For just one moment, I’d like to paint a scene for you. It’s 12:13 am on a Friday, and you’re partway through your weekly task of finding anything new and interesting that came out in the past week to share with the 6 people who watch your silly little internet videos. You’ve exhausted your purpose built list, so you’ve moved into your Spotify release radar, expecting all of this week’s greatest new tracks based on your listening algorithm. In theory this is a great next step for a few extra hits, but theory is the key word. After you stumble upon something you absolutely love you realize that, for some god forsaken reason, release radar has served you a song that came out a full month ago.
This is likely my most niche critique of Spotify, one of many on a list that would span a full kilometre if you were to print it out (that’s 0.621371 miles for my special American friends). Obviously we have far more pressing issues here, like the rampancy of AI music among its top playlists and charts, or the frankly abhorrent payment of artists, but this small issue plagues me week after week as I keep finding songs in an awkward window, too old to be a new release, but too new to be featured on THE ARCHIVE.
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Isn’t that great for music discovery? Isn’t this a problem completely of your own making?” and while that may be true, Spotify already has a playlist for discovering releases that aren’t new. That’s what Discover Weekly is for, a playlist that quite frankly I think should be longer and more comprehensive, but that’s a whole other can of worms. Spotify for years now has had this problem in that it feels like none of the teams in the company talk to eachother. There is a constant disconnect between feature implementation, feature removal, and literally any god damn common sense
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