"Save to your music" vs offline playlist ?

[Madridistas83]

Ok, I'm confused. What is the difference if I save a song or all the songs I want to the "Your Music" section vs if I make a playlist and make it available offline? Let's say I'm in another country with no data unless I have access to WIFI. Is there a difference between the two? I like how if I saved the song to my music I can go in and listen to a single artist rather than the whole playlist, or is that the point itself? Is the Your Music more like a library and the playlist is, well a playlist? Maybe I answered my own question, or maybe I'm just really confused?

[kbrooksc]

Hey there! think of it this way: a song you save just makes it easier to find and adds it to your music while a song saved offline allows you to play it without a cellular or wireless connection. 

Make sense? 

[Madridistas83]

No,

 I'll go into more detail about where my confusion is. Right now I have two playlist for two totally different genre. One is latin music one is reggae. Both are set for "Available offline". I just have the two playlist. Lets say I go into each playlist and save each song. Then that moves all the songs into "Your Music". "Your Music" is also available offline is it not? That's why you would save it, so technically if I'd want I can delete my two playlist and offline (say in another country) be able to listen to the "Your Music" section, either shuffle all songs or listen to single artist or whatever I want. Let's say I keep the playlist then everything is still available offline? Maybe I'm just making it a lot more complicated that it really is, but I just want to understand the difference between the Saved music and offline playlist.

[kyleyfw]

Madridista, you posed a very good question, i've been wondering the same thing for months.

For me the confusion started when i save music on my mac's spotify, and it automatically saves in my iphone. The thing i don't understand is that without making a playlist or a song/artist available offline on my iphone, i can already play it without any wifi or data connection, ergo, its technically available offline.

HOWEVER, on my MAC, when i don't have a wifi connection, i can't even play my saved music, ergo it is NOT available offline. Which is the strangest thing, it's like across the ios and mac, the same system is different??

Someone please help us understand this! Thanks!

[rayp582]

After reading the last few posts on this I am still unclear how the following things work: (Maybe someone from Spotify developers can clear this up for all of us:

I think the biggest concern is 1 and 2 where if I am offline, how can I make sure I have access to all my music playlists, songs etc.

so....my questions in a bit more detail...

1. What does save to my music do exactly? and is the music downloaded?)

2. How is the operation making my music offline differentt to saving to my music. Making offline I assume is the only time it is downloaded? On all devices ie once you login on another device it will sync? automatically all downloads etc? (see4 below)

3., is there a way I can make ALL my playlists available offline with one or two clicks or do you have to do each playlist AND.or each song to download .

4. How do you make all the songs you have available offline (downloaded?) sync so that eg your PC and your iPHone and your partners PC also sync. What are the corrrect order to do this?

Sorry for repeating the questions asked by others but I think some will thank me for it.

Premium vs Free (i.e. as it is applicable for use in Australia...?)

I am a new premium user. I assume that if you are not premium user you cannot download files...ie...listing offline? and cannot play in specific order as you wish. I think  those two items are the main benefits. This may be helpful for some reading answers to 1.4

Thanks

Ray

[woodandrew90 · Accepted solution]

My understanding, based on a year of premium use, with a mix of albums and playlists, is:

You do not have to Save an item to download for offline use.

' Save ' simply means that you marked an album or pre-made playlist (playlist of someone else, i.e. one that you have not created yourself) as a selected favourite in your Your Music. It is not downloaded for offline use just by the act of clicking on ' Save '.

' Available Offline ' will initate download to an individual device. I.e. you can flip the slider switch for an album or playlist (or individual song or all Songs) to ' Available Offline ' on a single device linked to your Spotify account, but the download is only to that device.

So ( to summarize 😞

Save simply tags albums, playlists or songs to Your Music (call it your tagged music library).

But you still have to flip the ' Available Offline ' slider to download any album/playlist/song, and you have to do it for each and any device that you want to download it to for offline use.

So from the Your Music library you have can have entirely different sets of downloaded music on any device.

This is one of the features of Spotify that I find works well. I.e I can have my Spotify music acount on three different devices, but only download what I want to each individual device ( I tend only to use my Mac and Ipad for listening only (no download, no uneccesary waste of memory space) and only download to my Android phone for listening in-car and away from home and wifi connection.

[rayp582]

Hi Andrew, Wow! What a great answer! Very grateful for your post, as I am guessing many others are too! Cant wait to get more use out of premium. I only just subscribed as premium yesterday. Thanks Ray

[woodandrew90]

Glad it helped.

Happy listening and Happy New Year.

[cyber_kev24]

Thanks for the great explanation, it definitely cleared everything up for me!

[phylades]

I've had Spotify for quite a while but thought it not too good for classical music. I'm on metered data and immediately I questioned what save meant and guessed I meant just the link. Thanks for the confirmation.

[kbrooksc]

Glad you found some help here @phylades!

[t0814bk]

Hi,

I have a very similar question, but take the "offline" part of it out of the discussion.

When I see an album that I am interested in, I can't tell the difference between:

1.  Clicking "save" when looking at the album and saving it to My Music

vs

2.  Clicking the 3 dots, Add to Playlist, Create New Playlist - which automatically creates a playlist with the artist name and album name

From using that album from that point on, what are the differences, or advantages/disadvantages of "tagging" an album in those 2 ways?