Spotify is a godsend for people who don't have the time or money to go out and purchase individual albums, and for serious music folks who don't want to carry their entire music library on their phone's limited storage.
It isn't perfect, though. For all its merits, one of the most frustrating things about Spotify is the fact that it doesn't have every song on the planet — a great number of deep cuts, unreleased tracks, and niche music from ultra-underground bands are sadly absent from the service. Sooner or later, a user will try and search for a particular track and end up empty-handed. As such, Spotify isn't the one-size-fits-all solution for all music lovers out there, especially those who listen to off-the-grid stuff.
To be fair, it's not just Spotify's fault. The situation is far too complex and one would have to delve into topics such as licensing and the messy world of record labels to fully capture the nuances. As such, that's a story for another day. The real story here is that Spotify might finally let users add in their music manually.
Importing Songs On Spotify
Soon, users might not have to use a different music player or streaming service just to play their super hard-to-find tracks. Jane Manchun Wong, a researcher who's built a track record for spotting experimental features on popular services, just discovered that Spotify is testing a new functionality that would let users import their phone's local music into the app.
To be sure, this is already somewhat possible on the desktop version of Spotify, which lets users add custom directories into the program. That means users are able to see their local music collection alongside Spotify's library. It's not clear whether this and the just-spotted feature are the same.
Other New Features Coming To Spotify
That's not all, apparently. Spotify is also testing a "saved for later" feature for podcast episodes that would let users preserve material for, well, later. Plus, as Wong has uncovered, Spotify is looking to declutter podcast episode menus by moving descriptions to a separate screen. It's also testing a reworked Library view that would generate an automatic playlist out of the user's favorite songs.
These are all experimental features, it's worth noting. That means there's no guarantee if Spotify will choose to go ahead with them moving forward. If they do make it, though — especially local music import — Spotify would become the only music app anyone will ever need.
