lanky bastards

I am not one to complain all the time about spotify unlike everyone on r/spotify, even though my list could be very long.

No album covers in lists, no way to sort by year, very few info (country, label, etc), not many options to manage playlists, can’t order playlists once made public, cannot ”star” songs like on JQBX, I could go on and on. Fortunately, JQBX has been answering most of these flaws, but that’s not what I want to tackle today. I want to talk about :

PLAYLIST MANAGEMENT

After about 3 years using Spotify as an avid music listener, I can now say that when it comes to making playlists…

SPOTIFY GOT IT ALL WRONG !

me

Seriously. Here’s why.

After immensely growing my library, my playlist organization now starts with a ton of folders, and sometimes has sub-folders. For example :

Top Folders :

Favourites : Playlists like songs I REALLY dig, albums I want to check out, anything that really stands out for me

Mood : Well, you guessed it. Playlists like : Sleepy, Chilling, Feeling Good, Feeling sad, etc. (of course i give them funky names that no one would get)

Genre : Different genres (my Jazz folder has over 10 sub-jazz genres). What I like here is that you can make your own genres, like my PyjamaRave genre that has a Kaytranada-like vibe where you feel like having a party in your PJs while getting high

From : Different places of the world. I started very wide and now its getting so specific that I will probably make continents folders with country playlists.

Themes : Stuff like Covers, Sampled songs, Songs about places, anything that could be useful in a DJ Battle, basically.

Then I have all sorts of other folders like JQBX, DJ, INSTRUMENTS, FOLLOWED, TO SORT OUT, etc.

Now you might be wondering, ok, but don’t you have duplicates, songs that are in Mood : Feel Good, Genre : Cumbia, From : South America, AND From : Colombia …?
Well…. …yes.

And that is the problem. Not that having a song in multiple playlists is a problem in itself, but it requires to have a ton of playlists to keep everything well sorted out (for someone who really likes to sort their music, obviously). The biggest advantage is that it becomes easier to create playlists on-the-go, for example if someone asks me to make a Latin upbeat playlist. The more specific you get, the easier it is to create playlists that really fit your mood/vibe or someone else’s.

So with that said, would there be an easier way to achieve that ?

Well, yes. With tags.

Imagine if you could give any tag to any songs. That song that was in all these playlists would now have the tags #cumbia #SA #Colombia and #feelgood. You wouldn’t need all these playlists. You could just type #feelgood and all the songs with the tag would appear. Then you add more tags (filters) and you get very accurate ”on-the-go” playlists, with all the possible combinations.

It seems to me that it would be fairly easy to implement for Spotify, and it would reduce the need for all the playlists that are made. I would only have the playlists that I followed from other people plus a few that I made and wanted to save (specific unrelated songs).

Plus, Spotify could use everyone’s tags to automatically get the most popular tags on all songs which could help the algorithms. Let the people do the work !

The way I see it, it would make it a lot more convenient and enjoyable and, finally, world peace would be achieved.