Quote:
Originally Posted by rem736
i'm curious about something. i used to be a rhapsody subscriber and now have dropped that in favor of spotify. however, the one feature missing on both is the ability to create a dynamic playlist that is specifically based to the artist name. the idea is that i would just create this one playlist that would dynamically update with all songs by the said artist on the fly so that i don't have to keep up with what artists just released what new albums. all songs belonging to the artist, old and new, should just automatically pop up when i choose to play this playlist. i should not have to add the new album to a playlist. the general idea is to have all songs that match a criteria that i set show up when i bring up that playlist. the idea is simple. yet neither rhapsody nor spotify has done it (these are the only two that i have every used, so i can't say how other music subscription services perform). begging and pleading did not help. is there a reason for this?
i bring this up because if apple comes up with its own subscription service, they would probably have this feature, and it would probably win me over for life. say what you want about itunes (and you would probably be correct), but what itunes does very well is have a very logical/intuitive way for you to view/filter/list/play your music collection. based on this logic, i believe that a dynamic artist-based playlist would be available in "iradio".
on spotify, even as of this very day, i haven't found a way to create a dynamic playlist based on my single criteria of "all songs that belong to a single artist". and there's no way i can just shuffle my entire library. i have to choose a playlist, then i will be able to shuffle the songs within that playlist. i could create a single playlist and place the entire collection on this single playlist, but that would be an organizational nightmare.
so if anyone as an answer as to why dynamic playlists based on the user's criteria can't be created, i'm very interested in the explanation.
thanks.
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This is the way I understand it...
It has to do with the licensing. It's the reason why Pandora works the way it does too. You cannot curate a "radio" station with just songs by one artist.
Keep in mind that they want you to do some thinking when you're using services like Spotify and Rhapsody too. Because they don't want to waste their money paying a fee for a song that doesn't get played all the way through. It's different when you've brought the song, and are doing that through Windows Media Player/iTunes/whatever - Can you imagine having to pay $0.02 every time you started a song, but decided not to finish it?
A single artist station sounds better on paper too. You have to think about the awkward hidden tracks that are 10 minutes long, the b-sides you may or may not have heard (and most artists having pretty hit/miss ones), the 30 second intros/skits, and the setup of an album in general (some are seamless, some have weird transitions, and then the last track closing the door). The listening experience isn't all that nice once you run into these issues. Even most greatest hits albums that aren't just money grabs are set up in a way where tracks don't seem so out of place, even though they could be YEARS apart and from different albums with different moods.