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FWIW, this is my rant. I cancelled Spotify last month. I've been a subscriber since 2006. The app has become increasingly buggy, especially on my newish iPad.

FWIW, this is my rant. I cancelled Spotify last month. I've been a subscriber since 2006. The app has become increasingly buggy, especially on my newish iPad. Frequently would refuse to play for minutes at a time. But more critically, Spotify has become focused on "generating background noise as profitably as possible". I originally liked Spotify as a way of finding interesting albums I haven't listened to before, but now it's all podcasts and easy-listening covers. It's constantly trying to play albums in random order, and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes. My relationship with music is now more suited to listening to a couple of tracks on any platform, and then buying it from Bandcamp.

gaws 4y ago
> It's constantly trying to play albums in random order, and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes. This can be turned off in the settings.
IanCal 4y ago
My way of discovering new music using the magic of AI is to ask Alexa to play something and see what weird song it returns after it either mis-hears me or decides to play a bizarre cover.
- aerostable_slug 4y ago
  > bizarre cover "Gin and Juice", covered by Sissy Bar on their album "Statutory Grape" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDq2FGsEGd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDq2FGsEGd8
  - janlaureys 4y ago
    I realise this isn't reddit. But this totally unlocked this memory in my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3EwjWhyUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3EwjWhyUU
  - hericium 4y ago
    What's the original song? This doesn't sound like a cover of Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Gin and Juice"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI3yXg-sX5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI3yXg-sX5c
    - hoistbypetard 4y ago
      It is. Listen carefully... the first line of lyrics in the Sissy Bar version is "So much drama in the LBC, it's so hard being Snoop D-O-double-G..." and the chorus is "Rolling down the street, smoking menthols, sipping on gin and juice." The quality of the recording makes the lyrics a bit difficult to pick out, but it's the same song.
      - hericium 4y ago
        Ok... this is awful but also kind of cool!
  - IanCal 4y ago
    Fantastic. My initial find was "I wanna be like you" expecting the jungle book version before it announced to my toddler that it was by the "Psychedelic Porn Crumpets" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0VpmaSBjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0VpmaSBjs Great cover!
- TrevorJ 4y ago
  That's similar to my observation that if you speak gibberish into the youtube search bar the first or second result is almost always a song.
lnxg33k1 4y ago
To be honest I’ve left Spotify for no particular reason other than that ive got a discount for Deezer with the phone subscription, but yeah it never occurred to me but I’ve continuously found interesting songs with Deezer like in daily basis
hardwaresofton 4y ago
> My relationship with music is now more suited to listening to a couple of tracks on any platform, and then buying it from Bandcamp. I think the music world would be considerably enhanced if everyone did this. Bandcamp is pretty damn artist friendly and I love that about it.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I started doing the same. Use Spotify/LastFM/various sources for discovery and if I find something that I like, purchase on Bandcamp + download FLAC files. Started doing it just to support the artists, but quickly it became invaluable in replacing Spotify as the audio quality seems to be getting worse and worse, even as a premium user.
- gaws 4y ago
  > Bandcamp is pretty damn artist friendly and I love that about it. Too bad Epic will eventually run it into the ground.
  - hardwaresofton 4y ago
    Yeah not the greatest recent bit of news... and I was pretty dismayed by it. I really hope that doesn't happen, but will prepare for the opposite. Well the good news is that it's probably somewhat easy to make another bandcamp these days compared to when they started, so if it got bad enough, someone could pop up to fill the void with nothing but a Stripe subscription and S3 if they were determined (and not VC funded) enough.
keyle 4y ago
I have cancelled during COVID since I wasn't commuting anymore. My rant is I'm fairly certain that I have less freedom with the app and more ads since I'm a user that used to pay than before I became a paid user. I really smell a dark pattern in there and I'm not joking, the app was treating me like a back alley garbage sack after I stopped paying.
- danaris 4y ago
  While I certainly wouldn't put such behavior past them, just from that information, it seems like it's also quite possible that the free-tier experience has just gotten worse overall since you started paying.
Kiro 4y ago
> Spotify has become focused on "generating background noise as profitably as possible" What does this mean? I listen to the music I want to listen to, in my playlists. Where would I get exposed to this new focus? The only "feed" I can think of is my "Discover weekly" but that contains music. I don't think I've ever seen a podcast in my Spotify app.
- vvillena 4y ago
  People who interact with Spotify using the search feature as the entry point won't ever interact much with podcasts. The home screen, though, is filled with them. Given it's what every user sees when starting the app, it is indeed a big focus. That said, the contents of the home screen heavily vary. I've never listened to a podcast on their platform, but Spotify still suggests me lots of podcasts on my Windows desktop and my phone. For some reason, it never shows them on my work laptop. Maybe it's because I set the laptop's language to English instead of using my native language - I've noticed Spotify only suggests me native-language podcasts.
- egeozcan 4y ago
  I had started to receive pop-ups. That was one of the last in the series of annoyances before I decided to cancel.
m-p-3 4y ago
I feel like I should, I just can't find the time to commit and buy all the songs from my Liked playlist..
comboy 4y ago
me2 E.g. for months now when casting play button is >play< instead of >pause< and you can pause music only after you minimize it Or the fact that adding something to the queue prevents you from using app for 2 seconds waiting for info popup to disappear. It's a play and stop music app being used on the most popular hardware and software. I don't even know how are they able to screw that badly. And it keeps putting podcasts on top of my music which I am not using spotify for. And yes I'm lazy, migrating my music preferences to another platform seems to never be the thing I want to do right now.
elric 4y ago
Bandcamp has been my go-to place for music every since they launched. My musician friends like it as a distribution platform. I like it as a place to discover music. I love it as a place to buy (and own) music.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Bandcamp is great, but it’s odd to see all these sites suggested as alternatives to Spotify. Bandcamp is a marketplace for musicians to host their music, merch, etc. so that people directly support them. There’s a wide range of mainstream to tiny bands started by someone last month. It’s an awesome place to fine new music, awesome place to buy it, as you get your pick of formats, etc. the app/site offer streaming features, but it’s primarily a marketplace. But I wouldn’t never consider it an alternative to Spotify. Spotify is a music streaming platform. It’s designed for curating and streaming, and for a bit had a decent recommendation engine. Bandcamp could never replace Spotify for me because only a fraction of my playlists are albums/songs available on Bandcamp.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    It's true that the lack of catalog in Bandcamp is a huge negative compared to Spotify, but that's a bit of a chicken and egg problem as well. Artists go where music consumers go, and music consumers go where artists go. Spotify got around this problem in the beginning by basically streaming pirated material, while Bandcamp would never go that way. Other than that (breadth of catalog), Bandcamp can do most things Spotify does, while making things more sustainable for the artists. I generally download FLACs directly from Bandcamp, but sometimes I use the streaming app on iOS if I buy something like on mobile network. Works as well as Spotify.
