Help me understand Spotify's queue

[jonathansick]

I'm coming to Spotify from years Rdio, and I'm totally confused about how Spotify does play queues. Maybe you can help me understand Spotify's logic.

My goal is

1. Start playing an album
2. While the first album is playing, queue up another album to play after it
3. repeat step 2

What actually happens when I do this in Spotify is

1. I pick an album to play. On the queue page, I see the first song is the "Current Track" and the remaining songs on the Album are the "Next Tracks"
2. I go to another album, and select "Add to Queue". Now the second album is in "Queued Tracks" and the album I'm playing is in "Next Tracks". At this point I'm a little worried.
3. My worries pan out and Spotify's queue switches from the first album I was playing to the queued album.
4. I can add additional albums to the end of the "Queued Tracks". A success!
5. Once my queue is finished, Spotify finally gets around the playing the remaining tracks of my first album.

So what's the deal? Do I just treat the first album as a sacrificial lamb so I can add other stuff to the proper queue and ignore the weirdness of Spotify saving the rest of the first album for later? The whole idea of a "Next Tracks" being separate from "Queued Tracks" seems like utter nonsense to me. *But* I'm really curious to see if there's value in Spotify's logic.

Is my workflow the best way to queue up a bunch of albums to play in order? What do you Spotify veterans do?

Is there any way to have songs from my albums, even the first one I play, show up in "Queued Tracks" rather than "Next Tracks"?

[doddlie]

OK, so I know that this is two years after your explanation. But thank you. I get it now. I'm not sure I agree with Spotify's logic and I wish they provided an explanation somewhere more easily accessible. BUT now I understand how it works, I will start to use the queue more! It always felt like this was a reason to go back to Apple Music as far as I was concerned.

[Sygmoral]

Summarizing the relevant features:
 

• Spotify has a working "Add to queue" feature.
  Just click the ... and choose "Add to queue". That always works as expected, both on songs and on albums. However, Spotify has more than just that queue:
• Spotify has a working "Play song" feature, and will follow-up with related songs.
  Spotify likes to keep playing, so it will automatically create a "Next up" list based on the song you started playing, usually beginning with other songs in the same album, and then others by the same artist. But these are just suggestions; your manual queue will take precedence.
• Spotify does not have a "Play album" feature.
  When you click "Play" on an album, it doesn't play the album, it just executes "Play song" on the first track of that album. See above for what happens then.

 
So:

• Spotify thinks songs, not albums.
• Don't "Play album" unless you really only want to hear that one. Otherwise, queue them from the start...

[Sygmoral]

I have posted an idea to fix this issue. If you could all vote on it, it might get Spotify's attention.

▶▶ Spotify Ideas:   "Play Album": put it wholly into queue instead of only playing first song ◀◀

[vd18]

Sygmoral, you explained it perfectly. Now I finally understand Spotify's logic. Thank you

[n0vice]

Hi there, I'm rather new to Spotify (came from GPM) and I'm trying to understand how things work here (which is not always obvious). I have read all three pages of this "solved" thread. Yet still here is very simple workflow that fails for me:

 - In the morning I select some albums for todays' listening.

 - I want to put them in the queue and loop them, so they are playing whole day long.

 - I want to listen them one after another with songs in order.

First problem I face is that there is some music left from yesterday and there is no "Clear queue" button. I found a workaround for that, though: I need to disable 'Repeat' and click last song in the queue (which looks weird to me, but anyway). So I click last song in "Next up" part and finally I get only one "Now Playing" song in the list.

Then I add my 2 new albums for today with ... and "Add to Queue" feature. They are added to "Next in Queue" part. I click first song of my todays' set and finally my new queue is ready. Now I need to loop all this.

I enable 'Repeat' feature and suddenly my "Next Up" list gets piled up with everything from the yesterdays' listening (everything I have just removed) and is repeated.

So for me it looks like:

1. The only way to add several albums one after another is using ... and "Add to Queue" feature. They are added into "Next in Queue" part of the list.

2. It is not possible to loop "Next in Queue". 'Repeat' button loops only "Next Up" part. Even if this part is empty, it loads last set of songs that has been there before and loops it.

I'm not sure why it works that way. I got used to this feature in GPM and in APM and had no idea that such basic stuff can be *** up. I was already told I can make a playlist everytime when I want to loop stuff, but here comes another problem: (for some reason) there is no possibility to add multiple playlists to the queue...

Maybe I'm not seeing someobvious thing here. I would appreciate if someone sheds a bit of light on how to pack several albums one after another and loop them? Thanks in advance.

[Sygmoral]

@n0vice, you're exactly right... I summed up how it currently works in my live idea right here, with a suggestion on how to make it more intuitive:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Idea-Submissions/Desktop-Playlists-quot-Play-Album-quot-put-it-whol...

