Wrong song order, songs queued multiple times when playing album

[ClassicalGas]

Using the Android app, I am trying to play the album "Sor: Six Bagatelles, Op. 43; 24 Progressive Pieces, Op.44" by the guitarist Jason Vieaux. It is impossible. It both mixes up the track order and adds tracks multiple times to the "Now Playing" list or the Queue, whichever way the album is added. I am in the trial period for Spotify but the way it handles the classical music and the song queue is infuriating. Why is it impossible to simply play this album, start to finish? Both the web players and Android apps for Google Play and Amazon Music do this without any problem. Does anyone at Spotify care about classical music listeners?

[David_09]

Hey @ClassicalGas 

I'm sorry to hear that

When you use the free spotify version you don't have the option Queue, since this is an exclusive profit of premium users, when you are in the free Spotify version you can only play the artist album and the playlists in random mode.

We invite you to become premium and have the benefits of other users.

[ClassicalGas]

This response is meaningless. I'm using the trial version of Spotify Premium to see if I want to subscribe and so far the app is horrible by comparison to other streaming services. I do have the option to use the queue. Even without the queue the album I mentioned will not play correctly. Are you a robot, or just a useless person sending out scripted replies?

[David_09]

Hey! @ClassicalGas

I'm sorry that my answer is not what you expect.

The application of free spotify is designed to give you an idea of the functionality of the app, as you will realize not all the great functions that spotify possesses you can use as it is a payment service with exclusive benefits, as they are putting your songs in the order you want, or just listen to the song you are looking for, without ads.

I reiterate my invitation to join the most important streaming service.

You certainly will not regret it

[Joe]

The OP has already said he is "trial version of Spotify Premium" although, to be fair he didn't make this clear in his first post.

Hey @ClassicalGas, I just checked and it plays fine and in order on my android. You need to play the album by touching the first track and not by using the big green "Shuffle Play" button.

Spotify does present a few challenges to classical music listeners but it should play all albums in order.

[ClassicalGas]

I just checked again and it is now playing in the correct order. Something changed since yesterday. I definitely wasn't using shuffle play yesterday because it's useless for classical music. I also tested other albums, which queued correctly. The other problem, which was songs being queued multiple times also is no longer happening. I think it was an issue of how the Android app identified track metadata since the problem wasn't happening with the desktop app.

In general playing classical music on Spotify is very challenging. For example, suppose you want to play Concerto No. 20 followed by Concerto No. 24 from "Mozart: The Piano Concertos" by Murray Perahia. You need to select Disk 8 Tracks 4-6 followed by Disk 10 Tracks 4-6. You can't just play the 1st three tracks, then add the next three to the queue. That pushes the last two tracks of "No. 20" to the bottom behind the queue. You can't start a queue unless somethings already playing. There's no "Clear Queue" button in the Android app to fix things. There's no obvious way to clear the "Now Playing" list. I've taken to playing "Silence" by John Cage while I line up a play queue. I also sometimes delete a playlist named "temp", then add tracks to a new playlist named "temp". This is all very cumbersome.

[Joe]

I don't think any of the popular streaming services handle classical well - Spotify is no exception. Classical lovers will usually find ways around the problems but, sadly, casual listeners who are new to the genre are pretty much locked out. 

You can see some of the current ideas from classical fans here.

[ClassicalGas]

Yes, that's true but the play queues are both simpler and more functional with other streaming services. I really want to like Spotify because it plays nice with both Chromecast and Alexa devices, it's library is extensive and the sound quality is better than Amazon Music. But the play queues in Google Play and Amazon Music are simply superior. You can select a track, check off a selection of tracks or an album. When you play the selection it becomes the play queue. You can then add to the bottom of the queue by using "Add to Queue", to the top of the queue by using "Play Next" and you can clear the queue if neccesary. This all works identically in the web browser and phone app players. With Spotify there's no "Clear Queue" in the phone app and no queue at all in the web player. You can cast to Chromecast in the phone app and web player (using the Chrome browser) but not in the desktop app. I'm currently trying to choose my streaming service among Google Play, Amazon Unlimited and Spotify. Google Play doesn't work with Alexa; Amazon Music doesn't work with Chromecast and can't play directly through Alexa devices. Spotify requires very cumbersome procedures for correctly queuing tracks that are unforgiving of any changes, plus it's implentations are frustratingly inconsistent with non-sensical loss of functionality across platforms. Spotify is so close to working well for me, if only they would match Google and Amazon in their player implementations. Something's wrong when the ease of use is worse at the same time functionality is more limited.

[ClassicalGas]

One other thing: the Spotify player doesn't organize my non-Spotify downloaded music by Album, only a long, hard-to-use list of tracks. Both Google Play and Amazon Music have no trouble seamlessly integrating my purchased music.