The latest (July 2009) playlist site awards are here.

In February 2009 I compared 10 of the best Spotify playlist sites, checking for things like how many playlists each had, how many features, what unique features a site had, things that could be improved…. here are the results in the first Spotify Playlist Site Awards!

Most Number of Playlists – Listiply

For many, quantity rules so here’s a look at how many playlists each site tracks:

Listiply has by far the most number of playlists: over 700 compared with the 2nd place site Spotifyfriends with around 450. Of course, many of these playlists sites are relatively new (especially the UK-based ones) and so are bound to not have as many playlists as the established sites. Note that a key feature of Listiply (auto-import playlist titles and tracks) is currently broken. UPDATE: The owner of Listiply has been in touch to say “the auto-track feature will be online soon again, and with it loads of new features (we have a branch full of features waiting to go live as soon as our connection to Spotify is re-established).”

Most Features – Spotyshare

Of course, it’s not always all about quantity: here is view based on the number of features each playlist site has:

Spotyshare is the clear winner here: you can bookmark a user’s page, text search, vote/rate, add comments, track the number of plays, store favorites, genre sub-categories and many more. It does have a slightly annoying Flash album art conveyor, and the registration asks for too many details (why does it need my postal address?), but Spotyshare clearly has a feature-set to beat. Other features I looked at included: does the site have RSS feeds, cover art, can you edit or delete a playlist once it’s added, and whether there are any “easy share” options. UPDATE: The owner of Spotyshare has been in touch to say “We have many new features on the way!”

Easiest to Use – Spotylist

Spotylist remains one of my favourite playlist sites for its sheer ease-of-use and simple design. The site owner (“Spoty Bill”) is also on Twitter so you can tweet at him there (he might ignore you though).

Most Promising – Specifyspot

Specifyspot would probably be my top-rated site if I spoke Swedish: its emphasis on social networking and the users who upoad the playlists is unique and ideal to foster a community. It’s the only site that has user avatars, for example, and is one of only two sites here that let’s you enter any genre tag you like (almost all other sites force you to select from a pre-defined set of genres). I did try the “English” button but unfortunately this only seemed to translate the tags. If this site had a proper English-language version it’d be killer.

SpotifyParty is another site I plan to keep an eye on: it scored quite low for now (since it’s such a new site) but according to its related blog, a bunch of new features are coming soon.

Unique Features

Surprisingly, almost every site I looked at here did have some kind of unique feature or identify, and that’s not including genre-specialist sites such as the Jazz-only site dagensjazz. Here’s the low-down on what’s unique to each site:

• Listiply: Auto-generates genres and song names (but currently broken)
• Specifyspot: Social-networking features, emphasis on the user
• Spotifyfriends: Popularity slider bars
• Spotifylist: RSS feeds by genre
• Spotifynd: Tag-based search (with tag cloud on homepage); vote down as well as up
• SpotifyParty: Has its own blog
• Spotifyplaylists: Cool emphasis on cover art
• Spotylists: Ease-of-use, look-n-feel, twitter page
• Spotyshare: User forum and a shed-load of features
• YourSpotify: Emphasis on cover art (looks like a CD), cover slider

Conclusion

With its explosion in popularity, new sites relating to Spotify are appearing on the web every day. Most of these are sites that track playlists. I’ve looked at a dozen of the biggest ones here and although at first glance it seems they all do pretty much the same thing, spend a little time checking them out and it becomes apparent they each have their own unique feature. That said, there are some clear winners: if it’s sheer quantity of playlists you’re after, check out Listiply. If you want a feature-rich site, I recommend Spotyshare. For a site to quickly upload and bookmark your playlists, try Spotylist. And if you’re lucky enough to speak Swedish (tyvärr allt jag har är en Babel Fish), definitely check out Specifyspot.

Disagree with any of this? Run a site you’d like added here? Let us know!