffled their playlist?

I can't speak to Spotify's data and research, focus groups and surveys, or about their business strategy. However, it occurs to me that anything that affects the order of which song plays can affect revenue because Spotify pays someone when a song gets played and they don't pay the same amount of $ for every song... Sure its a tiny fraction of a cent, but it adds up. So my first guess is that Spotify's hesitation to implement this idea is economic. I think we should continue the discussion along these lines to see if we could come up with some kind of consensus on this notion.

Letting a song "pair" with another in a playlist would be enough to make a lot of people happy.  Would we be willing to put some $ behind having this feature? Lets say Spotify charged you $0.01 (a cent) everytime you were shuffle playing and the queue hit a linked song and played the one that came after it. Would you be ok with that? If not, what would make it ok? I think answering the economic question is one thing that is keeping this idea from moving forward. @wsmyth commented in May 2019 that he would be willing to spend $1/month for this feature. I would do that too, would you?

From the many, many great comments, @WesleyM77 posted in April 2019 a link to a US Patent. There are two patents, actually, [US8214740B2] and [US9396760B2]. Reading through the two patents, it's clear that they cover this idea in many of its possible methods. So apart from the economic impact, Spotify may be prevented by the patent holder from implementing this feature. It has been noted that only one service has this feature, and now this explains it. The patents expire in 2030.

So, here we are. We want a feature, someone has successfully patented the feature and so we can't have nice things. Everyone including the patent holders want to make money, so is there a price that Spotify could negotiate with the patent holder and then pass on to the users that would be acceptable to all parties?

Spotify, would you look into this and get back to us?

Thanks very much!

-bogdan

[garys]

It's a great idea, but it'll never happen. Spotify needs to close this thread.  It's been 10 years, and they're still stringing people along. I can't think of any better improvements added to Spotify in the last 10 years.

They made The pink version of Spotify, which starts every playlist with the exact same song every time, and plays the tracks in the same order. - frickin genius, whoever thought of that mess!

It would've been so frickin easy:

Have a developer add the feature.

If it wasn't immensely popular, as we all know it would've been, they could've removed the feature again.

Oh well.

[Roseyyyyyy]

I want this so badly. It's part of the reason I only listen to certain songs on youtube, because two songs that go together often have their videos all as one. I would use spotify more often..

[metroid_04]

Still hoping after 7 years of spotify for me

[634bmf01]

3 years later, I am still getting my inbox blown up for this. There are lots of songs I enjoy I can't listen to, because they have to be played sequentially. But Spotify is content with today's generic, factory-assembled pop songs that all fit neatly in one little box.

[BestSteak]

I am NEW to Spotify. I have about 750 songs marked as favorites right now. I listen to my favorites on shuffle all the time. But there are some songs that should be LINKED together and played back to back. A few examples of this are as follows:

VanHalen - #1 Intruder & #2 Pretty Woman

Pink Floyd - #1 The Happiest Days of our lives & #2 Another Brick in the Wall Pt.2

Queen -  #1 We will Rock you & #2 We are the champions

Now I realize if made an actual playlist I can MAKE these songs always play back to back. But what I am asking is this.... Is there a way to LINK these 2 songs together so that in SHUFFLE mode it would play them together as one song?

[DemonDoggie]

Sometimes when I make a playlist I want to here certain songs in a certain order, especially from certain albums where they flow together really well. I want to be able to shuffle a playlist, but still keep certain songs together, almost as if it was all one collective song.

[jolivier23]

I encourage any developer at Spotify to listen to Pink Floyd’s Brain Damage and Eclipse in succession and then listen to just one or the other.  It sucks.  This feature is sorely needed.

[Crystalicious]

WHY ISN'T THIS A THING YET?

I just came across another example that I hadn't thought of before...
On the Fifth Element soundtrack, "Lucia di lammermoor" needs to be immediately followed by "The Diva Dance".
It drives me crazy that this isn't a feature. What do we need to do, start a Change.org petition?!

[garys]

1) *legally* download the tracks you want joined.

2)  Get Audacity if you don't already have it.

3)  Use Audacity to join 2 or more tracks into one.

4)  Spotify saves/plays local files, so there ya go!

You can have all the joined tracks you want in a matter of hours or days.

Much better than waiting another decade for Spotify to add the feature.

[drmike316]

Black Sabbath's - Embryo - to - Children of the Grave

Green Day's - Chump - to - Longview

wth? Why hasn't this been implemented?