Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
Spotify wants you to update the metadata of its music
- Spotify today introduced a new feature called Line-In, which enables users to suggest metadata updates to songs, albums, and artists.
- If enough users suggest the same metadata update, Spotify will officially update the metadata to reflect what users suggested.
- The feature is only available on desktop versions of Spotify for now, but app-integration could come in the future.
With the advent of music streaming services, the way people consume music has changed dramatically. Where we used to pop on a record by one artist to listen to from beginning to end, now we pull up automatically generated playlists based on an activity or mood. Spotify thinks the metadata used to create these playlists could use some updating and wants you to do the grunt work.
Starting today, desktop Spotify users can click on the three-dot menu icon next to any song, album, or artist, and select “suggest an edit.” Doing so will open up a website for Spotify’s newest feature called Line-In.
Once at the Line-In website, you’ll have the ability to suggest edits to the metadata of that particular song, album, or artist. To be clear, you are not able to change metadata using this feature, just make suggestions for changes. Spotify will then make decisions about officially updating the metadata based on user suggestions.
For example, the debut album by the band Weezer is officially called Weezer. However, fans primarily refer to it as The Blue Album, due to its distinctive album cover:
Using Line-In, fans could suggest that an alias for Weezer should be The Blue Album. If enough people make the same suggestion, Spotify can then update the metadata so when someone searches for “The Blue Album,” Weezer’s debut will appear as a result.
However, don’t think that you can get your friends to brigade Spotify and change Weezer’s sophomore album Pinkerton into The Greatest Album of all Time Forever and Ever. Spotify will check whether your submissions match up with other users’ and also keep track of your past performance. The company will also test you to make sure you are knowledgeable enough about a particular genre. If you start to show odd results on any of these fronts, your suggested edits will go to the bottom of the list.
Line-In started as a beta program for a select set of Spotify users but now is officially open to all Spotify members today. Unfortunately, it only works in the desktop version, with a mobile app possibly in the works.
Spotify will become a public company sometime this year and has been introducing new changes (as well as altering some past policies) in the meantime.