    - elric 4y ago
      > It's true that the lack of catalog in Bandcamp is a huge negative compared to Spotify That depends on what you're looking for in music. If you're a passive listener who just wants to listen to something familiar, sure, Spotify's probably got you covered. But if you're a music enthusiast who's looking for new things, Spotify is severely lacking. Many things simply aren't on Spotify (yet), and even if they are, Spotify seems to make it hard to find new things.
tweetle_beetle 4y ago
I quite like how spartan and transparent Bandcamp is when it comes to most things. Discovery through other users has been great and (afaik) there is no blackbox algorithm - "this user bought 12 things you have", great I might find something by looking at what else they bought. The quality of the recommendations is high, because 90% of music can be listened to in full in advance. So users only make purchases when they have a genuine interest. And fake results are less likely, because you can see purchase history. The official recommendations from the Bandcamp articles tend not to be of interest to me and the chart categories just get saturated by passionate fans of niche genre artists in my experience, but the user graph is refreshingly simple.
- nisegami 4y ago
  I really, really hope that Epic doesn't ruin it.
  - rodgerd 4y ago
    Epic's only interest in it appears to be to pad out their litigation. I expect they'll lose interest in it if they can bribe and sue their way into making it easier to get gambling in the hands of pre-teens.
  - ascagnel_ 4y ago
    Epic seems to have bought it for the relationships Bandcamp has within the music community -- they see Fortnite as a multiverse, and they've already hosted a couple of concerts. The Bandcamp and Harmonix acquisitions seem to be feeding into that, so hopefully they won't ruin the existing products in the process.
    - duskwuff 4y ago
      I suspect the real answer is even more cynical: Epic bought Bandcamp to make a point in their fight with Google (and Apple) over in-app billing. https://9to5google.com/2022/04/30/epic-games-bandcamp-android-billing-court/ https://9to5google.com/2022/04/30/epic-games-bandcamp-androi...
_fat_santa 4y ago
> My relationship with music is now more suited to listening to a couple of tracks on any platform, and then buying it from Bandcamp. It depends on your Genre. For me I freaking love Spotify because they have all the music I like to listen to all in one place for one flat rate every month and (almost) no bullshit, but I can see how someone who is into indie artists would prefer to go your route (I probably would if I was into that music). One major gripe I have about the Spotify app on iOS is they can't seem to figure out background audio for podcasts. This isn't a big deal as I still use PocketCasts, but for Joe Rogan I have to use Spotify.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Weird, I think Spotify is basically the best thing ever for indie artists. I can find an artist I like on TikTok and then immediately with zero friction be listing to all their music. There’s no, “well I like them but do I like them enough to buy an album.”
  - rodgerd 4y ago
    > I think Spotify is basically the best thing ever for indie artists. Funny, I know a couple who think that Spotify is the worst thing to happen. Streaming, especially at Spotify's rates, might as well be piracy. The income's no different.
    - smaudet 4y ago
      At least in the piracy model you don't have a badly made app between you and your music. You should still buy the album if you care about it, even with streaming.
      - _fat_santa 4y ago
        > You should still buy the album if you care about it, even with streaming. I agree with this to a degree. If I really like a small indie artist I'll usually buy a Vinyl from them. But alot of the music I listen to is "mainstream" and made by artists that are already raking in cash, not saying that they don't deserve the same compensation, but I feel exponentially less bad that Taylor Swift is making $0.0005 per stream rather than some indie artist trying to make it.
sneak 4y ago
Just use NewPipe and locally download the audio of the tracks you want for free. It's much simpler.
nomilk 4y ago
> and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes Not only this, but notice when the current album finishes and the next (random) song plays, the back button doesn't work any more! (it will just keep restarting the song you didn't ask for, rather than allowing you to go back through your selected album/song).
philamonster 4y ago
I canceled last month as well though had been planning to since hearing of this: https://www.fastcompany.com/90704310/spotify-boycott-daniel-ek-investment-defense https://www.fastcompany.com/90704310/spotify-boycott-daniel-... I was paying for a family plan with some people spread out and wanted to get everyone on the same page before I just dropped their paid service. I have to say it's been horrendous using the app over what seems like months. I recently bought a car with Apple CarPlay (which is garbage on all fronts IMO though may have more to do with Subaru's console than Apple). As you said, I was bombarded with Podcasts when the app loads in the car though I NEVER listen to them, ever. Even when my phone isn't connected to my car. Playback has gotten super annoying where if I'm listening to a playlist I've made or my Liked songs when I disconnect the phone and re-connect the song I was listening to will continue to play to the end but then then the app will take over and play recommendations instead continuing with the playlist I was listening to, every time. I also don't like not being able to generate a playlist in the app from Liked songs as I was using liking songs as way to quickly group a few tunes that I want to investigate further at a later time and maybe keep around or remove after a couple listens. They typically don't stay liked for long. Since leaving the service I've been listening to the couple gigs of songs I had cached locally in iSub on my phone. I used to host my own Subsonic server, over 12 years I think, but had a catastrophic hardware failure in Feb 2021 which brought all my containers down permanently. Fortunately, I was able to recover the array long enough to copy everything to an external drive, nearly a TB of MP3's/AAC/FLAC etc. Not sure where to go from here as I don't really have the interest or resources to build a new/better/more efficient homelab nor do I have the time. These services to stream and never own or curate a thing are killing my interest in general in learning how to roll your own again, which oddly I am somewhat thankful for especially as warmer weather approaches. This has lead me to cancel other streaming services and really question how badly I want to rent content which always ends in not doing so these days. My kids don't always appreciate it but I feel like I've taken back a small amount of control by opting out and not participating. Interested in seeing how far I can go with this purge...
- dangravell 4y ago
  > Not sure where to go from here as I don't really have the interest or resources to build a new/better/more efficient homelab nor do I have the time Disclaimer: this is my commercial service... A middle way is to use what is essentially a hosted service for streaming your own collection. I run https://asti.ga/ https://asti.ga/ . Let me know if it seems interesting or you have any questions!
