Make entire play queue editable

[Dommedagsprofet]

There's currently two queues in Spotify:

• The editable queue. ("Queued tracks")

• The locked queue. ("Next tracks")

If you press the  queue button with tracks in both lists, you can see that these two queues follow each other. The editable queue always plays first.

The problem is having a locked queue at all.

You can't empty it without interrupting playback, and you'll have to use a workaround to do so. You can't reorder it or add or delete songs. After finishing the editable queue, Spotify always continues playback from the locked queue.

The workaround is starting playback at the very last item on a page. The locked queue will then have no further items. Then you can continue by purely using the queue right-click function instead of double-click or enter. This adds items to the editable queue. These tracks can then be reordered and deleted as you wish.

This UI behaviour is, however, not very user-friendly and quite frankly really annoying. It's also very unconventional having two queues in a music player. I've never seen any other software using either a dual-queue system or a locked queue system.

Here's a good implementation suggestion from user Styrke:

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Google Play Music's queue system is really easy to understand and use. Just do what they do.

I can describe it by three (3) easy bullets:

• Double clicking a song starts playing it and adds the rest of the list that the song came from to the queue. (The queue gets overwritten)
• Right click one or more songs to add them to the top ("play next") or the bottom ("add to queue") of the queue.
• Everything in the queue can be removed or rearranged by drag-and-drop

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EDIT: I updated the terminology to match the new Spotify. Items are no longer yellow and white, but are now under separate headings and in the same color instead.

[krikelin]

Probably there would require some changes, nice idea though. I believe the play queue is just a pointer to the current playlist and is bound to the storage there so it might not be so easy to change, if the list isn't copied to a own stack for the play queue.

[bradavon]

Agreed. It's there by designed. There's a reply over at the old GetSatisfaction support forum, when this was last raised. It's assumed you want to listen to an entire artist.

It's even more annoying when Karaoke etc... albums are included.

[martijnenco]

you can jst drag a song into the playlist.. ..then after that song is done it wil continue with the list you've always had 🙂

[bradavon]

You shouldn't have to add a song to a playlist just to listen to it and not change the entire queue :-).

[XGTQFPZR]

"It's assumed you want to listen to an entire artist."

That's a wrong assumption in most cases.

Besides, as pointed out, a search result does not contain only one artist; it usually contains a whole jumble of various artists. Nobody wants to listen to that whole list in sequence.

The expected behavior when one double-clicks a track somewhere is that the track is added to the play queue he exact same way tracks are added when you right-click and select "Queue", and that it immediately starts playing. Possibly along with the rest of the tracks in the list you found it on, provided it's an album or a playlist. Never if it's an entire search result or an entire discography (which isn't chronological anyway).

The way it appears to be currently done, instead of individually adding tracks to the play queue, some sort of pointer is established in an album, discography, playlist or search result, saying: "Play everything below this point". And then the pointer plays its way relentlessly downward, displaying in the play queue all the tracks it intends to play, without them actually being added to the queue. And with little possibility to remove any of them or change their order in the queue.

In my opinion, this entire approach is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned altogether as soon as possible.

[bradavon]

@ XGTQFPZR: Agreed and well summerised. Sadly Spotify don't see it that way.

[DragonL]

I didn't even understand why the queue is always playing unrelated crap that I'd never added on purpose, now I get it - it's adding the entire list of search results which is INSANE. Also why can't I edit the queue? As it stands, the queue makes little to no sense.

[bradavon]

Yep.

Basically doubling click on a single track will play the entire selection. Whether it's a play list, an album, search result or entire artist. It'll either be shuffled or in the order it's displayed but it will add the entire list to the queue.

The only way around it, is to right click and Queue. Generally I know this and try and remember to queue but during parties people naturally double click and your carefully selected playlist is immediately wiped out. Grrr!

[krikelin]

To remove a track, you can drag that song up and throw it so it becomes yellow with a yellow circle at left, and then reorder it, it cannot be deleted thought. You can also edit the play queue in this way.

[c00a5b709b609c8]

Oh yeah!  I stand corrected.  This is probably the most consistantly ignored feature request in Spotify's history.  However, Don't want 2 clicks to queue a song, provides potential competition.