[Kayefpee]

Here's my problem with the way it works. I'm using the Spotify app in Windows. I like to play playlists that others have created, such as record labels. During playback I discover a new artist/album from the compilation that I want to listen to after the current playlist is over. I can't easily make a playlist out of what is already a community-provided playlist (I guess I'd have to create a new playlist and drag the community playlist contents to that one, not a simple process like what's available with an album's "add to playlist" command ). I want to queue the newly found albums at the END of the current playlist, yet there's no way to do that, that I've found.

[user-removed]

A normal single "queue" or whatever they would call it is still the best option, just like in any other music player. No double/parallel lists like "Next up", just one list. You can't even put a playlist to the queue now. Then it would be possible to even clear the whole queue! (wow). 

The Spotify's queue stuff has always been a continuous joke with my friends, the facts that it has its own life and difficulty level is above 9000.

Probably it will never be changed, but I just wanted to share the pain.

[Sygmoral]

My previous idea only reached 42 Kudos in a year, while it needs 100 to stay alive. So I have reposted the idea. Please vote for it so we have a chance of getting a working Album Queue!

▶▶ Clicking 'Play' on an Album should put it entirely into "Next in Queue" ◀◀

[r0liv-952_hl]

I would support this, as long as there remains a distinction between the "Play" button (at the album level) vs. hitting play on the first song of the album (which should continue to act as it does today, by playing the album but NOT "queuing" the album).  If they make that fix, they should retitle the "Play" button as something like "Queue Album". 

[atimholt]

This right here: this is everything that's wrong with human-computer interfaces today, and I'm not being hyperbolic. Spotify's dev team is among the absolute worst offenders of those holding back the software side of computer technology. The sheer incompetence they display completely destroys any hope that any computer UI will ever approach correctness even remotely.

It it inarguable that this is a BUG. No matter what justification you can come up with, or even however much it was done on purpose, it is objectively wrong and must be fixed. Ordered queues have been a solved problem FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. The “now playing” queue is the central part of the UI of any and all conceivable music applications that allow the user to play arbitrary tracks. It is completely inarguable that this is the single most urgent bug that any music-playing app could ever be faced with, barring a massive PII leak or device-bricker.

[BobGohd]

It's simple.... 

- Add to Queue should add the items to the end of the queue
- Clicking play on an album (or playlist) should play that album in it's entirety (currently it plays the first song on the album and adds the rest to the end of the queue)
- a Play Next option, next to Add to Queue, could add the items to the start of the queue

The last two are about the same thing, the Play Next option would just make it clearer and easier to understand. 

[mcored]

This is fundamentally wrong. 

What you are describing is how stack works. Queue should always add new items to the end of the list. Stack would always add new items to the beginning of the list. This is Computer Science 101.

When a user asks to add to the queue, they expect new songs to be added to the end of the list.

As per the screenshot, I am listening to ASOT 724, and it was towards the end of album, I searched for ASOT 725 and pressed Add to Queue. What does Spotify do? Spotify decides to play ASOT 725 before ASOT 724 album is completely finished. This is absurd behavior. Please fix this. I don't know how more I can be clearer about this.

[mcored]

You get it. It’s unfortunate that the Spotify devs don’t get it. The last two aren’t exactly the same. Play album plays the  first song of the album immediately. Play next plays after the end of current song; and if no song is playing, it would play immediately.

[joegreene]

No one in their right mind would design the queue Last In First Out for music. Just like no one would default a computer Print Queue LIFO. Does anyone plan their day starting with the last activity and working backward to the present? wth? 

[asbjornu]

Add me to the list of users frustrated to the brink of insanity about how the current "queue" system works. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the play queue is completely wiped clean by playing a song on any other platform than the one in which the queue was originally created.

So I now pay extremely close attention to every link before clicking it to not have the Spotify web player pop up and "helpfully" start playing a song and nuking all of the songs I've queued up in the Spotify desktop app.

Please vote for the idea to stop resetting the queue.

[doddlie]

Tbh, I thought I’d worked it out. Then realised I may have worked it out but it was still not intuitive and so I’m giving Apple Music another go. Wife happy about this decision, daughter grumpy until I moved playlists etc over to Apple now she’s discovering she prefers it. Will decide over next couple of weeks.

[gtrmike5150]

This is not a solution! Most times I start playing music and I browse around and find something else I want to listen to and expect it to go to the end of the list so I can finish listening to the album I started. I don't open up Spotify with a list of albums I want to listen to, queue them all up and hit play. Who does that? I don't get it, why is this so hard to implement? I came back to Spotify after an offer for 3 months for 10 bucks but I'm going back to Apple Music after the 3 months are up. This issue, and the fact I have to sit through ads on Podcasts are deal
breakers for me.

[Theogb]

4 years on and Spotify still haven't fixed their queue system. It's incredible. Just the worst UX.

[pablolie]

I am also having issues understanding the queue. Why there are separate "Next Up" and "Next in Queue" lists in my playlist has never made sense to me, and I have never seen a good explanation  from Spotify on that.
There's also the issue that I don't seem to be able to simply add a few playlists to my queue and mix my playlists easily. I try to solve this by creating folders and drop playlists in there, then the songs in the folder play... but the Shuffle function doesn't work - the playlists play sequentially.