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

Paul Music, Technology Spotify