mattweinberg 4y ago
> and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes FYI, this can be turned off in the Spotify settings, under "autoplay".
- pimlottc 4y ago
  Unfortunately, as of about 6 months ago, Spotify ignores the auto play setting if you’re listening through a smart speaker. And it’s not a bug. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774897/spotify-connect-autoplay-default-speaker-music-streaming https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774897/spotify-connect...
  - tzs 4y ago
    I think it depends on how you are playing it on the smart speaker. If you are playing it by saying "<trigger> play <song or album or artist or genre>" I think it will behave as you describe. If however you are playing by having your desktop Spotify or mobile Spotify control your smart speaker using Spotify Connect, in my experience it obeys the "Autoplay similar songs when your music ends on other devices" setting under the "Autoplay" settings on the desktop or mobile device. With Spotify Connect you should be able to select your smart speaker (and possibly other things) in the "connect to a device" menu. The button to invoke that is in the lower right on desktop between the queue button and the volume control. In iPad it is on the lower left. Spotify Connect is good about sharing status between devices, so you can start an album playing on a smart speaker from say your desktop, pause it, and later from the couch have your tablet tell the smart speaker to pick up where it left off.
    - blowski 4y ago
      I tested whether it was consistent between iPad, desktop, and my Yamaha amp which acts as a smart speaker. It definitely did not carry the setting over, and Spotify confirmed that behaviour.
      - tzs 4y ago
        I just tested using Spotify on my iPad and my iMac, listening on an Echo Dot, Echo Show, Denon AVR-1913, and Google Home Mini. The Echos use Spotify Connect, the Home Mini uses Google Cast, and the Denon uses Spotify Connect from the iMac. From the iPad the Denon was not showing up in the Spotify devices list so I used the option to connect to an Airplay or Bluetooth device to connect via Airplay. Later, I noticed Spotify was asking for permission to scan my network for devices, I gave permission, and the Denon then started showing up directly in the devices list. I don't know if connecting to the Denon from the device list uses Spotify Connect or Airplay, because mobile Spotify unlike desktop Sotify doesn't say on the device list how it connects. The test was to tell connect to the test target, start playing a one song playlist, then when it starts playing use the position slider to skip to near the end, switch to the view that shows what is playing and the queue and up next lists, and see what happens when the song ended. Then I'd stop it (if it was playing), disconnect from the target, toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting, and do the above test again. I'd again stop it (if necessary), disconnect, and toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting back to its normal setting (which for me is off). For the Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Google Home Mini it obeyed the autoplay setting. When off it stopped after the playlist ended. When on it started playing a list of things it felt were related to the playlist song. For the Denon it always stopped when the playlist finished, both when I was definitely connected with Airplay and when possibly connected with Spotify Connect. Make sure you have an up to date version of Spotify. They added the ability to control autoplay on remote devices 2 or 3 months ago.
monkeybutton 4y ago
>The app has become increasingly buggy They've got some seriously weird bugs going on in the backend with their catalog too. I can open an artist's page and it looks like all the songs I liked are gone. So I add some and then find out I've now got a bunch of doubles. So while I've "liked" one instance of a song, it's not longer the "official" one? Then recently the audio and artwork for one liked song changed to someone else's remix of it! The original song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6dPgd8QtZKozuh725mZbXw https://open.spotify.com/track/6dPgd8QtZKozuh725mZbXw The shitty cover or whatever that replaced the original in my liked songs: https://open.spotify.com/track/2dJol6YvFoNs8WMRzn8HEp https://open.spotify.com/track/2dJol6YvFoNs8WMRzn8HEp It didn't affect just me either, my spouse had the same song swapped in her playlists too. How tf does that even happen?
- danillonunes 4y ago
  I believe sometimes a song become unavailable for some reason (license issues or whatever) and they replace it with a similar version. Most times it's just the exact same song in a different album, some cases it's a different recording from the same artist, but in the rare cases the algorithm may find a cover version to offer as a suitable replacement. I think the main issue is they don't keep track of the original song that received the like, so when it comes back, it's not restored to your library.
krnlpnc 4y ago
What have you replaced Spotify with for music discovery? I'm a Spotify user on the fence myself
- dont__panic 4y ago
  I've been using last.fm for many years now. Hundreds of thousands of scrobbles later, it's still serving up recommendations that I'm now using to build up my personal Jellyfin library that I stream to my phone via Finamp. I use a VPN so I can always connect to my home server when I'm on the go. Spotify was a pretty convenient all-in-one service for a while. But they've fallen prey to the growth trap and dark patterns for a while now, with no signs of improving any time soon. This solution isn't quite as easy as OG Spotify... but it's free, gives me something to hack and work on, and puts me in control of my music library again. There's something very freeing about consciously thinking about my music library, instead of allowing Spotify to spoonfeed you artists that give up a share of their profits [1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/02/spotify-will-now-allow-artists-and-labels-promote-tracks-in-your-recommendations/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/02/spotify-will-now-allow-art...
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Long ago the Xbox had a last.fm powered music service that gave the best recommendations. I could put it on auto play and just let last.fm pick tracks for me and I'd rarely end up skipping a song. No service since then has come close. I was really disappointed when it was shutdown and replaced with one of Microsoft's first stabs at their own music service.
- blowski 4y ago
  I've found the FT's weekly album reviews to be quite diverse. But also... just asking people!
nicolas_t 4y ago
I'm beyond mystified as to what Spotify is tying to do with their recent UI, it's messy, it's unusable and reduces the value of the service by a lot. I'm still a subscriber because it's cheap and an easy way to listen to music but I hate the fact that I no longer discover music like I used to on Spotify.
- hylaride 4y ago
  I'm an Apple music subscriber and I feel discovery is poor there, too. Back in the day iTunes genius was phenomenally good at recommending music. I spent a fortune in the iTunes music store. My guess is they let it stagnate because with cloud music there's no financial incentive to make music discovery good as they get the monthly revenue either way.
  - nobleach 4y ago
    Way back in the day, The Pirate Bay was my discovery tool. They recommended other bands that were perfect for my tastes. I haven't even looked at that place in like 10 years or something. On the legal/legitimate front, Pandora has the BEST discovery algo I've ever seen. I can put in one artist and listen for hours. (I just have to thumbs-down Coldplay a lot) I've also found a lot of great music there. The bum thing is, some of it is not available on Spotify.
