10 Missing Spotify Features Users Are Desperately Waiting For

These missing features show how far Spotify still needs to grow.

The world’s most popular music streaming service has some noticeable holes in its feature set. Spotify’s users have been asking for critical updates and missing features, with some requests dating back several years.

Here are the ten most-wanted changes that could help the platform maintain its edge in an increasingly competitive streaming landscape.

1. HiFi Lossless Streaming

Spotify still doesn’t offer lossless audio streaming, and users have been begging for it since 2021.

This may be the most predictable one on the list. And, that’s because other services like Apple Music, Qobuz, Tidal, and Amazon Music, have had this for years.

They’re not just streaming in high-res. Qobuz even lets you buy and download these pristine audio files.

For those who can tell the difference between a compressed file and a high-resolution recording, this is a big deal.

Spotify could probably flip the switch on HiFi streaming tomorrow if they wanted to. They most likely already have the technology and infrastructure for it, especially since we’ve been seeing signs of it for months now.

But for some reason, they’re dragging their feet, and users are getting pretty tired of waiting.

2. Disable or Hide Podcasts

Spotify’s persistent podcast recommendations have become a major pain point for music listeners.

This is especially frustrating for parents who’ve set up Spotify on their kids’ devices. Children listening to Disney playlists suddenly receive recommendations for adult-oriented podcasts.

With Spotify’s limited parental controls, there’s no real way to prevent this from happening. That is unless they’re using the special Kids’ account that’s only exclusive to Spotify Family subscribers.

The fix seems pretty straightforward. Just give us a simple toggle to turn off podcast recommendations.

It’s not that we hate podcasts (well, some users might), but we want to choose when and where we see them.

3. Universal “Dislike” Button

Spotify’s current “Dislike” button situation is a mess of inconsistency.

The hide feature used to work across the entire platform, but now it only applies to wherever you originally hid the song. If you hide a song from Taylor Swift’s “1989” album, that same song will still play when it comes up in your “Mood Booster” playlist.

This goes deeper than just annoying song recommendations. Many users need to block certain songs for personal reasons.

Maybe it’s a song that brings back tough memories, or music from a challenging time in their life. Right now, these songs can pop up unexpectedly in radio stations, mixes, or autoplay, with no way to prevent it.

4. Reset Taste Profile

Anyone who’s ever let their teenager borrow their Spotify account knows how quickly recommendations can go off the rails.

One K-pop binge session or a weekend of heavy metal exploration, and suddenly your carefully curated algorithm thinks you’ve completely changed your music taste.

The problem? There’s no way to tell Spotify “Hey, that was just a phase” without creating a whole new account or spamming your typical choices.

The current situation is pretty frustrating.

Let’s say you spent a week playing lullabies for your newborn nephew. Now your Discover Weekly is full of baby songs instead of your usual indie rock. Or maybe you hosted a party and played nothing but dance hits all night. Suddenly Spotify thinks you’ve given up jazz for EDM.

Users have been asking for simple solutions, like a “reset recommendations” button or ways to tell the algorithm “ignore everything I played last week.”

Even better would be tools to fine-tune the system, maybe exclude certain genres from affecting your recommendations, or mark some listening sessions as “temporary.”

Without these options, keeping your music recommendations relevant feels like a constant uphill battle.

5. Smart Shuffle Toggle

Smart Shuffle sounds great on paper. It’s supposed to spice up your playlists by adding similar songs. But in reality, it’s become more of a headache than a help.

When you’re driving and want to shuffle your favorite road trip playlist, you have to toggle through different shuffle modes just to get to the one you want. Not exactly ideal when you should be focusing on the road.

The real kicker? Even after you turn it off, Smart Shuffle keeps sneaking songs into your playlists.

Your carefully curated 90s rock compilation suddenly includes random 2000s pop songs that don’t fit the vibe at all.

Users just want a simple settings toggle, like the one we already have for Canvas (those moving album artwork backgrounds). Just flip a switch once and be done with it.

But right now, there’s no way to permanently disable Smart Shuffle.

So, for long-time users who’ve spent years perfecting their playlists, it feels like Spotify is ignoring their basic right to control their own music experience.

6. Romanized Lyrics

K-pop and J-pop fans have a common complaint: trying to sing along to their favorite songs feels like solving a puzzle. While Spotify shows lyrics, they’re only displayed in their original scripts. So, unless you can read Hangul or Kanji, you’re stuck humming along or making up sounds.

While Spotify’s current lyrics provider, Musixmatch, has some restrictions on romanization, users argue there’s got to be a way around this.

Adding a simple toggle between original and romanized lyrics would help millions of international music fans better connect with their favorite songs. After all, isn’t music supposed to bring people together, regardless of what language they speak?

7. Offline Lyrics Access

Spotify’s lyrics feature stops working the moment you lose internet connection, even for songs you’ve already downloaded.

This isn’t just about convenience.

Think about learning a new language through music, or being hard of hearing and relying on lyrics to fully enjoy songs. Having to depend on an internet connection makes these experiences much harder than they need to be.

The best part? Lyrics files are tiny, just kilobytes compared to the megabytes that songs take up. Adding them to your downloaded tracks would barely make a dent in your storage space.

For something that takes up so little space but adds so much value, it seems like a no-brainer to include this feature for offline listening.

8. Shazam-Like Feature

Music plays everywhere, at cafes, stores, parties, but Spotify users can’t identify and save these songs directly in their app. Instead, they need to open a separate app like Shazam, identify the song, and then hope they remember to add it to their Spotify library later.

In an age where music discovery happens anywhere and everywhere, this extra step feels outdated.

Other streaming apps already have this figured out. YouTube Music lets users tap a button to identify any song playing nearby or even just have the users hum them. Apple Music has Shazam built right into the Control Center.

Built-in song recognition would let Spotify users capture music moments instantly.

Hear a great song at a restaurant? One tap and it’s in your playlist. No more juggling between apps or hoping you’ll remember to add that song later.

9. Genre Tags for Songs

Finding new music on Spotify can feel like a guessing game without proper genre tags. When you find a great metal song, there’s no way to know if it’s thrash, doom, or power metal without doing extra research.

Genre tags would be especially helpful for albums that mix different styles.

Take an artist like Poppy, who blends pop, metal, and electronic music. Proper tagging would help users find similar artists who mix these genres. Or think about jazz albums where some tracks are bebop while others are more contemporary fusion. Without clear tags, finding more music in the specific style you love becomes a tedious process.

Some users have also suggested adding their own custom tags to songs, similar to how we can currently make custom playlists. This would let listeners organize music their way and make discovering new tracks in specific subgenres much easier.

10. Bring Back the Heart Button

Spotify recently swapped out its familiar heart button for a plain checkmark, and users aren’t happy about it. Unlike the current checkmark system, the heart icon clearly indicated personal favorites, making it simpler to spot loved tracks in playlists.

This change has messed up how many users organize their music.

So, for users who’ve spent years building libraries and playlists around the heart system, this seemingly small change has broken their entire music organization system.

While Spotify could add different icons or custom markers for favorite tracks, most users just want their hearts back.

Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one, and the heart button was simple, clear, and actually meant something to people.