We’re among friends here, so I think we can comfortably agree that Spotify is pretty much the best thing in the world right about now. This week, Spotify celebrated its third birthday (and appointed someone called Paul Brown as UK managing director – not me!).

Following the news that the service has added (unobtrusive) download links to 7Digital, Spotify now gives users the opportunity to stream whatever they fancy, and download whatever they want to keep (assuming those users haven’t yet heard about the death of the download). But what other tweaks and features would make Spotify even better? Here’s my wishlist:

1. Better recommendations. Spotify’s ‘radio’ feature is its weakest facet. Grouping music by decade or genre is useless. As I’ve written here previously, I don’t want to listen exclusively to 60s soul or only 90s alternative, I just want to listen to music I like, which could be from any of the genres or decades available. The artist radio feature is slightly better, but still too restrictive. What’s needed is a Last.fm-style recommendation system based on what I actually listen to. It can’t be too difficult to track my listening habits – indeed Last.fm tracks my Spotify history – and turn that info into personalised recommendations. Spotify is getting there with its ‘artists you may like’ feature. What it really needs to do is offer personalised radio playlists and recommended albums, and flag up relevant new additions to the catalogue. Talking of which…

2. Make it easier to track new additions. Currently, Spotify highlights eight recently-added albums in it’s ‘what’s new’ tab, none of which seem to have any relevance to my listening habits. As the service apparently adds 10,000 new tracks every day, the ‘what’s new’ tab is slightly inadequate. Currently the most comprehensive way to track new additions is to follow the Spotify blog, which offers slightly cumbersome lists in Google doc format, plus the occasional highlighted heads-up. (The 20th anniversary edition of Paul’s Boutique has been added? Get me there.) Alternatively, you can use the useful Last.fm + Spotify + New service to track new additions from your Last.fm favourites – and, brilliantly, from Last.fm recommendations. FreshSpotify does a similar thing without involving Last.fm. But couldn’t this be done more elegantly within Spotify itself, combined with recommendations?

3. Add to favourites. I have lots of CDs. Most of them are upstairs, out of the way, and rarely played. My favourites are downstairs, next to the CD player, handily enough. It’s good to be able to browse my favourites without having to trawl through my entire collection. And it would be good to be able to browse my favourites on Spotify. Of course, I can see my top ten most listened to albums and tracks, and I can also save albums as new playlists. But this is not much use if I want to add, say 100 favourite albums. An ‘add to favourites’ feature would solve this problem, with the favourites being browsable and searchable. Lovely.

4. Improve the search function. Spotify’s current search feature isn’t too bad – if you’re aware of the little bits of code you can insert into your searches to narrow the results. For example, you can search by artist, album, genre or year by preceding your search with ‘artist:’, ‘album:’ etc, and you can combine categories, and add ‘OR’, ‘NOT’ etc. This is all a bit fiddly. Spotify Super Search makes advanced searches easier, but couldn’t something similar be incorporated into Spotify itself?

5. Do more with playlists. Playlists are integral to Spotify, and it’s fun to create personal and collaborative playlists. But what if I want to move out of the circle of my friends and colleagues and try playlists from other users and organisations? There are lots of websites catering for this need, including Listiply and Spotylist, but again I want to be able to browse playlists within Spotify.

Much of the appeal of Spotify lies in its simplicity, but a handful of additional features could make it even better. For a round-up of Spotify blogs and apps see the excellent Pansentient League. Now I’m off to shake my rump to Paul’s Boutique. Here’s my recommended list of five recent additions to the Spotify catalogue:

The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
A Camp – Colonia
Various – Dark Was The Night
The Acorn – Glory Hope Mountain
Doves – Kingdom of Rust

Music, Technology Spotify

Cometh the hour, cometh the man, but is Alan Shearer the right man at the wrong time for Newcastle United? His April Fools Day appointment as Newcastle manager until the end of the season has divided opinion.