- pelagicAustral 4y ago
  My guess is that designers are still getting paid, so, 'bring me something fresh!', its the same mess everywhere. Soon as you get a functional UI, designers will iterate infinitely until it becomes borderline unusable.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Its objective is to generate "growth & engagement" to justify those designers/marketers' salaries as opposed to being a tool to pay for & listen to music.
- ryneandal 4y ago
tambourine_man 4y ago
I learned so much when Spotify came out, the recommendation algorithm was remarkable and I'm truly grateful for the music I've discovered. But that was many years ago. Haven't used it in probably two years. Every time I try to it only suggests me crap. I don't know what happened. YouTube is my go to when I want to find something new. For listening to stuff I already know, I'm old fashion and have folder with my audio files. My most precious backup.
P_I_Staker 4y ago
These problems seem endemic with these services. Apple music definitely seems no better. Huge bugs that seem to go unfixed for large periods of time. Unhelpful algorithm. Especially Spotify is trying to make it's algorithm it's main product; and not to give you what you want. They want to make it pay to win and sell it to record companies and podcasts.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  It's really odd because these companies spend tremendous amounts of money for content and then skim on hiring technical expertise. It's like buying the cheapest tires you can find for the landing gear of an Airbus A380.
- blowski 4y ago
  Yeah, I tried Apple Music, and cancelled during the free trial. It was that bad.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
For discovering music, I like Audile (https://audile.app https://audile.app) It recommends a random album from Deezer’s library on every page load.
clolege 4y ago
I thought that they removed the shuffle album button after Adele rose a stink [0]? It was cool to see them make that change - but its a mystery how they got in that state in the first place. My biggest gripe with Spotify is around their implementation of Play Next and the Queue - which makes it difficult to navigate some of my most basic user journeys. The way it works is: Current playing song -> Queue -> Play Next My CUJs that go south with this are: - I want to play a song after the current one, but there are already things in my queue. I can only add to the end of my queue, so I have to do that and drag it to the top. - I press play on an album to listen to it (and it gets added to my Play Next). I then want to queue up another album after the one that I'm listening to, but the only option is to add it to my Queue. I then have to go and add all of the current songs in my Play Next to my Queue before adding the new album to my Queue. - I open my app and press play on album. It will play the first song before starting to play the songs in my Queue from the last time I was using Spotify. I apparently needed to clear my Queue the first thing when getting on. There are certain things in the UI that signal to me that the abstraction might be confusing them as well - such as when right clicking on songs to remove them from Play Next, the option reads "Remove from Queue". What the heck... I feel like Google Play got this part of the UI right, with (IIRC) a single queue and treating it as double ended. They exposed both a "Play Next" and "Queue" options on their catalog - and the Play Next functionality would put the song/album at the _beginning_ of your Queue. Clicking play on an album wiped your Queue and filled it with just the single album. Maybe that's just where my expectations for how this sort of UX should work were made, but it made sense to me :) [0] https://theconversation.com/adele-has-successfully-asked-spotify-to-remove-shuffle-from-albums-heres-why-thats-important-for-musicians-172301 https://theconversation.com/adele-has-successfully-asked-spo...
- gmassman 4y ago
  I 100% agree with all your issues. Some product manager(s) at Spotify seriously messed up when they designed the queue system. Maybe it's too much to ask for the Next songs to actually play Next?
  - clolege 4y ago
    Interesting, I found a feature request for a "play next" on their community forums [0]. They responded: > We've discussed this feature in-depth internally and also carried out a variety of tests with different groups. Based on the results we can confirm that for the moment we won't be changing the existing way queueing works. As we don't have any immediate plans to implement this, we'll be changing the Idea Status to Case Closed. Added my +1 and keeping my fingers crossed that they revisit :) [0] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-Queue-to-Next-or-Last/idi-p/120484 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-Queue-to...
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bob1029 4y ago
I totally agree with this. I love Bandcamp (and also Beatport). Still have my spotify subscription, but its mostly used for discovery. Foobar2k is how I actually listen to music most days. My biggest reason for maintaining my own collection is to compensate for the possibility that spotify will arbitrarily remove tracks.
tzs 4y ago
> It's constantly trying to play albums in random order, and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes. (The following may vary in some details between desktop and mobile versions of Spotify, but the general idea works in both). On my iPad it only shuffles playlists by default, not albums. To play a playlist without it being shuffled the trick is to start it by clicking the first song rather than clicking the playlist's play button. Clicking the first song starts that song playing and sets the "next from" list to the rest of the playlist not shuffled. Starting an album by clicking the first song instead of hitting the album's play button works the same way, so simplest is to always start both albums and playlists that way unless you actually want shuffle. The above works if what you want to do is listen to a specific album or playlist and then when it is finished choose another album or playlist, assuming you start with a clear queue. If there is anything in the queue it will play the song you clicked, then the queued items, then the rest of the "next from" list so clear the queue either before you start your album or playlist or before the first song finishes. If what you want to do is listing to more than one album or playlist in a row, without shuffling, and without having to wait until one ends to choose the next, you might think you could start the first one using the above method, and then while that is playing add the others to the queue but that fails. The queue has priority over the "next from" list. The best way I've found to play multiple preselected albums is to simply make a playlist for this and add the albums to it in the order I want to hear them, and then play that playlist as described above. Next time I want to listen to a different set of albums I delete the previous play list and remake it with the new albums. I'm not sure how to play multiple preselected playlists in order. You don't seem to be able to copy a playlist to another playlist, so the trick for multiple albums does not work. You can queue the playlists one after the other which mostly works, except that if there is anything in the "next from" list that will be played after the last song from the queue. I don't know how to clear the "next from" list, but here is a hack. Make a playlist with a single song. Start that playlist and then hit pause. Now add your other playlists to the queue, and then hit the "next song" button to start the queue. When the queue finishes that song from the one song playlist will become the next up song but it won't start playing because it already played.
copperroof 4y ago
I wound up going back to pandora recently. I had started using Spotify really late (2021) and couldn’t understand any of the praise it had.

