Problems in the play queue management that have been around forever without having been addressed

[typo]

Hey all,

It's been a while since I last contributed here. Think my last post was around 2011 or so - right around the time when the Spotify team announced they are going to be concentrating on polishing the basic functionalities of the player. It's been around 3 or so years and I still find myself cursing the badly neglected play queue management on a more or less daily basis. This makes me a sad panda.

As I wrote 3+ years ago, I don't know about anyone else but at least to me the play queue management is like the 3rd most basic functionality in a music player - right after being able to find music in the first place and then being able to actually play it too.

I just spent mere 15 minutes and came up with this list of issues that are still present in the player:

1. Play queue is treated differently depending on whether you choose to "play" some tracks or if you "queue" them. In the former case you can delete the tracks from the play queue, in the latter case you can not.
2. If you "queue" up tracks in spotify, the shuffle setting has no effect (okay, this might be intentional, or it might not be, I don't know).
3. If you first choose to "play" some tracks and then you "queue" up additional music, the queued tracks are not placed at the end of the current play queue but, rather, immediately after the currently playing song. Sure, this might also be intentional but, to me, it seems counter-intuitive and just plain wrong.
4. You can change the order of the "queued" tracks - but only within the confines of the "queued" tracks i.e. if you first choose to "play" tracks and then you "queue" up additional tracks, you can not move a "queued" track to be played in the middle of the tracks you chose to "play".
5. As a continuation to the previous point, you CAN, however, make a track you chose to "play" to be played in the middle of the "queued" tracks but, instead of just changing the track's position in the play queue, it is duplicated, or triplicated, or quadruplicated (is that a word?) instead i.e. you get to hear that track in the middle of the "queued" tracks... and then again as part of the tracks you chose to "play". Additionally, once you do that, the duplicated tracks becomes "queued" i.e. you can no longer delete it from the play queue.
6. You can not "queue" tracks by right-clicking on a playlist - the only way to do that is to select the playlist so you can see the tracks in it, then click a track, select all, and then "queue" through a right-click.

Remember folks; it took me all of 15 minutes to come up with all of that.

-typo

PS. I know these are not exactly ideas but, since I can't post on the bug board, I didn't know where else to post this.
PPS. I can't seem to be able to add tags to this post by writing in the text field that tells me to separate the tags by a comma.

[typo]

Here's an explanation of my typical behavior when using Spotify, to try and help explain why I consider these points a major problem:

Quite often, when I launch Spotify, it is to find something new to listen to. To achieve that, I use a number of means, one of which is the absolutely fantastic "Discover" functionality (I love it!). Typically, I listen to some recommended artists/tracks/albums, and when I find an album or artist I like, I click "Play" on top of the track list in the album view and start listening.

Then I continue browsing and discovering and, when I come across something else that I find interesting, I can no longer choose to "play" it because it would completely override the current play queue, the currently playing track included, and start playing the new album I just found. So the only option is to "queue" it.

Now, this is where the problems kick in. Instead of being queued up nicely at the end of the play queue like it should do in my view, this new album is like the neighborhood bully, cutting in line straight to the entrance. If I leave things the way they now are, I'm going to hear the currently playing track... and then the entire new album I just "queued" up... and only after that do I get to hear the rest of the tracks I first chose to "play".

If, at this point, I keep on browsing and discovering and finding more interesting music, I can pretty much only keep on "queueing" them up which means that the rest of the first album just keeps getting pushed back further and further. However, the neighborhood bullies seem to respect one another, so all music added beyond the first "queued" tracks take their place at the end of the queue, like they should.

Sure, I could just "queue" up the first album as well but I really dislike the way the whole "queue" functionality has been implemented - simply because I want to be in full control of my play queue which means that I want to be able to move any track to any position in the play queue regardless of how it was added there and I want to be able to delete any track I choose from the play queue at any time.

Also, I would very much like to be able to just add like a 100 tracks in the play queue, one track or one album at a time and then hit "Shuffle" to have them play in a random order. With a vast majority of the tracks being "queued" up this does not happen.

I hope this helps at least some people see things from my perspective.

-typo

[Marco]

Hello!

Thanks a lot for taking the time to write down everything (especially in such detail)!

You might also want to post that feedback directly to Spotify via the official contact form. 😉

P.S Moved it over here in the help section.

[bartdevuyst]

I noticed this behaviour too and find it extremely annoying and counter intuitive. I hope Spotify will fix it one day but I'm not having my hopes up on a fix... this issue is there for a very long time...

I really think Spotify should take a look at the Rdio desktop app... it works wonderfully well on the subject of queuing albums and songs...