Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Did Spotify get rid of the ability to add albums to a playlist? On the app the option no longer shows up for me. I see some people on Twitter reporting the same.

still works for me

Hey there! We'll let the team know you'd like to see that feature return in the future. Let us know if there's anything else.

— SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) October 12, 2022

Seemed like it was actually removed in the new update. Terrible decision.

Seems

Yikes, I use that feature all the time. Every year I create a playlist for newly-released albums, adding them as they come out and listening whenever I have time. Dipping into that playlist probably accounts for 30-50% of my Spotify use.

on what version of the app are you seeing this? doesn't really make sense that this would be disabled altogether. so far I'm not seeing it on the android version, the windows version, or the browser version.

iPhone app

The twitter and support threads don't ever know moment to moment what the product managers are testing in the app. So you can report a change to twitter or support and they will not have any idea if what you are seeing is a bug, or an A/B test, or a new feature change for all users. They will just say "try reinstalling the app, and we'll let the team know about your experience, thank you for your feedback." There are too many product teams testing changes on the 3 major platforms (web, iOS, android) and sundry minor platforms (alexa/echo, car integrations, etc).

Adding albums to playlists still works for me so it's probably an A/B test or a bug.

Aimee Mann currently singing her way through a song called 'Nothing is good enough - Instrumental'.

This is a pretty old one but for the remix release of The Juan Maclean's 'Feel Like Movin' the Leon Vynehall remix (6:30) and the radio edit (4:09) remain the wrong way around

I did an epic 10-hour Spotify clean-up yesterday and can confirm the 'add album to playlist' feature still exists. I have the most recent updates of the iOS and Windows apps, and it's avail on both.

I just discovered the playlist folders feature. It's an organisational godsend. Really handy for sorting different types of playlists (albums by genre, new stuff, mixes by you, mixes by others etc.)

With folders, I feel like I'm on top of my Spotify for the first time in years.

Also discovered that almost everything I liked in 2014 is terrible.

hmm, well I'm glad this isn't an official feature. I wish they would bring back the ability to add albums to playlists for me though.

I just discovered the playlist folders feature

WHAT

I've been happily using folders for years but I can report that I can no longer add albums to playlists on the iOS app - it's "Add to your Library" or nothing.

And yes, I have the latest version, v8.7.68

This is from the help forum:

Hey everyone,

Thank you for your inputs so far.

Our tech folks have confirmed that this is part of an ongoing test we're currently running for some users. Feel free to check out this thread where you can share your feedback on the change and let us know how you think the feature can be improved.

uh, wtf?

folders are great, but I'm still salty that you can't play an entire folder in the mobile app. there is a workaround for this which is to start playback in the desktop app and then shift playback to your mobile device, but that's a pain in the butt.

just to be clear, folder playback was a feature that was originally in the mobile app and then taken away

Shuffling giant playlists always seems like a good idea for about the first 10 minutes and then feels increasingly like a black hole.

I enjoy it, the bigger the better

If you want to jazz up your listening of giant playlists, I recommend http://sortyourmusic.playlistmachinery.com/. It lets you sort playlists by various criteria then save the new order as fresh playlist. My favourite one is 'energy', so you start with the quiet stuff and end on a party. Tip: with really long playlists, make sure the whole thing has loaded first before clicking on one of the column titles - otherwise it won't let you save the new playlist.

I just discovered the playlist folders feature

WHAT

Not sure why it's surprising that someone would primarily use the mobile app?

Playlists full of albums have always felt a little unwieldy for me, so on playlists that I'm using to keep track of albums, I just put in a single song from each album as its representative. I figure I can always click over to the full album when I want to listen to it.

I don't know why I never thought of that. Genius!

I don't know if it's a bug or if that's just the way Spotify handles multi-artists releases but I was looking for an album made by Colin Stetson, Elliott Sharp, Billy Martin and Payton MacDonald called "Void Patrol", and I couldn't see it anywhere on Colin Stetson's discography page so I figured it just wasn't there. But then I looked for "Void Patrol" and I found it. All four artits are listed on the release and you can click on them, but it doesn't show up on any of the artists' pages.

Looks like that Void Patrol album is credited to "Void Patrol" at the album level. The individual artists only appear in the track credits, which means it shows up in their "Appears On" sections, rather than in their main discographies.

My bad, that's correct. I did look at the "Appears On" section but only the first few releaese that appear on the artist's page, assuming it would be listed with the most recent first.

