Hi MS Team,

I just wanted to first say thank you for helping build and shape this website that I've come to rely on for several years now. My biggest joy coming here is to go to the Bands --> Albums section of the site and sort/filter on my favorite styles for new music. I do this often and can spend hours a day trying out new albums. My problem is I pretty much exclusively stream my music now through a Spotify premium account and don't see any easy way to categorize an album as just being streamed or listened to and so I quickly lose track of which albums I've tried and which ones I haven't.

I can't rightly use the Collection dropdown because I don't technically "own" or "have" the albums I've tried, I only streamed them. I'm also very peculiar about only rating albums I've listened to multiple times and in styles I prefer (why trash an album in a style I know I won't like; really bugs me when people do this) so I can't use the rating system to filter out everything I've heard either.

I'm just spitballing here but Is there any way to add an option to the Collection menu dropdown for having streamed an album, or maybe create a new column in the albums interface with a checkbox for having listened to/tried it? The idea that you either own an album and therefore "have it", or not purchased the album and therefore "don't have it" seems outdated. Everytime I play a song through Spotify, I'm supporting a band. Metalstorm is about discovering new music and supporting our favorite artists. I think adding some way to distinguish between albums you've heard and ones you haven't, or just marking an album as having been streamed instead of bought, could be a really appreciated quality of life change for the users and make discovering new music even easier.

Written by Lionthrone on 03.12.2018 at 20:51

[...]
I think adding some way to distinguish between albums you've heard and ones you haven't, or just marking an album as having been streamed instead of bought, could be a really appreciated quality of life change for the users and make discovering new music even easier.

I never streamed music but I like your idea very much, it's worth some support.
For me, the underlined part would offer a significant advantage. My collection of physical CDs contains round about 1.200 records and - getting older - I am loosing track quite often. Occasionally, I stumble (bric-a-brac markets, clearance sales, whatever) upon albums I think I immediately and very urgently need, forgetting I already purchased them some months or even two decades ago. This really is a pain in the a*&% because I already do own countless duplicates and even some triplicates I obviously never really needed to have.

Thanks to Metal Storm, I can now at least check the biggest part of my collection online via phone, no matter where I am. But this doesn't always prevent me from buying crap I already classified being not worth a purchase.

Included in wish list = bargain
Included in collection or in 'already streamed' or 'heard but disliked' = no purchase (and no duplicates anymore)

Of course, I can not estimate the programming effort of including this feature, but for me, it would be a perfect add-on of the site. I would even pay for this and I am not kidding - I pay for useless CDs anyway...

Written by Lionthrone on 03.12.2018 at 20:51

your suggestion

not a bad idea... will keep this in mind for future updates to the website