gaws 4y ago

> It's constantly trying to play albums in random order, and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes. This can be turned off in the settings.

IanCal 4y ago

My way of discovering new music using the magic of AI is to ask Alexa to play something and see what weird song it returns after it either mis-hears me or decides to play a bizarre cover.

aerostable_slug 4y ago
> bizarre cover "Gin and Juice", covered by Sissy Bar on their album "Statutory Grape" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDq2FGsEGd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDq2FGsEGd8
- janlaureys 4y ago
  I realise this isn't reddit. But this totally unlocked this memory in my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3EwjWhyUU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3EwjWhyUU
- hericium 4y ago
  What's the original song? This doesn't sound like a cover of Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Gin and Juice"[1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI3yXg-sX5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI3yXg-sX5c
  - hoistbypetard 4y ago
    It is. Listen carefully... the first line of lyrics in the Sissy Bar version is "So much drama in the LBC, it's so hard being Snoop D-O-double-G..." and the chorus is "Rolling down the street, smoking menthols, sipping on gin and juice." The quality of the recording makes the lyrics a bit difficult to pick out, but it's the same song.
    - hericium 4y ago
      Ok... this is awful but also kind of cool!
- IanCal 4y ago
  Fantastic. My initial find was "I wanna be like you" expecting the jungle book version before it announced to my toddler that it was by the "Psychedelic Porn Crumpets" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0VpmaSBjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD0VpmaSBjs Great cover!
TrevorJ 4y ago
That's similar to my observation that if you speak gibberish into the youtube search bar the first or second result is almost always a song.

lnxg33k1 4y ago

To be honest I’ve left Spotify for no particular reason other than that ive got a discount for Deezer with the phone subscription, but yeah it never occurred to me but I’ve continuously found interesting songs with Deezer like in daily basis

hardwaresofton 4y ago

> My relationship with music is now more suited to listening to a couple of tracks on any platform, and then buying it from Bandcamp. I think the music world would be considerably enhanced if everyone did this. Bandcamp is pretty damn artist friendly and I love that about it.

capableweb 4y ago
I started doing the same. Use Spotify/LastFM/various sources for discovery and if I find something that I like, purchase on Bandcamp + download FLAC files. Started doing it just to support the artists, but quickly it became invaluable in replacing Spotify as the audio quality seems to be getting worse and worse, even as a premium user.
gaws 4y ago
> Bandcamp is pretty damn artist friendly and I love that about it. Too bad Epic will eventually run it into the ground.
- hardwaresofton 4y ago
  Yeah not the greatest recent bit of news... and I was pretty dismayed by it. I really hope that doesn't happen, but will prepare for the opposite. Well the good news is that it's probably somewhat easy to make another bandcamp these days compared to when they started, so if it got bad enough, someone could pop up to fill the void with nothing but a Stripe subscription and S3 if they were determined (and not VC funded) enough.

keyle 4y ago

I have cancelled during COVID since I wasn't commuting anymore. My rant is I'm fairly certain that I have less freedom with the app and more ads since I'm a user that used to pay than before I became a paid user. I really smell a dark pattern in there and I'm not joking, the app was treating me like a back alley garbage sack after I stopped paying.

danaris 4y ago
While I certainly wouldn't put such behavior past them, just from that information, it seems like it's also quite possible that the free-tier experience has just gotten worse overall since you started paying.

Kiro 4y ago

> Spotify has become focused on "generating background noise as profitably as possible" What does this mean? I listen to the music I want to listen to, in my playlists. Where would I get exposed to this new focus? The only "feed" I can think of is my "Discover weekly" but that contains music. I don't think I've ever seen a podcast in my Spotify app.

vvillena 4y ago
People who interact with Spotify using the search feature as the entry point won't ever interact much with podcasts. The home screen, though, is filled with them. Given it's what every user sees when starting the app, it is indeed a big focus. That said, the contents of the home screen heavily vary. I've never listened to a podcast on their platform, but Spotify still suggests me lots of podcasts on my Windows desktop and my phone. For some reason, it never shows them on my work laptop. Maybe it's because I set the laptop's language to English instead of using my native language - I've noticed Spotify only suggests me native-language podcasts.
egeozcan 4y ago
I had started to receive pop-ups. That was one of the last in the series of annoyances before I decided to cancel.

m-p-3 4y ago

I feel like I should, I just can't find the time to commit and buy all the songs from my Liked playlist..

comboy 4y ago

me2 E.g. for months now when casting play button is >play< instead of >pause< and you can pause music only after you minimize it Or the fact that adding something to the queue prevents you from using app for 2 seconds waiting for info popup to disappear. It's a play and stop music app being used on the most popular hardware and software. I don't even know how are they able to screw that badly. And it keeps putting podcasts on top of my music which I am not using spotify for. And yes I'm lazy, migrating my music preferences to another platform seems to never be the thing I want to do right now.

elric 4y ago

Bandcamp has been my go-to place for music every since they launched. My musician friends like it as a distribution platform. I like it as a place to discover music. I love it as a place to buy (and own) music.

the_only_law 4y ago
Bandcamp is great, but it’s odd to see all these sites suggested as alternatives to Spotify. Bandcamp is a marketplace for musicians to host their music, merch, etc. so that people directly support them. There’s a wide range of mainstream to tiny bands started by someone last month. It’s an awesome place to fine new music, awesome place to buy it, as you get your pick of formats, etc. the app/site offer streaming features, but it’s primarily a marketplace. But I wouldn’t never consider it an alternative to Spotify. Spotify is a music streaming platform. It’s designed for curating and streaming, and for a bit had a decent recommendation engine. Bandcamp could never replace Spotify for me because only a fraction of my playlists are albums/songs available on Bandcamp.
- capableweb 4y ago
  It's true that the lack of catalog in Bandcamp is a huge negative compared to Spotify, but that's a bit of a chicken and egg problem as well. Artists go where music consumers go, and music consumers go where artists go. Spotify got around this problem in the beginning by basically streaming pirated material, while Bandcamp would never go that way. Other than that (breadth of catalog), Bandcamp can do most things Spotify does, while making things more sustainable for the artists. I generally download FLACs directly from Bandcamp, but sometimes I use the streaming app on iOS if I buy something like on mobile network. Works as well as Spotify.
  - elric 4y ago
    > It's true that the lack of catalog in Bandcamp is a huge negative compared to Spotify That depends on what you're looking for in music. If you're a passive listener who just wants to listen to something familiar, sure, Spotify's probably got you covered. But if you're a music enthusiast who's looking for new things, Spotify is severely lacking. Many things simply aren't on Spotify (yet), and even if they are, Spotify seems to make it hard to find new things.

