[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! 🙂

[SerhiiH]

Hello

Mixes of the day divided by genre as i see, but i want feature that based on my favorite songs will generate me endless playlist with auto-update which don't focus on certain genre.
Also it must contain no songs wich i already have in favorite, cause if i want to listen favorite song i will open it.
You already make feature named "Radio" but it works only on new playlist or specific song\artist. I hope i dont need to copy 332 my songs from favorite to the new playlist, just to turn on this "radio".

Thanks

[Bfist]

When building playlists, let users choose certain artists, albums or even other playlists to bulk add to your custom playlist. Then give users the option to choose the algorithm to build the playlist for based on the users selections.

E.g build a playlist based on two or three artists you like without having to choose lots of song individually.

[snively]

A smart playlist is a search-based playlist based on data you create when making said playlist. For example:

A playlist consisting of songs rated 4 and/or 5 stars, that have over 50 play counts (personal listens) and hasn't been played in over 6 months. That's a smart playlist and something Spotify has needed for years. I do like your idea tho, but it should be labeled something else.

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@SuperSpasm wrote:

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

[embauer74]

Yes please! I love the idea of linked/nested playlists (not the same as nested folders) where a playlist could be composed of several sub-playlists with transition songs between them, and then the individual sub-playlists could be individually edited or moved around as a unit. Constructing long playlists is so tedious and time-consuming now, and this implementation would help greatly! Please add another vote to this idea.

[rednblu]

Brilliant!

And thanks for the clear comparison with how Folders work!

And thanks to Spotify for leaving this discussion open for weaving into the growing understanding of the spectacular music resources that Spotify allows us to build into our own musical experiences.

[rikverstraete]

better solution is spotify implimenting this idea , but the next best thing is playmixify, 3th party application that makes a synced playlist based on other playlists of yours. So then you can add any playlist and create a new one, which you can shuffle play. The other just released a new version : https://playmixify.com/

try it , you love it ! 

[phantompvris27]

So we all have playlists that  have similar themes like " Spotify wrapped 2022,2023,2024" or  " summer of 2020,2021"  or childhood playlist, adolescen playlist"

My ideia is to be able to have access of similar playlist inside a main one,I think this way we could organize much better than a million playlist spread on Spotify,for example:

I have a playlist about my childhood songs and a playlist about adolescence songs and another one about my 20s, and I want them to be in the same space not the same playlist but the same space because they are from the same universe." Oh but you can make only one playlist with all these songs"  but them wouldn't be organized in chronological order.

[iinkhat]

We have folders for organisation (though greatly unsupported by Spotify, sadly. No folder cover images, and I don't think you can create them on mobile), but I agree being able to create some sort of masterlist that collates between playlists would be something useful. 

I have a lot of individual character playlists, sometimes I want to listen to 'all the character playlists'. You can create one manually and select all the playlists to put them in, but as I update the lists frequently I imagine this would get bothersome fast.

[Luan]

Updated on 2025-03-03

Thank you for sharing your feedback with the Spotify Ideas Exchange.

Your suggestion has been marked as a Live Idea and will be reviewed by the Spotify staff once it receives enough votes. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to your continued support of this idea!

For more details about how the Ideas Exchange works, please refer to here.

[rikverstraete]

change to live idea, common guys, keep on voting for this !