View previous versions of playlists

[laurenfarnswort]

Hey, all!

Is there a way to view an earlier edition of a playlist? Here's some background. I listen a lot to the Sounds of Spotify playlists--they're an easy way to find good "mood" music and discover new artists. One of my favorite playlists was the Sound of Medieval, which was a lot of neofolk/world music/instrumental pieces. It was really great (except for the odd problematic band)! They recently revamped it, though. It's now almost entirely choral and similar styles, which is also pretty...just not what I really want. Since I have the free version of Spotify/am ignorant of how playlists can be revamped, I didn't save a lot of the music.

TL;DR Is there a way to view previous versions of a playlist?

[EthanS1]

Hi @laurenfarnswort!

At the moment, this isn't currently a feature that Spotify offer users. I'll also pass your feedback on to the teams at Spotify as they really appreciate users feedback about the platform!

Sorry!

[cmonson]

Giving this a signal boost because I can’t for the life of me remember what songs were on this playlist that I loved and it’s been updated to a bunch of songs that are just meh. If Spotify doesn’t want to make this feature maybe they can at least give a heads up when they are going to update a playlist or give us access to our listening history? 😕

[acwpope]

Spotify has some great playlists... I listen to a lot of the official ones daily at work. However, why on earth would they change the playlist without warning listeners or having a backup?! Mellow Beats was my favorite playlist and really great to listen to at work. I never saved the songs because I assumed that they would always be in that playlist. Suddenly all the songs are different and I can't find any information as to the old playlist. I've listened to other things in between and so the songs are not on my recently played list (why does this only list 50 songs?). Why not just make a new playlist or call it Mellow Beats 2 so users don't lose great playlists you've already made? I'm very unhappy about this. Spotify should fix this issue or at least put a warning in the description when the playlist will be updated.

[vtecsinan]

It's a shame that Spotify does not include this as a feature... 

I lost so many songs on a lot of playlists.. There MUST be a playlist history...

Also this will be a good feature to know what was populat at that time...

[mackorone]

I kept running into this same issue, so I built a small system for archiving public Spotify playlists. In fact,  it's already archiving the "Sound of Medieval" playlist you mentioned! If you have additional playlists that you want archived, it should be straightforward to add them. Check it out here: https://github.com/mackorone/spotify-playlist-archive

[Katerina]

Hey there folks,

Thanks for reaching out about this here in the Community!

Having the option to see the edit history of playlists is something other Spotify users mentioned here that they'd like to see as well. In this case, we'd recommend heading over to that thread and adding your +VOTE and feedback in a comment there. 

You can also take a look here to find out more information on how the Ideas Exchange works. 

Hope this helps clarify things, but don't hesitate to give us a shout if there's anything else we can help with!

Have a lovely day 🙂

[stenmorg]

Hello!

Had the same problems with a playlist called Lounge - Soft House. Loved then, now its totaly different. I should have downloaded the songs to a own playlist. Now its to late though. To sad. Isnt there anyway to checkout history plays for the users?

[lkduncan23]

I also have been searching for songs previously on Lounge - Soft House! It's so frustrating because I remember one song, and how it goes, but I can't make out what the lyrics are--and even so there aren't many. I keep playing the radio of the playlist or some of the songs that I knew were previously on there--but I still can't find it.

[mackorone]

It might be too little too late, but I just added "Lounge - Soft House" to my Spotify Playlist Archive. We'll have daily snapshots from this point forward (for that playlist), so hopefully this never happens again!

[schwindlig]

Don't suppose you could be an absolute legend and do one for Techno Bunker could you? Seems I took for granted the amazing music on that playlist, and now it's lost to oblivion (for me).

Thanks!

[lkduncan23]

Sure I’ll like my playlist where I have a few of the songs from the old one, and a similar playlist I found that also has a good amount of songs the same as the old one—sadly neither have the song i’m looking for, but hopefully you’ll get some use from them!

[mackorone]

Hey schwindlig, I just added the "Techno Bunker" playlist (from Spotify) to the archive: https://github.com/mackorone/spotify-playlist-archive/blob/master/playlists/pretty/Techno%20Bunker.m.... Hope that helps!

[eagle1maledetto]

@mackorone really good work, thank you.

Sadly, the song I miss is from the playlist "Late Night Jazz", updated some days ago, and I cannot find anywhere the old playlist. Any chance someone have it?

I think that the song is not available on Spotify anymore tho

[mackorone]

@eagle1maledetto, I know this doesn't help much now, but I've gone ahead and added the "Late Night Jazz" playlist to the archive. I hope you find the song you were looking for!

[chazootan]

Hi, I'm not sure if there's anyway to find the songs that were on "Rap UK" from about a year ago? This is definitely a long shot but I used to just listen to this playlist instead of liking the songs and I've forgotten a load of them, any help appreciated!

[SlimeChris]

I have been trying to find out a way to find the “Dance Party” playlist from October 2019 because now that playlist entirely changed as well

[mackorone]

@SlimeChris, I know it's too little too late, but I just added "Dance Party" to my archive (https://github.com/mackorone/spotify-playlist-archive). You won't be able to find songs from 2019, but from now on, it'll track songs that are added/removed.

@chazootan, same thing goes for the "Rap UK" playlist.

[giselledemr]

I understand there is no way to see a previous list of a playlist. Would it be possible to see only the names of those songs so I can at least find & listen to them again. Just learned my favourite Spotify playlist - Motivation Mix - changed completely to my disappointment.... Unfortunately the new beats are not appealing to me at all.... The previous version, in my opinion, was simply perfect.

Any help on that would be very much appreciated.

[mackorone]

Unfortunately no, I don't know how to recover the names of the songs on the old version of the playlist. Nonetheless, I added "Motivation Mix" to the archive so that this doesn't happen again in the future.