[Playlists] Smart Playlists (Nested)

[SuperSpasm]

A smart playlist consists of other playlists, as one big joined playlist - it can be played in sequence or shuffled.

I believe this could be a game changer for the Spotify (playlist) eco-system.

Implementation

• In playlist creation, allow the user to add "sub" playlists
• Also let them add other smart playlists
• Playlists can be shared/reused in multiple smart playlists
• Regular songs can still be added alongside playlists.

NOTE: This is not accomplished by playlist folders! See below.

Benefits over playlist folders

1. Playlist Reuse: Any number of smart playlists can share a playlist! whereas only one folder can contain a the same playlist.
   This will allow having smaller, "atomic" playlists as building blocks of larger ones.
   
   Example: Below "Oldies"  is shared / reused by different smart playlists:
   Easy morning [smart] = (Oldies -> Chill) 
   Nostalgia [smart] = (Oldies -> 90's -> Specific songs)
   
   
2. Sharing (A) - This could encourage playlist creators to make more nuanced playlists, as they will have a tool to compose more of them out of parts, instead of investing in a single large one, or copy-pasting like crazy.
   
   
3. Sharing (B) - This could also open up an entire new content eco-system for compiling other creator's playlists, and re-sharing them as a new whole.
   
   
4. Easy "temp" playlists - Currently, to combinine playlists for a party, drive, etc- you must break your organizational hierarchy to create a folder.
   This causes a mess to be cleaned later.
   Having a single "temp" smart playlist would allow you to change it's contents on the fly, without messing up your playlist organization.

I have more ideas, but I'll add them as a reply so this is more readable 🙂

I realize this is not a small feature - but for a few years I've felt It's absence, and I really believe this could be a game changer  -  if done properly.

Happy to hear any thoughts! 🙂

[mamut86]

I wanted to bring up an idea that has been once proposed here and here. By having the opportunity to build hierarchical playlists would allow to have a more granulated selection of sub-genres.

One might think of creating a genre list with latin music. Sub-genres could include for instance Salsa, Vallenato and Cumbia. This would allow to listen to Salsa only or include all latin sub-genres. Obviously a subsection could then be furthermore dividied into years or even artists if needed.

In summary this feature would facilitate the organisation of songs and depending on the mood one can focus on one specific genre or go more broad.

[alkaden]

I would also like a feature like this. I have a lot of playlists and i wan't to merge them together in sub categories.

[alkaden]

Great thank you, i haven't noticed it before 🙂

[keylimep1e]

It would be fantastic to have a playlist organization feature that allowed for sub-playlists or folders. I'm very into organizing my playlists by say, genre, decade, or mood, and would love further organization options to go hand-in-hand with listening flexibility.

For example, with this feature, I could have an overall playlist called "1960s folk", which contains sub-playlists "60s sad folk" and "60s happy folk". If I wanted to, I could play everything on "1960s folk" which would include the songs on both playlists, but the feature could allow me to just play 1 of the sub-playlists too, if I only wanted to hear those songs.

This would be an awesome feature!!!

Cheers~

[InesLB]

Feature request: Subplaylists

I think it could be very useful and convenient to create sub playlists within playlists. In that manner, you go to one of your playlists which include plenty of songs which are not all the same speed, mood, beat etc but still in the same playlist for the context. Let me explain. I have a playlist called Chillout that includes also 24h of songs with kinda different genres but related to a chill moment, etc. Your could create sub playlist such as "background", "beginning" of a chill moment, "more motivating", "more dancing", etc... Therefore, you would be able either to shuffle the whole playlist which will go through every sub playlist (in the order you choose or order that it displayed in the app) by shuffling also inside these sub playlists and will go to the next one every time shuffle is over for one sub playlist. You could also go to the next sub playlist easily by clicking on one button. Besides, you can also just shuffle one sub playlist of your choice by directly clicking on it and not the feature of shuffle the whole playlist (and therefore all the sub playlists). I hope I made myself clear enough, but if not, please contact me asap. 

Contact me here:**bleep**

[Alex]

Updated on 2021-05-04

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

We've gone ahead and marked this as a new suggestion. Spotify Staff will look into this idea once it reaches the necessary amount of votes.

More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange can be found here.

Cheers!

[juancahgo13]

I agree!

The ability to have many subplaylists inside a bigger playlist.

That way, you could:

1. Listen to everything inside the bigger playlist shuffled.

2. Listen to every subplaylist in order.

3. Listen to a single subplaylist (shuffled or in order).

Similar to Pinterest's sections inside boards.

This would also solve organization issues, such as needing folders if you have too many playlists. This way you can organize subgenres inside genres, or submoods inside moods like InesLB suggests.

Example: have a Metal big playlist for the genre; with Death Metal, Progressive Metal and Thrash Metal as subplaylists for the subgenres.

[Luan]

Updated on 2021-06-28

Hello!

Your idea has been submitted a while ago but unfortunately hasn't gathered enough kudos. In order to keep an overview of the active ideas in this forum, we will close this idea for now. However, this does not mean that your idea has been declined by Spotify.

If you still feel strongly about your request, we encourage you to post your idea in a little different form again! Maybe now is the right time to receive the support of our community for your suggestion!

Do you have any further questions on how the idea exchange is managed? Just click here.

[giompad]

TL;DR: Have Spotify implement sub-division into playlists so you can have sections for specific songs without having to create a whole new playlist for them. 

I think it would be a really great and unique feature for Spotify to implement adding "sides" to help user's sub-divide their playlists. This was something people used to do all the time in albums and mixtapes with A-sides and B-sides, something similar could be added to a user's playlist.

For example, I have a Christmas playlist that as over 100 various Christmas/holiday songs that span all different types of genres and styles. While I love to put that playlist on shuffle, it would be great if I could divide up that playlist into say a "Classic Rock" section, "Religious" section, and a "Modern" section. I could then go into those sections and play/shuffle just the songs on that side. This allows me to keep all of the music I want into the same playlist, while also allowing me to have greater freedom in choosing which music within that playlist I want to actually listen to.

[SuperSpasm]

Room for future development

This also opens the door on really exciting features that could follow!

To be clear, these are not part of my suggestion, (hence the different post).

They're just a vision of where this path could  lead, if chosen.

• Smart Filter playlists
  • Workout = (songs in EDM  if bpm > 120)
  • Rock Epics = (songs in Rock if length > 5:00)
  • MyChill = (songs in Tom's  ChillPlaylist if liked by me)
  • Etc.
• Full on query language:
  • ChillEDM = (songs in (EDM  and Chill)  except (Some playlist you don't want))

NOTE: even if chosen, regular users would not have to deal with this complexity.

But it could give power users tools to create much more sophisticated content for regular users.