[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

[roostorx]

I’ve been a part of this post for so long, I can’t recall if this was ever mentioned. But a rules engine would be nice. If X song is played ever, always play Y after. Regardless of queue or playlist. But I doubt Spotify devs would want to code that. Combine with tagging and you’d have a great system for pushing music to playlists saving songs.

[tfsimon]

Re-posted under a new title:

"Allow users to queue a track to always follow a specific track"

[jon9091]

Spotify obviously supports playlists. Why couldn’t it support sub-playlists? Literally…a playlist within a playlist, and in that sub-playlist…any songs you wanted to play consecutively. There would be no limit to how many sub-playlists one could make, and you could title them whatever you wanted for clarity.

[ozbonus]

This feature is a no-brainer and I can't fathom why it hasn't been added yet. The resources wasted on implementing Spotify barcodes would have been better put toward this, a feature that people actually want and would use and have been asking for for almost a decade.

[LittleFlames]

So, what I was thinking is that you can set a song to play after another song in a play list, so if two songs go together and after the other, you can pair them with each other. I hope that makes sense.

[Vasting]

This would be great since some songs have an intro that leads into another, like Sirius/Eye in the Sky by Alan Parsons Project, etc.

[Jsthvngdtm647]

there are certain rock songs that play back to back on the radio or on a album or cd I would like to be able to chose which songs to play back to back so i can play my 1500+ playlist and the songs play correctly ?

[4tndt-_kgozg]

Yes. We really need a “play next” feature to add a song to the top of our queue. 

The existing “Add to queue” feature is limited. It only allows a song to be added at the bottom of our queue. The user then has to manually drag the song to to the top in order for that song to be played next. This is time consuming for us. 

Adding a “Play next” feature will solve this issue and provide more efficiency for us. 

Many other competitors such as Tidal and Apple Music already have this feature. 

Thank you 

[MadmanOnWheels]

I can see this being helpful with classical pieces, but also with songs, like "Little Guitars Intro" & Little Guitars", by Van Halen, as well as the "Unforgiven" trilogy, by Metallica.

[Mihail]

Updated on 2021-07-29

Hello and thanks for submitting your idea to the Idea Exchange!

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