Spotify needs to become more Album "Collection" based, it's too track-focused at the moment

[philask]

Before Spotify I had (well still have, but mostly untouched these days) large MP3 collection organized into Artist/Album/Tracks folder structure.  This worked well for me and combined with Playlists meant that I maintained my personal "collection" of "Albums" as well as favourite tracks and Playlists for particular occasions / moods.

What I find these days is that I'm losing track of Albums, I have Spotify Playlists (although the flat Playlist structure tires me), but it's just not the same as having a personalized "Collection" of music.

Spotify needs to add the ability to build your own "Collection" (not Library, which is still track based), this should be organized however you like, but at least providing Artist / Album / Year drill-down structure (folders or not).  It'd be nice to match this against existing MP3 collections and Libraries.  The ability to tag playlists and collections (and/or albums) would also be a bonus.

What I'm getting at here is the missing part (for me) in Spotify is the ability to "virtualize" (cloudize?) my mental image of a music collection, which is shelves of albums sorted into some logical order (years, artists, genre, whatever), but mostly Albums, not just Tracks.

My 2 cents.

UPDATE 21/4/13: I don't seem to be "allowed" to embed images in my posts (sad).  I've recently been using Google Music on a Nexus 10 and I have to say it has almost the perfect Album / Genre / Artist interface.  I particularly love the way that in Artist view you see Albums stacked and they move subtly in 3D as you scroll.  The only thing missing here would be Year and latest-added sort/views.  Anyway here are the screenshots, this is DEFINITELY a better way to "visualize my collection":

http://community.spotify.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/298076/album-id/3824

UPDATE 16/5/13:

Google Play Music All Access does this and more

Sorry Spotify but looks like you were too slow.  Google just ate your lunch, dinner and breakfast for the next 10 years.  Google Play Music All Access has the above functionality (add any album to "my collection") and more, including a MUCH better visualization of your collection, album based browsing and a considerably better radio implementation.

UPDATE 21/5/13:

Spotify ignore albums, again

It's pretty obvious now that Spotify have no interest in the albums or the art of constructing an album, don't they realize that most artists work for years to create a "piece of work" known as an album, not just a bunch of random tracks?  Today Spotify launched their "Charts", which once again completely ignore albums... What with Google Play Music All Access and Rdio I think Spotify are going down the slippery fail slope to irrelevance.

http://charts.spotify.com/

UPDATE 1/1/14:

Looks like Spotify took this suggestion seriously and have been beta testing Collections for quite a while (yes, they made me a beta tester 😉 )  It works well and I'd imagine it'll be mainstream soon.    (Keep giving the idea Kudos to continue to support it)

[JoeJiko]

Isn't that what search is for?

[philask]

JoeJiko - no, it's not, unless you can memorize and mentally visualize a 40,000+ album collection.

[shirleybeans]

seriously. spotify, i love you, but the interface / functionality for browsing the library really needs to be improved, as mentioned above. thanks!!

[Bokonon]

I think that this is an issue especially with the mobile app.  I have the Spotify app on my iPhone, which has completely replaced my using the native iPod function on the phone.  I love having so much music at my fingertips and I'm more than happy to pay for it, the price it quite reasonable for the amount that I use it.  My problem with the mobile app is that the organization is really sub par.  I have playlists set up for certain collections I've made. 

What I've discovered though is that I'm faced with an ultimatum, either set up a playlist for either every artist I listen or use the search function every time I want to find an artist.  I star some albums but the starred tracks folder has become a huge mess and it's pretty much hopeless to browse through it to find what I want.  The solution to make things more organized would be to allow you to devide the Starred Songs folder into subcatagories, much like browsing music on an iPod.  I'm thinking of the mobile app specifically, it's not so much of an issue when using a computer.  When you go into Starred Songs instead of just a huge list of songs it should let you choose "Songs, Artists, Albums" much like an iPod.  Then if you choose an artists from the artists list you could select what album from that artist from what you've starred.  It would make it so much easier to find music and would allow you to browse easier.  Browsing is a great feature because sometimes you don't know what you want to listen to until you see it.

[royrov]

I agree. I almost always listen to a complete album. Have a look at how Wimp and Rdio have done it.. 

[xjones]

100% agree. I love the music discovery features and apps provided by Spotify. I've been a free user for a while now and am testing out services to use with mobile devices inc. offline. Currently, Rdio is my favorite solely b/c of the Collection features. Basically, I want my music service to let me manage a personal library first, search for new music and interact socially second.

Would be great to hear from Spotify on any future plans in this regard.

[er43]

Agreed. Collection of chosen artists containing chosen albums. Gives easiest browsing. And please add some sorting too, where you can sort for genre and personal rating 0-5 stars

[user-removed]

I like the way "simfy" handles the favorites! You can choose artist, album, songs independently. The way "Spotify" does with the starred list based on songs is not user friendly and overloads the list.

A favorite artist does not automatically mean "I like everything of the artist".

A favorite album does not automatically mean "I like all songs of that album".

Please Spotify, give us more flexibility with "favorites"!

[philask]

Holky - Correct, that's EXACTLY what I'm proposing.

If you "favorite" a track then it's the track you like, it becomes part of your track collection.

If you "favorite" an album then you're saying you generally like the album (it becomes part of your album collection, which can also be browsed by other categories such as artist, genre, year), you should then also still be able to  independently favorite tracks.

If you "favorite" an artist then you're saying you generally like that artist (but as you pointed out, not all their albums).

I'm a developer myself, if Spotify don't address this I many well look into developing it as a Spotify "app".

[kummyquat]

Rdio has a lot of downsides and lacks overall functionality compared to Spotify in the mobile arena, but one thing they have down is this.

You hit "Collection" in the Rdio app and you're presented not with a flat list of thousands of tracks - you're presented with an Artist browser and a"Shuffle all" button.

This is precisely what Spotify needs. I'd like to scroll through a few hundred artists, not thousands of tracks.

And this would really help when in a marginal/no-data zone. You can't search for a song with no data. And when you don't have much enough bandwidth to stream, searching for a track and then scrolling around to find the version you have cached is more than a bit cumbersome.