Language

Needs the Plus or Pro plan. The Language filter keeps or drops tracks by the language of their lyrics. The app marks it Experimental: Spotify publishes no language, so Playlistation detects it from other sources and is sometimes wrong.

What it matches

Each track gets one language, or none when no source could tell. Is one of keeps a track when its language is in your list. Is not one of drops a track when its language is in your list.

A track with no detected language shows as "- No lyrics -" in the track list. Instrumentals are the usual case, along with songs no source knows. Such a track never matches Is one of, whatever languages you pick, and always matches Is not one of. To collect instrumentals, use the Instrumentalness filter.

A bilingual song gets a single language, and a cover can be given the original song's language.

Where the data comes from

Detection runs in the background when a playlist updates, once per track, and the result is shared by every user. For each track:

1. Playlistation searches Genius, a lyrics site, for the title and the main artist. When the best hit's title is close enough to Spotify's (more than 70% similar), it takes the language Genius lists for that song. Genius lists none for instrumentals.
2. When that disagrees with the language the artist's other tracks were detected in, or the artist is new to Playlistation, an AI model is asked. It gets only the title and the artist name, never the audio or the lyrics, and answers from what it knows about the song.
3. When neither source gives an answer, the track borrows its artist's usual language until a real detection replaces it.

Operators and values

Two operators, shown as two cards: Is one of ("Keeps tracks sung in any of these languages") and Is not one of ("Removes tracks sung in any of these languages"). Then a picker ("Type a language") where you add one or more of 145 languages, each named in the language the app is set to. A new Language filter starts with no language selected.

The sentence follows the operator:

• Is one of: "The track language is one of French, Spanish".
• Is not one of: "The track language is none of English".

Examples

• The track language is one of French. Everything you liked in French, whatever the genre.
• The track language is one of Korean and The track artist is tagged with one of k-pop. K-pop sung in Korean; the genre alone includes the English-language releases.
• The track language is none of English. For practicing every language you listen to that is not English. Instrumentals are included, since they have no language.
• The track language is one of French and The track artist is tagged with one of rap, hip hop. French rap, since genre labels mix languages.

Things to know

• When a track has the wrong language, report it: in the track list at the bottom of the playlist page, expand the track and click the flag icon next to "The track language is". "Report an incorrect language" shows the current language and asks for the right one. Reports are reviewed by hand; an accepted report fixes the track for every user and is never overwritten by a later detection.
• On the Free plan the filter is locked in the filter picker. See Plans and billing.

Related filters

• Instrumentalness: tracks with no lyrics, which this filter cannot see.
• Speechiness: spoken or sung, in any language.
• Artist genre: one scene in one language.
• Combining filters