Spotify, a listening platform that we all know and love (except you, Apple Music users; no one wants you here), is widely used by many music lovers. It has features (listening activity, mixes, time capsule) that set it apart from other music platforms and make it what it is; however, there are pros and cons to these features, the pros being the fact that they exist and the cons being the awful programming that went into creating them.

Listening activity glitch

For those who don’t know, listening activity refers to the sidebar of Spotify desktop that shows what your friends are listening to. It includes the friend’s name, the song they are listening to, the artist, and the playlist/album it is from. Additionally, it displays how long ago the friend was listening on Spotify, or if they’re listening currently. But there’s an issue with this innovation. Listening activity may say that a friend is currently listening to a specific song when in actuality, they were listening to it about five minutes ago. And I know what you’re thinking: It’s really not that deep. Except it is that deep. We live in a society where we can send messages to one another and receive them within seconds, so why can’t Spotify display user listening activity in a timely manner? There’s another reason for my dissatisfaction: it’s embarrassing. I partake in stalking my friends on Spotify (not in a creepy way, in a normal way) and report back to them, commenting on their current listens. When they reply with, “oh i’m not listening to that anymore,” I feel like burying myself alive. Apparently, I’m late to the trend and that song is no longer the “it thing” or whatever. This glitch has been occurring since the beginning of time (aka since I started using Spotify in 2017). It’s annoying and getting old. This type of glitch could happen in the 1960s, but not today. Today there needs to be change.

Mixes

As you may have seen, Spotify has a multitude of playlists that are “made for you.” These are playlists that Spotify users worldwide can access, but there’s just one catch—they’re different for everyone. This means that if you see your friend listening to a made-for-you playlist in the listening activity section, you will not be able to see the songs they see. Instead, you will see a list of songs that are “yours.” These are usually a jumble of songs that are taken straight out of your playlists, songs that you’ve streamed on Spotify before, and new songs that Spotify thinks you may enjoy. In these made-for-you playlists, there resides a section called “mixes.” You’ve probably seen your Daily Mixes simply titled: “Daily Mix 1/2/3/4.” Then, there are some more specific mixes such as Sad Mix, Happy Mix, Pop Mix, and Chill Mix. But amongst all of these mixes, there’s a niche section of mixes like Goblincore Mix, Milk Mix, and Angry Tuna Mix. The weirder the title, the more ambiguous the songs get, meaning you may find a whole mix containing songs you’ve never heard of before, or songs that are even in a completely different language. As you can see, these mixes are very intriguing. Some may seek simplicity in their music and turn away from these strange playlists. But others, like us, are drawn to these unusual song collections.

However, if this information on niche mixes isn’t new to you, then you know there are a few problems affiliated with the brilliant mixes that I’ve described. One of them is so simple and can be fixed so easily, yet Spotify just continues to make us suffer. It’s the fact that it’s almost impossible to find niche mixes. One particular example of this is my Chill Milk Mix that I adored so dearly and was ripped away from my arms one random day in 2023. It upsets us that such an interesting variety of playlists are locked away from our reach. There are at least hundreds of niche mixes that are hidden somewhere in Spotify’s confusing layout, and sometimes they don’t appear even if you search for them. Spotify has not commented on this issue– or at least not in a clear manner– most likely because this problem is being ignored. It’s our responsibility to speak up against this madness, this monstrosity.

Another problem with the mixes is that they often recycle the same sequence of four songs in several different mixes. There are these sequences of songs in our mixes that we have been seeing for the last four months now. Get creative Spotify. It’s fun until it gets old, and trust us, it has gotten old. In addition to all of these issues, Spotify doesn’t understand that when we’re listening to a song on repeat one day, we will need it on our mix the next day. Get it right Spotify.

Songs disappearing (and coming back)

Lana Del Rey is notorious for her unreleased songs, which everyone has heard through social media whether they like it or not. These songs are often illegally put on Spotify, but then one day Spotify randomly decides to follow their legal obligations and removes these songs, making all the Lana Del Rey fans angry. Nevertheless, Lana Del Rey fans persist, so all the unreleased songs are always put back up soon after they are removed. In fact, Lana Del Rey fans were so passionate about “Say Yes To Heaven” that Spotify couldn’t remove that song even if they wanted to because the fans had put this song in so many different places. The interest among Lana’s stans for this song caused Lana to release it, but this is sadly not the fate for other unreleased Lana songs.

This is just one example of the atrocious acts committed towards beautifully written unreleased songs. Spotify, do better.

Artists are not paid enough

We think the biggest problem with Spotify is that they don’t pay the artists enough. Artists make $0.003 to $0.005 per stream, which means that artists who are just starting out make peanuts. This has a negative impact on the music industry as it discourages new artists from continuing their careers as musicians.

By now, we’ve discussed some features of Spotify that are innovative and unique but have downsides to them; however, this one last feature is quite the quirk and has been severely overlooked in our opinion.

Time capsule

One main quirk that Spotify has is its end of the year Wrapped. There’s a whole article discussing Spotify Wrapped on The Quill, (Article on Spotify Wrapped), so what we want to discuss in this article is Spotify’s Time Capsule, a recent creation of Spotify. The time capsule is exactly what it sounds like—store a few songs in a “container” of your choice (this year’s choices included the traditional bottle, a rice cooker, a garbage dump, and a snowglobe) before setting it aside for a year before being able to open it. What makes this idea so unique is that it provides prompts for what songs to put into your capsule. By this, I mean that you add songs based on questions like “What song reminds you of your favorite person?” and “What song would you play for aliens if they came to Earth” and “What song would be your theme song?” You’re required to add at least three songs (but of course, we added as many as we could). Overall, Spotify’s newest creation makes the platform even more fun and different from their competitors. By allowing users to surprise themselves each year with songs that they listened to in the past, Spotify certainly knew how to create a connection with its listeners.

We all listen to Spotify religiously. We rely on it for our music, which is synonymous with our sanity, and Spotify delivers for the most part. On the other hand, Spotify must reform itself a little bit so that we can listen to music that interests us and artists can get better pay.

Sources:
Andris Mucenieks Oct 10, et al. “How Do Artists Make Money on Spotify: Full Guide (2024).” Printify, 21 Nov. 2023, printify.com/blog/how-do-artists-make-money-on-spotify/#:~:text=How%20much%20money%20do%20artists,per%20streamshare%2C%20not%20by%20song.