Spotify Review

I listen to a lot of music. My collection in iTunes was always growing, then I discovered Spotify. I loved the ease of listening to new things, the discovery algorithms, the suggestions, and the constant influx of new music. I subscribed pretty quickly in 2016.

At the end of 2016 Spotify then delighted me with my Year in Review playlist. It was a great way to look back at my year, and was a great playlist to throw on at any time.

In 2017 Sue, and the kids started listening to Spotify more. We have a Sonos speaker and I set it up with my account. Nearing the end of 2017 I was looking forward to the year end playlist. Once it arrived though, I was very disappointed. The playlist was mainly pop songs that were a result of the kids’ listening. It was so bad, I deleted it from my account.

There started to be more conflicts over Spotify use where multiple people were wanting to play music at the same time. We fixed this by signing up for the family plan, which has made me very happy. No more music interruptions at work, or random texts from the kids asking if they could have a turn on Spotify. The only pain was transferring the playlists I had created for their music to their account.

When 2018 was drawing to a close I was once again looking forward to the ‘Your Top Songs’ playlist. I figured the accounts had been separated long enough that there wouldn’t be any overlap. I was mostly right. The playlist is really good, full of lots of songs that bring me back to certain parts of the year. There are still a few pop songs that I end up skipping (and really should just remove).

We’re barely into 2019 and I’m looking forward to next years playlist already

Side Note:

Every Friday I check the new releases for bands I know and enjoy. Quite often there is nothing except pop and rap. Spotify really has a chance to make this area more customized to the account. The vast majority of the band I follow, and the albums I’ve saved are rock/hard rock/metal. Why the New Releases section shows 95% content that I don’t listen to is beyond me. Further is the fact that a lot of the music I listen to is by artists that are not mainstream. They release new albums, but those do not show up in the New Releases area. Spotify has a vast amount of data on my listening habits, they should make use of that.