tweetle_beetle 4y ago

I quite like how spartan and transparent Bandcamp is when it comes to most things. Discovery through other users has been great and (afaik) there is no blackbox algorithm - "this user bought 12 things you have", great I might find something by looking at what else they bought. The quality of the recommendations is high, because 90% of music can be listened to in full in advance. So users only make purchases when they have a genuine interest. And fake results are less likely, because you can see purchase history. The official recommendations from the Bandcamp articles tend not to be of interest to me and the chart categories just get saturated by passionate fans of niche genre artists in my experience, but the user graph is refreshingly simple.

nisegami 4y ago
I really, really hope that Epic doesn't ruin it.
- rodgerd 4y ago
  Epic's only interest in it appears to be to pad out their litigation. I expect they'll lose interest in it if they can bribe and sue their way into making it easier to get gambling in the hands of pre-teens.
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  Epic seems to have bought it for the relationships Bandcamp has within the music community -- they see Fortnite as a multiverse, and they've already hosted a couple of concerts. The Bandcamp and Harmonix acquisitions seem to be feeding into that, so hopefully they won't ruin the existing products in the process.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    I suspect the real answer is even more cynical: Epic bought Bandcamp to make a point in their fight with Google (and Apple) over in-app billing. https://9to5google.com/2022/04/30/epic-games-bandcamp-android-billing-court/ https://9to5google.com/2022/04/30/epic-games-bandcamp-androi...

_fat_santa 4y ago

> My relationship with music is now more suited to listening to a couple of tracks on any platform, and then buying it from Bandcamp. It depends on your Genre. For me I freaking love Spotify because they have all the music I like to listen to all in one place for one flat rate every month and (almost) no bullshit, but I can see how someone who is into indie artists would prefer to go your route (I probably would if I was into that music). One major gripe I have about the Spotify app on iOS is they can't seem to figure out background audio for podcasts. This isn't a big deal as I still use PocketCasts, but for Joe Rogan I have to use Spotify.

Spivak 4y ago
Weird, I think Spotify is basically the best thing ever for indie artists. I can find an artist I like on TikTok and then immediately with zero friction be listing to all their music. There’s no, “well I like them but do I like them enough to buy an album.”
- rodgerd 4y ago
  > I think Spotify is basically the best thing ever for indie artists. Funny, I know a couple who think that Spotify is the worst thing to happen. Streaming, especially at Spotify's rates, might as well be piracy. The income's no different.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    At least in the piracy model you don't have a badly made app between you and your music. You should still buy the album if you care about it, even with streaming.
    - _fat_santa 4y ago
      > You should still buy the album if you care about it, even with streaming. I agree with this to a degree. If I really like a small indie artist I'll usually buy a Vinyl from them. But alot of the music I listen to is "mainstream" and made by artists that are already raking in cash, not saying that they don't deserve the same compensation, but I feel exponentially less bad that Taylor Swift is making $0.0005 per stream rather than some indie artist trying to make it.

sneak 4y ago

Just use NewPipe and locally download the audio of the tracks you want for free. It's much simpler.

nomilk 4y ago

> and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes Not only this, but notice when the current album finishes and the next (random) song plays, the back button doesn't work any more! (it will just keep restarting the song you didn't ask for, rather than allowing you to go back through your selected album/song).

philamonster 4y ago

I canceled last month as well though had been planning to since hearing of this: https://www.fastcompany.com/90704310/spotify-boycott-daniel-ek-investment-defense https://www.fastcompany.com/90704310/spotify-boycott-daniel-... I was paying for a family plan with some people spread out and wanted to get everyone on the same page before I just dropped their paid service. I have to say it's been horrendous using the app over what seems like months. I recently bought a car with Apple CarPlay (which is garbage on all fronts IMO though may have more to do with Subaru's console than Apple). As you said, I was bombarded with Podcasts when the app loads in the car though I NEVER listen to them, ever. Even when my phone isn't connected to my car. Playback has gotten super annoying where if I'm listening to a playlist I've made or my Liked songs when I disconnect the phone and re-connect the song I was listening to will continue to play to the end but then then the app will take over and play recommendations instead continuing with the playlist I was listening to, every time. I also don't like not being able to generate a playlist in the app from Liked songs as I was using liking songs as way to quickly group a few tunes that I want to investigate further at a later time and maybe keep around or remove after a couple listens. They typically don't stay liked for long. Since leaving the service I've been listening to the couple gigs of songs I had cached locally in iSub on my phone. I used to host my own Subsonic server, over 12 years I think, but had a catastrophic hardware failure in Feb 2021 which brought all my containers down permanently. Fortunately, I was able to recover the array long enough to copy everything to an external drive, nearly a TB of MP3's/AAC/FLAC etc. Not sure where to go from here as I don't really have the interest or resources to build a new/better/more efficient homelab nor do I have the time. These services to stream and never own or curate a thing are killing my interest in general in learning how to roll your own again, which oddly I am somewhat thankful for especially as warmer weather approaches. This has lead me to cancel other streaming services and really question how badly I want to rent content which always ends in not doing so these days. My kids don't always appreciate it but I feel like I've taken back a small amount of control by opting out and not participating. Interested in seeing how far I can go with this purge...

dangravell 4y ago
> Not sure where to go from here as I don't really have the interest or resources to build a new/better/more efficient homelab nor do I have the time Disclaimer: this is my commercial service... A middle way is to use what is essentially a hosted service for streaming your own collection. I run https://asti.ga/ https://asti.ga/ . Let me know if it seems interesting or you have any questions!

