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One thing in particular that grinds my gears about a lot of software is how limited the actions I can perform on data are. Take Spotify for example, a fantasti

One thing in particular that grinds my gears about a lot of software is how limited the actions I can perform on data are. Take Spotify for example, a fantastic product by many measures, but which even so does suck in some ways. Being able to create playlists and to enqueue songs is a start, but think about a list as a special case, limited kind of graph, and think about what kinds of operations we are missing out on by restricting ourselves to just lists. And that's not all. Spotify is also annoying in terms of looking at the currently playing list of songs. If you go someplace else and look at another list and then go back to the current playlist you'll usually be brought back to the top and if the list is long then you have to scroll a lot in order to get back to where you were. And I would like to make arbitrary queries like "show me all playlists in which song x occurs". And I would like to have access to the full history of songs I've listened to, including information about leaving the song before it was done, and skipping forward and back. And I would like to have the point in time in a song where I starred it or added it to a playlist. Then I could query for example "show me all songs that I've listened to in the past six months, that I listened to at least 80% of the full length of, but which I have not listened to within the last two weeks" and play the resulting list. Of course, the playlist being a simple concept makes it easy for users to understand. I guess the amount of people that want what I want is probably not many...

vinceguidry 8y ago
Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve. It's a monumentally hard problem. And there's another issue on top of it, the company 'crown jewels' problem. If Spotify makes it too easy to query Spotify, then it becomes ridiculously easy to compete with Spotify. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but not something we should expect Spotify to expend millions of dollars to enable.
- codetrotter 8y ago
  > And there's another issue on top of it, the company 'crown jewels' problem. If Spotify makes it too easy to query Spotify, then it becomes ridiculously easy to compete with Spotify. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but not something we should expect Spotify to expend millions of dollars to enable. Yeah that's true. But mainly the data I want to be able to query is the data that is directly connected to my own activity. If Spotify made it possible to get access to metadata about my activity and the songs that were involved in my activity then it's useful for users but still limits somewhat what a would-be competitor could do. Combine that with a ToS that forbids redistribution of the data and I think Spotify could provide this without helping would-be competitors too much. Even if a would-be competitor had access to various data from Spotify they would still need to both negotiate agreements about streaming rights with the IPR owners of the music itself, and they would need a lot of marketing in order to get users. In other words they would need a lot of capital. Where would a would-be competitor even get that kind of money? I don't see why any VC or startup accelerator would be willing to fund someone to build this given how big Spotify is and how limited the group of people probably is that would decide to leave Spotify for this feature. Whereas on the other hand, this kind of access to data could be a premium feature, and then it could be another reason for users that cared about these things to pay for Spotify Premium. Open source third-party clients could implement query engines, building on exactly what you mentioned in the first paragraph; > Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve. Open source clients exists today, and using them with Spotify requires premium. If Spotify provided the data, someone would follow suit in making use of the data in open source clients. Which could further boost sales of premium membership, while at the same time like I said would still not make it too easy for would-be competitors. Actually, the client wouldn't even need to be open source, it could be a commercial product, and by integrating with Spotify Premium they would still not be a competitor, and they would not need to go through licensing, and marketing might be easier as well. "Enjoy advanced interaction with your Spotify Premium listening experince by using our client."
brennebeck 8y ago
Wouldn’t an example of another ‘type’ be something akin to a graph for Spotify Radio? Particularly Artist or Song Radio. Though, I do still see the point of your example.

vinceguidry 8y ago

Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve. It's a monumentally hard problem. And there's another issue on top of it, the company 'crown jewels' problem. If Spotify makes it too easy to query Spotify, then it becomes ridiculously easy to compete with Spotify. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but not something we should expect Spotify to expend millions of dollars to enable.

codetrotter 8y ago
> And there's another issue on top of it, the company 'crown jewels' problem. If Spotify makes it too easy to query Spotify, then it becomes ridiculously easy to compete with Spotify. Which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but not something we should expect Spotify to expend millions of dollars to enable. Yeah that's true. But mainly the data I want to be able to query is the data that is directly connected to my own activity. If Spotify made it possible to get access to metadata about my activity and the songs that were involved in my activity then it's useful for users but still limits somewhat what a would-be competitor could do. Combine that with a ToS that forbids redistribution of the data and I think Spotify could provide this without helping would-be competitors too much. Even if a would-be competitor had access to various data from Spotify they would still need to both negotiate agreements about streaming rights with the IPR owners of the music itself, and they would need a lot of marketing in order to get users. In other words they would need a lot of capital. Where would a would-be competitor even get that kind of money? I don't see why any VC or startup accelerator would be willing to fund someone to build this given how big Spotify is and how limited the group of people probably is that would decide to leave Spotify for this feature. Whereas on the other hand, this kind of access to data could be a premium feature, and then it could be another reason for users that cared about these things to pay for Spotify Premium. Open source third-party clients could implement query engines, building on exactly what you mentioned in the first paragraph; > Arbitrary data querying are literally the problem databases exist to solve. Open source clients exists today, and using them with Spotify requires premium. If Spotify provided the data, someone would follow suit in making use of the data in open source clients. Which could further boost sales of premium membership, while at the same time like I said would still not make it too easy for would-be competitors. Actually, the client wouldn't even need to be open source, it could be a commercial product, and by integrating with Spotify Premium they would still not be a competitor, and they would not need to go through licensing, and marketing might be easier as well. "Enjoy advanced interaction with your Spotify Premium listening experince by using our client."

brennebeck 8y ago

Wouldn’t an example of another ‘type’ be something akin to a graph for Spotify Radio? Particularly Artist or Song Radio. Though, I do still see the point of your example.