I’m new to this forum but I feel like I’ve finally found a place where I can discuss the idiosyncrasies of my software life with people who will understand me. Most of my friends just download the default of everything and never change a setting. Nevermind my wife’s iPhone screens – yes, SCREENS – that are not organized in any way, shape or form. But I digress – happy to have found a home with you all. Long time listener of MPU and new Focused listener!
I prefer Apple Music, let’s get that out of the way. I feel like for old folks like me (40’s), I want to listen to music the way I did growing up – by album. When I open Apple Music I have the option to play a playlist (I don’t debate Spotify is strong on this point). I do this often, but I also really like browsing through my library. To do that, I click on “Artists” quite a bit and scroll through a list of bands in my library.
One day a couple of months ago (I sometimes sub to Spotify and Apple concurrently), I was looking through Spotify and figured I’d browse through the artists in my library. Only one artist appeared in this list, yet – I have over 100 artists in my library.
I reached out to support and they said this is by design. Only artists you “follow” show up in this view. WHAT?!
So finding music by artist is a bit tedious. Okay. Then… if I did somehow manage to land on a page for an artist I like (e.g. Led Zeppelin), instead of showing me their albums I get a list of all the songs – with the album icon beside it.
Spotify has great playlists but they seem to rely very heavily on people who treat it like a radio station, listening to singles and random songs. If you like to build a collection and listen to albums, I don’t see how Spotify works for people.
But the artist view not showing music by artist? I mean, come on.
If Spotify were a hardware store, I feel like it’s the kind of place where I walk in looking for a 3" wood screw, and the staff member directs me to one giant container full of screws and says “it’s in there somewhere”.