mattweinberg 4y ago

> and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes FYI, this can be turned off in the Spotify settings, under "autoplay".

pimlottc 4y ago
Unfortunately, as of about 6 months ago, Spotify ignores the auto play setting if you’re listening through a smart speaker. And it’s not a bug. https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774897/spotify-connect-autoplay-default-speaker-music-streaming https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774897/spotify-connect...
- tzs 4y ago
  I think it depends on how you are playing it on the smart speaker. If you are playing it by saying "<trigger> play <song or album or artist or genre>" I think it will behave as you describe. If however you are playing by having your desktop Spotify or mobile Spotify control your smart speaker using Spotify Connect, in my experience it obeys the "Autoplay similar songs when your music ends on other devices" setting under the "Autoplay" settings on the desktop or mobile device. With Spotify Connect you should be able to select your smart speaker (and possibly other things) in the "connect to a device" menu. The button to invoke that is in the lower right on desktop between the queue button and the volume control. In iPad it is on the lower left. Spotify Connect is good about sharing status between devices, so you can start an album playing on a smart speaker from say your desktop, pause it, and later from the couch have your tablet tell the smart speaker to pick up where it left off.
  - blowski 4y ago
    I tested whether it was consistent between iPad, desktop, and my Yamaha amp which acts as a smart speaker. It definitely did not carry the setting over, and Spotify confirmed that behaviour.
    - tzs 4y ago
      I just tested using Spotify on my iPad and my iMac, listening on an Echo Dot, Echo Show, Denon AVR-1913, and Google Home Mini. The Echos use Spotify Connect, the Home Mini uses Google Cast, and the Denon uses Spotify Connect from the iMac. From the iPad the Denon was not showing up in the Spotify devices list so I used the option to connect to an Airplay or Bluetooth device to connect via Airplay. Later, I noticed Spotify was asking for permission to scan my network for devices, I gave permission, and the Denon then started showing up directly in the devices list. I don't know if connecting to the Denon from the device list uses Spotify Connect or Airplay, because mobile Spotify unlike desktop Sotify doesn't say on the device list how it connects. The test was to tell connect to the test target, start playing a one song playlist, then when it starts playing use the position slider to skip to near the end, switch to the view that shows what is playing and the queue and up next lists, and see what happens when the song ended. Then I'd stop it (if it was playing), disconnect from the target, toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting, and do the above test again. I'd again stop it (if necessary), disconnect, and toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting back to its normal setting (which for me is off). For the Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Google Home Mini it obeyed the autoplay setting. When off it stopped after the playlist ended. When on it started playing a list of things it felt were related to the playlist song. For the Denon it always stopped when the playlist finished, both when I was definitely connected with Airplay and when possibly connected with Spotify Connect. Make sure you have an up to date version of Spotify. They added the ability to control autoplay on remote devices 2 or 3 months ago.

monkeybutton 4y ago

>The app has become increasingly buggy They've got some seriously weird bugs going on in the backend with their catalog too. I can open an artist's page and it looks like all the songs I liked are gone. So I add some and then find out I've now got a bunch of doubles. So while I've "liked" one instance of a song, it's not longer the "official" one? Then recently the audio and artwork for one liked song changed to someone else's remix of it! The original song: https://open.spotify.com/track/6dPgd8QtZKozuh725mZbXw https://open.spotify.com/track/6dPgd8QtZKozuh725mZbXw The shitty cover or whatever that replaced the original in my liked songs: https://open.spotify.com/track/2dJol6YvFoNs8WMRzn8HEp https://open.spotify.com/track/2dJol6YvFoNs8WMRzn8HEp It didn't affect just me either, my spouse had the same song swapped in her playlists too. How tf does that even happen?

danillonunes 4y ago
I believe sometimes a song become unavailable for some reason (license issues or whatever) and they replace it with a similar version. Most times it's just the exact same song in a different album, some cases it's a different recording from the same artist, but in the rare cases the algorithm may find a cover version to offer as a suitable replacement. I think the main issue is they don't keep track of the original song that received the like, so when it comes back, it's not restored to your library.

krnlpnc 4y ago

What have you replaced Spotify with for music discovery? I'm a Spotify user on the fence myself

dont__panic 4y ago
I've been using last.fm for many years now. Hundreds of thousands of scrobbles later, it's still serving up recommendations that I'm now using to build up my personal Jellyfin library that I stream to my phone via Finamp. I use a VPN so I can always connect to my home server when I'm on the go. Spotify was a pretty convenient all-in-one service for a while. But they've fallen prey to the growth trap and dark patterns for a while now, with no signs of improving any time soon. This solution isn't quite as easy as OG Spotify... but it's free, gives me something to hack and work on, and puts me in control of my music library again. There's something very freeing about consciously thinking about my music library, instead of allowing Spotify to spoonfeed you artists that give up a share of their profits [1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/02/spotify-will-now-allow-artists-and-labels-promote-tracks-in-your-recommendations/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/02/spotify-will-now-allow-art...
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Long ago the Xbox had a last.fm powered music service that gave the best recommendations. I could put it on auto play and just let last.fm pick tracks for me and I'd rarely end up skipping a song. No service since then has come close. I was really disappointed when it was shutdown and replaced with one of Microsoft's first stabs at their own music service.
blowski 4y ago
I've found the FT's weekly album reviews to be quite diverse. But also... just asking people!

nicolas_t 4y ago

I'm beyond mystified as to what Spotify is tying to do with their recent UI, it's messy, it's unusable and reduces the value of the service by a lot. I'm still a subscriber because it's cheap and an easy way to listen to music but I hate the fact that I no longer discover music like I used to on Spotify.

hylaride 4y ago
I'm an Apple music subscriber and I feel discovery is poor there, too. Back in the day iTunes genius was phenomenally good at recommending music. I spent a fortune in the iTunes music store. My guess is they let it stagnate because with cloud music there's no financial incentive to make music discovery good as they get the monthly revenue either way.
- nobleach 4y ago
  Way back in the day, The Pirate Bay was my discovery tool. They recommended other bands that were perfect for my tastes. I haven't even looked at that place in like 10 years or something. On the legal/legitimate front, Pandora has the BEST discovery algo I've ever seen. I can put in one artist and listen for hours. (I just have to thumbs-down Coldplay a lot) I've also found a lot of great music there. The bum thing is, some of it is not available on Spotify.
pelagicAustral 4y ago
My guess is that designers are still getting paid, so, 'bring me something fresh!', its the same mess everywhere. Soon as you get a functional UI, designers will iterate infinitely until it becomes borderline unusable.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Its objective is to generate "growth & engagement" to justify those designers/marketers' salaries as opposed to being a tool to pay for & listen to music.
ryneandal 4y ago

tambourine_man 4y ago

I learned so much when Spotify came out, the recommendation algorithm was remarkable and I'm truly grateful for the music I've discovered. But that was many years ago. Haven't used it in probably two years. Every time I try to it only suggests me crap. I don't know what happened. YouTube is my go to when I want to find something new. For listening to stuff I already know, I'm old fashion and have folder with my audio files. My most precious backup.

