[Desktop][Podcasts] Logical sorting of titles

[lovemonkey]

To give some background info:

I have a bunch of podcast episodes that are named entirely of <title>-<episode#>

They're local files.

When I attempt to sort them logically, it doesn't seem possible. I press the title sorting, but all I manage to get is illogical sorting.

How it currently sorts:
<Title> - EP1
<Title> - EP10

<Title>- EP100

<Title>-EP101

This is of course not the desired effect anyone would want from sorting something by its title, can't think of any actual reason myself. I'm assuming this is due to using Lexicographic order sorting.

Please, set up more logical sorting for local files. It works fine on actual published podcasts, but that is clearly due to properly tagged source files.

[MafeG]

Hi @lovemonkey,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community.

We've moved your post to this help board as it fits its content better.

We did some tests from our side and were able to replicate the same you describe which in this case, is not a normal behavior. 

We'd like to go ahead and report this to the right team, so please share with us: 

• The operating system of your computer.
• The Spotify version you're running. 
• Some screenshots of your app showing the issue.

Keep us posted!

[lovemonkey]

Windows 10
Spotify for Windows version - 1.1.74.631.g0b24d9ad

I recently fixed it myself by adding a leading 0 to the track names and sorting by Artist instead (for some reason that works).

Sorting by Artist:

Sorting by Title:

I'm not sure if it would work properly if I write id3 tags for actual titles, but they have Track # written, and it doesn't appear that you can sort by that attribute either.

EDIT: I wrote track names to add the episode # as the "Title", but it did not help sadly.

[CarlosE]

Hey @lovemonkey,

Thanks for your reply.

That's right - it's not possible to sort from the # column. To confirm, is it showing properly when sorting by Artist? Since these are local files, this inconsistency might be expected as the tagging isn't optimized for the Spotify app, so we'd recommend using the sorting by artist if that delivers the desired effect.

Let us know if you have any questions.

[lovemonkey]

I mean, sure, I could accept this as a solution, but it makes to sense to me.

The file names AND id3 tags (ID3/meta tags definitely being what Spotify loads in) are identical. I just don't see what logical reason that would cause sorting not to follow number values increasing.

I realise I might have mistaken lexicographical sorting with whatever my point was, because as far as I understand it, lexicographical sorting would've caused the single numbers to sort as:
1
10
2
20

Yet, with original file name and #, it did something else.

In all honestly, let us sort by meta tags (such as Id3 track number) and this would be a non-issue.

Thank you!

[MafeG]

Hi @lovemonkey,

Thank you for keeping in touch!

Just so you know, we went ahead and reported this to the right team to have it investigated. It's been some weeks since the last time you shared your device info with us, so please let us know what's your current app version.

At the moment we're not able to provide you with a timeframe for a fix, but we can recommend keeping the app updated.

Let us know if we can help you with anything else.

[MafeG]

Hi @lovemonkey,

Thank you for your patience and bearing with us. 

We have confirmed that sorting lexicographically will produce this type of sorting. What this means is when this is organized by Title, it’s going to organize the numbers like letters. For example, Ep 20 comes right after Ep 2 because it’s organizing by the number 2*. So the order would be Ep 2 --> Ep 20 --> Ep 3.

This is expected behavior and not something we are aiming to change in the near future. In this case, we recommend that you create a playlist and use Custom Order if the track order is incorrect.

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.

[toddmedema]

My main set of playlists have numbers at the front to indicate intensity, e.g. 1 Sleep, 2 Relax, 3 Study, ... 10 Workout

But the alphabetical sort treats the numbers as letters, so when they're sorted on mobile, it gets sorted as 1, 10, 2, 3

This is pretty frustrating, and would be a minor adjustment to the alphabetical sort function to sort numbers as numbers

Thank you for your consideration!