They're sorted by popularity. (They used to be sorted by date, but some labels started spamming tons of pointless re-compilations of existing songs to take advantage of that, so we had to change it.)

the search bar on desktop version is baccccck!

― Spottie, Friday, September 23, 2022 12:50 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

but the search being embedded back in the top bar is good

― Spottie, Friday, September 23, 2022 1:11 PM (three weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

and just like that.. its been removed again. idgi

Unless it’s different to last time it’s just an aesthetic change that makes no difference to the number of clicks though. As soon as you click on search it gets the focus and you can start typing your search term, just like when the bar was always visible. I suppose it’s a smaller target but there’s always the keyboard shortcut.

Always an interesting UX psyche study - does the search field being always visible mean people use it more?

I’m sure it does. Which in turn creates an interesting philosophical question: if you’re being nudged into not using a feature but still the retain the ability to use it with no significant difference in ease, do you still have a legitimate grievance?

I was wondering - is it correct to say that streaming payouts are a zero sum game? If, hypothetically, all current users doubled their listening so all artists doubled their streams - this would not yield higher payouts?

Right, the current standard royalty model for music streaming services is based on percentages of revenue, so doubling all listening on a given platform would not change the payment results.

Although if the total listener numbers doubled, presumably the ads would cost more to buy, so there would be more revenue to split.

I’m sure it does. Which in turn creates an interesting philosophical question: if you’re being nudged into not using a feature but still the retain the ability to use it with no significant difference in ease, do you still have a legitimate grievance?

― Alba, Monday, October 17, 2022 3:41 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

its a smaller target with other clickable things around it. much easier when its just up there by itself. why add it back after two years then delete again so soon?

They should have stopped "improving" the app years ago - the best thing ever on Spotify was the Blue Note app.

Yeah, I miss that

xp thanks, makes sense

i hate it when mummy and daddy fight

https://www.timetoplayfair.com/audiobooks/

Glen, there are some pretty big mistakes on Golden Palominos tracks in the Spotify catalogue I thought I'd mention to you:

1) Cookout on both versions of the self-titled album and on The Celluloid Collection is actually Darklands from the record, A Dead Horse:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2o1SH4ILklYkxEkpvK8Nnk?si=74033515ec7f4f96🕸

2) On A Dead Horse (the 2001 issue, not the one from 1989) -- Angel of Death and Lucky are listed in the right order but the music is swapped (Lucky is supposed to be the bluesy one, AoD the ethereal tune).

https://open.spotify.com/track/0OSxKSy4OsHsJmQfcjIRpE?si=ecf3b0c808304bce🕸
https://open.spotify.com/track/1V58ggzs5vDXNXADuVrPkm?si=205e172cf1ec4bdc🕸

It sounds like Tidal has had some issues with their catalogue as well, so it's not just Spotify. But another ILM user said you might make these changes faster than the official channels -- and since the head of the band passed away last month, you may be getting more traffic than usual to them.

Passed along to the right team...

Another long-standing error is Lady Leshurr being co-credited on Orbital's 'Blue' album - presumably some knock-on accident from tagging her on 'Wonky' title track?

Just logged in to Spotify for the first time in a while and the fake collaborator songs seem to be even more common (except it's moved from fake Madonna collabs to fake, uh, Snail Mail?). Do the tagged collaborators actually get a piece of the streaming royalties?

I was fooled by that today. Got a collab between Pan-American and Brian McBride (aka one of the guys in Stars of the Lid).

It was so specific, so esoteric, and so plausible, I was truly excited. My only red flag was that the track was only a little over a minute long which seems impossible for either of these artists. That was actually less believable than the beat-driven electronic sound.

Like who is going to the trouble to impersonate the less prolific half of SotL??

haha that "pan-american" track was also in my release radar, not even an imitation

the “radio” you get after playing “holy thursday” by david axelrod is siiiiick

Here's a feature I'd like/think would be useful: I've got so many playlists by now that I'd like to be able to click on a song and see which (if any) of my playlists said song features. I'm prepared for this to be a stupid idea and completely impossible technically, but does anyone else agree it'd be useful?

Definitely not impossible technically or even that difficult - using the developer API, it's really easy to search a user's playlists for a specific song. but would probably be too clunky and not useful enough to add to Spotify itself. Wondering if I have the time to knock out a quick app to do it...

I'd use it!