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Thumbs up? Spotify may add voting to its music playlists

Spotify may currently be on top when it comes to subscribers, but the company didn’t get there by resting on its laurels. The streaming service is constantly looking for ways to improve its offerings, and now it’s considering an overhaul of its playlists feature.

Some Spotify users have recently received a survey asking about how they use the service’s playlists, Music Ally reports. The survey is targeted at those who listen to playlists as well as those who spend most of their time creating playlists.

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The questions for those listening to playlists are fairly simple, asking if they would tell a playlist creator, if they liked a song, and if they’d tell a creator if they didn’t like a song. The answers include the obligatory yes and no answers, as well as options asking if feedback should be anonymous, or only by request.

While this feedback would be nice for Spotify users who create playlists, it could also be a boon for the service itself. “If we get a recommendation wrong you can’t tell us,” Spotify creator Matt Ogle said, speaking of the service’s Discover Weekly playlists. “We want to play with the playlist format a bit. It’s not the right tool for every job.”

The questions aimed at playlist creators start out strangely, asking them how much they already know about who is listening to their playlists, including how many followers they have, whether they know when someone likes or dislikes a playlist, and if they realize when someone plays one of their playlists.

After these initial questions, the survey asks how interested they would be in knowing certain pieces of data, like knowing if listeners skip on a certain track.

Spotify already provides detailed metrics to artists and labels who have music on the service, but its data for playlist creators is comparatively sparse. This survey could point to big plans for playlists. Of course, these surveys can also come from third parties or divisions within a company with little knowledge of future plans, so don’t go all in on your plan to become a professional Spotify DJ just yet.

Kris Wouk
Former Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
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