The most common criticism of the appointment has been that Shearer has no managerial experience, and has yet to obtain his pro coaching licence. Those making this point presumably believe that top flight managers still run around in polyester tracksuits with whistles and medicine balls.

A lack of managerial and coaching experience is irrelevant here. Shearer knows the game inside out, and more importantly he knows everything there is to know about Newcastle United. In any case, the eight-game period he has left to save the club from relegation offers too little time to get around to ‘real’ management.

All he really has time for is to administer a hefty kick up the collective arse of a lacklustre playing squad – something that reports from his first training session suggest he was very quick to do. Shearer’s appointment has already galvanised the fans. If it can galvanise the players, the club might just have half a chance of survival.

Another criticism has been that Newcastle United are yet again appointing another manager instead of sticking with their current one, a tactic that has backfired so many times in the past. But Newcastle’s current manager is in a sick bed. And let’s not mince words here – Joe Kinnear’s record before his illness was shockingly bad, and Chris Hughton’s record as caretaker has been even worse.

In any case, you cannot hope to fight relegation without a manager. The club was in freefall, never looking like winning a game. At the very least, the club’s chances of surviving relegation are now better than they were 48 hours ago.

But, even if Shearer is the right man, has his appointment come too late? I’d have to say that it probably has. If Newcastle fail to get anything from their match with Chelsea on Saturday, the club could be five points adrift, and that might prove to be too big a gap to close.

The possibility of relegation seems only to have dawned on Mike Ashley and co in the last few days, despite many fans issuing SOS calls since January. This is hardly hindsight talking – the club has been managerless for two months, and rudderless for much longer.

If Shearer’s appointment was unexpected, the resulting anti-Newcastle reaction was anything but. Phone-ins and message boards were clogged with furious anti-Geordie and anti-Shearer sentiments, mostly of the well-worn and ill-informed ‘why do Newcastle fans think they are so special?’ variety.

One such avenue for outrage was Nicky Cambell’s excrutiating Breakfast Phone-in on 5Live. A succession of callers queued up to vent their frustrations at Newcastle fans and the media coverage that they apparently crave. ‘They don’t have a right to be a great team. They’ve won nothing. And yet here you have a radio programme about… well, Geordies.’ Conspicuous by their absence from the proceedings were any actual Newcastle fans.

When local fanzine editor Steve Wraith explained how the media, particularly Sky’s David Craig, manipulate the view of fans to suit their agenda, the phone-in took a far more interesting turn, culminating with former Newcastle chairman Freddie Shepherd memorably chastising a caller via a mobile phone from an airport baggage claim. (‘It’s easy for you to pick on things. What do you do? Nowt probably. Nothing. Anyway, I’ve got to go and get me luggage off the carousel. Cheers. Beeeeeeeep.’) You can listen to the phone-in for the next few days via the BBC iPlayer.

The fact is that the media representation of Newcastle fans is generally that of the so-called bedsheet brigade who, for one reason or another, spend their days hanging around St James’ Park. The fact that this motley collection of truants and unemployables are taken by the media to represent the general consensus of Newcastle fans is troublesome – and extremely lazy journalism.

If they were covering a political story would the media interview a kid wagging school or, as on last night’s BBC Look North, a woman who appeared to have severe mental problems? The fact is that the majority of Newcastle supporters do not hang about outside St James’ Park because – and this might come as a shock to some of the southern media – they have jobs.

Newcastle fans aren’t any different from any other set of fans, and the vast majority of them don’t claim to be. The media often like to claim otherwise, because it makes for a good story.

Newcastle United have no divine right to stay in the Premier League. In fact, on the basis of the last 30 games, they deserve to go down. But ten or twelve points from the last eight games might change that. If Shearer can inspire a battling run-in, they might just have done enough to deserve to stay up.

My book about supporting Newcastle United in happier times is Black & White Army.

Football Newcastle United