The one Spotify feature I need in 2026

What I'm about to suggest in this newsletter is simply outlandish. But it's 2026, AI is here, all bets are off. I feel it's time Spotify lets us listen to songs in clips.

Although unlikely given the infancy of this newsletter, if you work on the Spotify product team, I'd appreciate it if you showed this video to your superiors. Look, some songs only have a specific section where they are actually good. Songs like this leave me conflicted a lot. For example, it's a boring 5 minute pop song with a brilliant 90 second bridge section. As a listener I have to decide whether the 1 minute 30 seconds are worth sitting through the preceding dull 3 minute 30 seconds. Is it worth it? Should I add it to my Liked Songs playlist? I will outline exactly how they should go about creating this feature and why it's important for me.

To understand why I pretty bullish on this idea of listening to the best parts of a song, you need to understand how I listen to music. I'm a curator at heart. I curate my music strictly. I never listen to a song randomly. Every time I press play on a song there's intend, it's either I know the artist, I'm seeking a new genre or it's a song I've already vetted. How do I vet song? You ask. Well, to answer you, I seek new music through trusted Spotify created playlists, the albums of artists I follow or some times, random deep dives on artists I often hear about on social media or other media I consume. After listening to a song, if I like it, I add it to my Liked Songs playlist.

The Liked Songs playlist for me is a sanctuary. I strive to make sure it's pure, that every song on it truly embodies the name of the playlist, that it's a song I can say I like without any shame. I'm too strict because I want the Liked Songs playlist to be a place where I can shuffle the songs without being afraid the next song might be a total bore. So, when my curation works, I can listen to the playlist for hours in either direction, shuffled or not, filtered into any genre without stumbling into a weak link, just straight bangers. This curation is also a thumbs up on a song, if I add a song to the Liked Songs playlist, it means I intend to listen to it a lot more than once. As you can imagine, there are very few songs which I wholly love every minute of. There are songs that I only love 60 percent of. But the question is, what about a situation where I only love 30 percent of a song but that 30 percent is simply transcendent?

I can already see the music purists turning this clicking away from this newsletter. To which I think it's unfortunate, seriously, I have a compelling pitch. In the past two years, Spotify has introduced a number of features that I had me scratching my head a bit. They were confounding to say the least. Which is why I think my idea isn't so crazy after all. Chief amongst these recent features is Spotify Mix. It gives users the ability to audio mix songs in a playlist like a DJ would. It gives them tools to add transitions between songs with various presets. It exposes the song tempo so users can reorder the songs to keep a specific mood with the mix. And I'll admit, this makes the curating a playlist extra fun, it's deep personalisation. But, never in a million years did I think a streaming service would expose such a niche feature directly to the users. It's a quirky feature that, I suppose, sets Spotify apart. And for the very few millions of people who will use it, it's great.

The other bizarre recent feature is AI playlists. It's a straightforward feature if you have used AI chatbots. You prompt the AI by describing the kind of music you want to it add to the playlist, it heeds the call and gives you what you want, hopefully. I have used the feature to varying success. Sometimes it keeps on spewing the same generic songs it thinks I would like. Now, this might be because I am bad at writing AI prompts. But either way, I don't the like the feature. It messes with my curatorial pursuits. To me it seems like they implemented it as a response to the hype around AI. Which is fair, they are experimenting to see what sticks. While they are still in this experimental mode and it seems they are taking a lot of suggestion. I want them to listen to my suggestion and see how I would go about implementing a feature to play specific parts of a song.

The simplest way to implement this is to create a clipping seeker, like the one we have in video editing software or even on TikTok or YouTube. On TikTok and YouTube shorts, once you upload a video, it gives you the ability to crop your clip to the length you want. It's an intuitive process. On Spotify, the tools are already there. The songs are there, all that's needed is the ability to clip them for future listening. The the craziest thing is, Spotify already has this functionality. On the home page there are preview clips of songs and podcasts. These clips are automatically created by the algorithm, I presume based on what it determines are the most listened to sections of a song. What I'm asking for is for Spotify to give us, the users, the power to create our own clips for future listening. Just think, is it even ethical to advertise the best part of a song to people but deprive them of the ability to skip the torturous parts? I think not.

I have a playlist in my Spotify library that I named 'Euphoric Climaxes'. The title is self explanatory, it contains songs that, regardless of whether they're overall a bore, have a climax or midpoint that would have me singing my lungs out. One notable song on it so far is Beyonce's Single Ladies. The song is, through and through, a boring affair until the bridge. If I had my way, I would have that bridge section of the song on repeat.

Obviously this isn't the only use case for clipping. Some songs are two songs in one, with two totally different vibes. For instance Drake's Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music II is two songs in one. To get to the Paris Morton Music section I need to sit through Jay Z's verse and I don't always feel like listening to Jay Z. So, I call for Spotify to make this feature a reality and deliver me from Jay Z. Besides avoiding Jay Z, some songs are bundled with interludes and it's annoying. The interludes work well when you listen to the song in the context of a album, otherwise it's just random noise that serve not storytelling purpose.

If I haven't convinced you of how much this feature is needed by now, perhaps I never will. I can only hope the good people at Spotify are listening.

Thank you for watching.