Unable to view only downloaded artists/albums in My Library

[Interphased1992]

Plan

Premium

Country

UK

Device

Samsung Galaxy S7

Operating System

Android

My Question or Issue

In the most recent version of Spotify, I cannot easily sort my downloads by artist, only by Album, which is much more inconvenient, meaning I have to sift through a huge list of downloaded albums. When I click on 'Your Library' and select an 'Artist', I am taken directly to that Artist's feed, which gives me several extra, unnecessary steps to go through before I can choose the music I want to listen to. 

For context, I started using Spotify on my girlfriend's Huwaei phone yesterday (28th May 2019) and loved the interface, particularly being able to download every album I like from an artist, and easily listen to it offline - as this is what I do during my long commutes, as not to waste any data. I purchased Spotify Premium today (29th May 2019) without delay, and was excited to get started. However, the admittedly slight change in interface design has left me very unsatisfied, and I will undoubtedly be  cancelling my subscription as soon as my initial 3 month period is up.

I have installed a previous version of Spotify (Version 7.9.0.746 armV7) as the interface on this release allows me to easily see every Artist I have downloaded and choose which song I wish to play very quickly. I feel that having to use an outdated version of the app extremely disconcerting, time-consuming (not to mention the potential security concerns with using an old software version...). However, I find using the current version of the software (as of 29th May 2019) too unwieldy to be viable.  

Having read the comments (or vitriol...) on this very forum regarding this issue, I see that I am not the only one who is less than enthusiastic about the change. However, this should be a relatively easy fix. I'm no app developer, and I'm not sure how complex it would be, but surely reinstating a much-loved feature should be high up on the priorities list?

[Guido]

Hey @Interphased1992.

Thanks for getting in touch!

We're sorry to hear that you are not enjoying the new Your Library experience. You can find info on how to use the new Library here. Everything that was possible before, should be possible as well now as there is many ways to save and collect music in Spotify.

If you still don't like the new Your Library. Feel free to leave a vote here.

Let us know if you have further questions and we'll be happy to help.

Have a nice day!

[Interphased1992]

Hi @Guido

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. As I've mentioned previously, I think there are many others experiencing the same frustration as me due to the new design.

Thank you for directing me to the Idea to revert back to the old Spotify UI. I will happily be voting for this in the hope that Spotify devs take notice.

Hopefully it gets sorted in a way that's best for everyone. Thanks again 🙂 

[Katerina]

Hey there @Interphased1992,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

If you're curious about how your feedback reaches Spotify, we'd recommend checking this Spotify Answer.

Keep in mind that we are actively bringing votes and comments regularly from the Ideas Exchange to our teams so your feedback is appreciated.

In the meanwhile, you can save and dowload any albums from artists you like and they will show up in the Albums tab. Then, once you head to the Albums tab you can swipe down to see the filters tab:

You can tap Filters and then select Downloads from the menu that pops up, to view only content you've downloaded.

Don't hesitate to give us a shout if there's anything else we can help with, we'll be happy to lend a hand.

Have a lovely day 🙂

[Interphased1992]

Hi @Katerina

Thanks so much for your suggestion! While being able to filter albums by only those downloaded is a useful feature, I feel it would be even more useful to also include a similar tab to filter music by artist. 

My own personal usage of Spotify is to download a lot of albums from my favourite arists (of which there are many!). The end result is that I wind up with a library of a few hundred albums, and at that point it can become tricky to remember which albums belong to which artist. 

As mentioned previously, I thought it would be a good temporary fix to roll back to a previous version of Spotify which has this feature (I'm currently using vers. 7.9.0.746), as well as a full list of songs which I have downloaded. I'd love to move back to using the most recent version of Spotify, but I'd like my experience to be as easy and seamless as possible, and it just doesn't seem like the most recent version could deliver that. 

I'll continue with this interim solution for the time-being, and I'm excited to see what Spotify devs can come up with next 🙂

Hope you all have a great day, too!

[Katerina]

Hey there @Interphased1992,

Thanks for keeping in touch!

Please keep in mind that we'd recommend always keeping the app up to date so you don't miss any improvements in the app's performance. 

Further, it's possible to filter your albums by downloaded content and then sort that downloaded content by artist name to locate it more easily. All you need to do is head to the Albums tab and then:

1. Scroll up/down to view the filters tab.
2. Tap Filters.
3. In the the pop-up menu that shows up, select Filter by Downloads.
4. Tap Filters again.
5. Now, from the pop-up menu select how you'd like your downloaded content to be sorted by. You can choose to sort by Title, Artist or Recently Added:

Let us know how you get on if you try it 🙂 Have a lovely day!

[moonwatcher2001]

I had this issue too. What I determined is that upon opening Spotify on my Android phone, I had to go into SETTINGS and turn on the OFFLINE mode.  Then when I go to albums and FILTER by Downloads, it will (finally) only show the albums that I have downloaded.  Previously, when I tried to Filter by Downloads NOTHING would show up. (Even though I knew I had saved three albums for offline listening). 

While this works, it is beyond aggravating to have to do.  Far better it would be if Spotify simply had a "View Downloads" icon or feature that would only show the music that you have downloaded for offline playing, and let you filter that list by Album or Artist. 

Note that for whatever reason, I just now tried Katerina's instructions and they WORKED, even when I am "online" via wi-fi, so perhaps this issue has been resolved with an update.  If so THANKs!

Now, if Spotify would throw some love toward the PC desktop application and make it less clunky, but that is for another thread....

[Interphased1992]

Hi @Katerina,

Thanks for your reply, and apologies for my delayed response. I have installed the most up-to-date version of Spotify and followed your suggestion, thank you.

Unfortunately, the newest interface is not as user friendly as I, and I'm sure many others, would like.

For example, following your advice, I now see each individual album, separated by Artist in A-Z alphabetical order. This becomes quite cumbersome, as I have as many as 12 albums (5 on average) from each artists, which creates a lot of clutter and scrolling to find which artist I want to listen to. The previous interface where Artist was its own tab was much easier to navigate and much tidier overall.

I really appreciate your help and proposed solution. It's a good temporary fix, but I feel some of the old design should be reincorporated into the current iteration of Spotify to help with user-friendliness.

Kind regards!

[brooks29]

In case anyone else comes looking with the same problem. There is an open idea to bring back filtering by downloaded for artists.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Android-Re-allow-Downloaded-Filtering-For-Artists/idi-p/...

Apparently this was an intentional design change, not a mistake, and we have to request it if we want it back.