5 Things I Wish Spotify Would Steal From Rdio

1. Label Pages

In Rdio, labels were treated a lot like artists. You could click on the name of the label from an album you like and see all the records they have put out. While you’re at it, following a label and getting updates about their new releases in the activity tab would be awesome.

2. Friends who have listened

I don’t really recommend music on Spotify which is a huge shame because giving and receiving good recommendations are such immensely satisfying experiences. There are people that I have gone years without talking to other than in-app music recommendations. I don’t make as many recommendations on Spotify because I have no way of knowing if that person has already listened.

This was also great if you were looking into a new artist and needed some guidance on the best jumping off point — you could gauge at a glance with the friend icons or even reach out to someone you didn’t know was a superfan.

3. Graceful Degradation to offline mode

Please, Spotify. You know when I don’t have an internet connection. Just give me a switch to flip to offline mode and only show me synced stuff. This might be really hard, I don’t know, but it would sure be nice.

4. Custom Playlist Artwork

I pushed for this at rdio through personal friends. As far as I know, I have no such connections at Spotify, so it’s going to be trickier. Either way, I get that it seems like nothing, but I put a lot of work into playlists and the only reason you generate those stupid album art mosaic things is so the space isn’t empty.

5. Gorgeous Queue Backgrounds

This is another point where you can see that rdio was designed by music lovers and specifically album lovers. In rdio, your queue wasn’t just another page for your main content window, it was another view mode.