P_I_Staker 4y ago

These problems seem endemic with these services. Apple music definitely seems no better. Huge bugs that seem to go unfixed for large periods of time. Unhelpful algorithm. Especially Spotify is trying to make it's algorithm it's main product; and not to give you what you want. They want to make it pay to win and sell it to record companies and podcasts.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago
It's really odd because these companies spend tremendous amounts of money for content and then skim on hiring technical expertise. It's like buying the cheapest tires you can find for the landing gear of an Airbus A380.
blowski 4y ago
Yeah, I tried Apple Music, and cancelled during the free trial. It was that bad.

r3trohack3r 4y ago

For discovering music, I like Audile (https://audile.app https://audile.app) It recommends a random album from Deezer’s library on every page load.

clolege 4y ago

I thought that they removed the shuffle album button after Adele rose a stink [0]? It was cool to see them make that change - but its a mystery how they got in that state in the first place. My biggest gripe with Spotify is around their implementation of Play Next and the Queue - which makes it difficult to navigate some of my most basic user journeys. The way it works is: Current playing song -> Queue -> Play Next My CUJs that go south with this are: - I want to play a song after the current one, but there are already things in my queue. I can only add to the end of my queue, so I have to do that and drag it to the top. - I press play on an album to listen to it (and it gets added to my Play Next). I then want to queue up another album after the one that I'm listening to, but the only option is to add it to my Queue. I then have to go and add all of the current songs in my Play Next to my Queue before adding the new album to my Queue. - I open my app and press play on album. It will play the first song before starting to play the songs in my Queue from the last time I was using Spotify. I apparently needed to clear my Queue the first thing when getting on. There are certain things in the UI that signal to me that the abstraction might be confusing them as well - such as when right clicking on songs to remove them from Play Next, the option reads "Remove from Queue". What the heck... I feel like Google Play got this part of the UI right, with (IIRC) a single queue and treating it as double ended. They exposed both a "Play Next" and "Queue" options on their catalog - and the Play Next functionality would put the song/album at the _beginning_ of your Queue. Clicking play on an album wiped your Queue and filled it with just the single album. Maybe that's just where my expectations for how this sort of UX should work were made, but it made sense to me :) [0] https://theconversation.com/adele-has-successfully-asked-spotify-to-remove-shuffle-from-albums-heres-why-thats-important-for-musicians-172301 https://theconversation.com/adele-has-successfully-asked-spo...

gmassman 4y ago
I 100% agree with all your issues. Some product manager(s) at Spotify seriously messed up when they designed the queue system. Maybe it's too much to ask for the Next songs to actually play Next?
- clolege 4y ago
  Interesting, I found a feature request for a "play next" on their community forums [0]. They responded: > We've discussed this feature in-depth internally and also carried out a variety of tests with different groups. Based on the results we can confirm that for the moment we won't be changing the existing way queueing works. As we don't have any immediate plans to implement this, we'll be changing the Idea Status to Case Closed. Added my +1 and keeping my fingers crossed that they revisit :) [0] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-Queue-to-Next-or-Last/idi-p/120484 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Queue-Queue-to...

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bob1029 4y ago

I totally agree with this. I love Bandcamp (and also Beatport). Still have my spotify subscription, but its mostly used for discovery. Foobar2k is how I actually listen to music most days. My biggest reason for maintaining my own collection is to compensate for the possibility that spotify will arbitrarily remove tracks.

tzs 4y ago

> It's constantly trying to play albums in random order, and even more egregiously, related tracks when the current album finishes. (The following may vary in some details between desktop and mobile versions of Spotify, but the general idea works in both). On my iPad it only shuffles playlists by default, not albums. To play a playlist without it being shuffled the trick is to start it by clicking the first song rather than clicking the playlist's play button. Clicking the first song starts that song playing and sets the "next from" list to the rest of the playlist not shuffled. Starting an album by clicking the first song instead of hitting the album's play button works the same way, so simplest is to always start both albums and playlists that way unless you actually want shuffle. The above works if what you want to do is listen to a specific album or playlist and then when it is finished choose another album or playlist, assuming you start with a clear queue. If there is anything in the queue it will play the song you clicked, then the queued items, then the rest of the "next from" list so clear the queue either before you start your album or playlist or before the first song finishes. If what you want to do is listing to more than one album or playlist in a row, without shuffling, and without having to wait until one ends to choose the next, you might think you could start the first one using the above method, and then while that is playing add the others to the queue but that fails. The queue has priority over the "next from" list. The best way I've found to play multiple preselected albums is to simply make a playlist for this and add the albums to it in the order I want to hear them, and then play that playlist as described above. Next time I want to listen to a different set of albums I delete the previous play list and remake it with the new albums. I'm not sure how to play multiple preselected playlists in order. You don't seem to be able to copy a playlist to another playlist, so the trick for multiple albums does not work. You can queue the playlists one after the other which mostly works, except that if there is anything in the "next from" list that will be played after the last song from the queue. I don't know how to clear the "next from" list, but here is a hack. Make a playlist with a single song. Start that playlist and then hit pause. Now add your other playlists to the queue, and then hit the "next song" button to start the queue. When the queue finishes that song from the one song playlist will become the next up song but it won't start playing because it already played.

copperroof 4y ago

I wound up going back to pandora recently. I had started using Spotify really late (2021) and couldn’t understand any of the praise it had.