Spotify Tips for People Who Like to Listen to Whole Albums

I might be old-fashioned, but I like listening to albums. Spotify seems to always be fighting me on this.

I like experiencing a collection of songs all at once, played in the order chosen by the artist. I especially like doing this when I discover a new artist: I want to get a feel for what their music is like outside of their one or two hits. You know who doesn't seem to get that? Spotify.

Now, my experience is subjective, and I'm not saying I don't like Spotify. I really love having almost every album I can think of just a few keystrokes away. But I can't help but feel the service isn't made with album listeners in mind. For one thing, when an album ends, I like having silence until I decide what to listen to next. Spotify prefers to fill that silence by playing a stream of algorithmically selected "related" music.

And those choices seem odd, at least in part because of my album habit. My theory is that the habit of listening to complete albums is niche enough that Spotify assumes someone would only do it if they were truly obsessed with an artist. The result is that random tracks from the middle of an album—not even my favorite tracks from that album—end up inserted into such autoplays, and even playlists, just constantly.

I can't be the only person experiencing this! There must be countless others who mostly listen to full albums on Spotify. If you’re one of them, here are a few settings you can use to make the experience better.

Disable Autoplay

I mentioned Spotify's autoplay feature earlier, which keeps playing like-minded songs after you’ve reached the end of an album. You can turn this off, and it's not even particularly hard. Click your profile icon, in the top-right corner, then click Settings. You'll find the Autoplay option toward the top. Switch it off and you're done: Albums will now end with silence instead of a random stream of music. You can always turn the feature back on later if you want.