So where has my library gone?

[QuirkBit]

Updated Spotify desktop client yesterday (about says v0.9.8.258) and the 'Library' option has dissappeared and been replaced by a rather useless and blank looking Your Music > Songs / Albums / Artists. Also I cannot star anything, a plus seems to have replaced the star. The Library was my goto screen on spotify as it contained all my local files and playlists....Spotify has rendered itself rather useless for me in 1 update, unless I go and manually create a library playlist which I would then have to manually update each time I added new music.

Please advise how to get the library back or a suitable workaround which provides the same functionality. Also, why the hell were users not notified of this big change?

[LaRube]

FatalJustice:

Iam sure this all is based in their never ending quest to create a positive revenue flow... To this date, I beleive, Spotify has not yet made a profit... (To be fair, they revolutionized the way royalties are negotiated and paid; for quite some time they had the largest library of available songs of all the services; and the library was the finishing touch; and there was a downloadable desktop app, which most services do not have). So my guess is that there were issues with the approach the library took and the royalties which had to be chnged... so they did... Since as in most markets the competitors have caught up with them and they had to make some changes to improve their bottom line. This is just conjecture on my part of course...

I am with you I am shopping as well... Perhaps we all could report back on our research findings on other services... I will not stand for having my over 2 years of habits and taste being flushed down the toilet...

Thanks for the post...

[clapton5000]

The closest one I know is Google music, as it is the only other service that let's you mix your local music with the online, the main thing that made Spotify different from other services. There are two drawbacks, though. You need to upload your local music to their Google's cloud in order to play them, and there is a limit of 20,000 local songs. But, if Spotify doesn't give us a way to mix online and local again, then it will be the only one to use.

[knightpt]

Terrible change. I have no idea how they could even imagine this would be a good idea except to pressure people to go always online mode and make offline listening to playlysts harder and less intuitive.

unsubbing if the next version doesn't significantly make this whole "your music" tab much better, starting with being available offline, better sorting and ways to organize it (but hey, we already had that with the library, why change it ?!).

I'm deeply disapointed with this change, it make spotify much much worse.

[HeadCrabNed]

Hmm, I know probably every change gets a lot of criticism, but removing the library was actually pretty bad for me. I used it mainly to search for a song that I had saved to one of many playlists, or a local file. There is now no way to search for songs in your saved playlists/ local files... That's all I really want, because wading through the search function is terrible when I just want that one version of a song I saved because it was good. Is there some way to do that kind of search? Am I missing it?

[bettmo]

They removed my link to the older version!!!  Sorry guys, I tried. 😞

[unclesilas]

This is rubbish

Can i ask,since the library has gone,how do i get my playlists into "your music" section?

I cant drag and drop them and the only way i can see is to click the + sign next to each track

Does this mean i have to go through every single one of the thousands of tracks in my playlists and click + one by one?

Im using version 0.9.8.296 if that makes any difference and there doesnt seem any way to drag anything into your music

[Peter__]

You should be able to drag playlist names (or batches of highlighted tracks) from the sidebar onto "Songs" to import. However, be aware there is a bug which will prevent changes from being saved if you move more than 542 tracks in one go, so if a playlist contains more than that, you need to drag and drop in smaller batches at the minute.

[mdewater]

Interesting to read these comments. During the beta testing for the new design, the Library function was brought up maybe once or twice, and we pretty much came to the conclusion that it (along with stars) wouldn't be missed. From what I understand, a very small percent of users actually use the Library. Interesting to note that even a feature that is not widely used is still a lot of people's GO TO method of using Spotify.

I for one always thought the Library was completely and utterly useless. A giant pile of thousands and thousands of songs? No thanks, I could never listen to music that way.

Just more proof of how many types of users there are here.

[unclesilas]

No,this isnt possible

It doesnt allow me to drag anything to the your music section

I am going to uninstall and do a reinstall and see what happens.

Fingers crossed and thanks for the reply

[unclesilas]

Thats better it worked this time

I uninstalled and reinstalled manually rather than letting spotify update itself

My activity feed has come back on aswell which had also gone haywire

Why do things always seem to bork when spotify updates by itself? and needs an uninstall to fix it

This is going to take bloomin ages.Why cant we select several playlists at once and drag them over instead of doing it individually?

[bdygert]

Just want to say that I can't believe there hasn't been an update yet for these problems that so many people have pointed out here. Not even a small, minor one. What is going on? For me, "Your Music" is absolutely pointless with a 10,000 track limit. The library was great. Now searching for a track you have in a playlist is such a pain in the ass. Eh, Spotify. Really disappointed customer here.

[waterox]

Wow. What a way to address the disappointment of your customers. The arrogance of your reply is... frankly, rude.

[mdewater]

What was Spotify's reply?? I hope you didn't think my post was from Spotify - I was just a beta tester.

[noble_fail]

Oh wow, so we're in the minority? This is really interesting.

I listen to the newest music in my collection all the time, especially in the car, and i do listen to albums all the way through, especially on first listen. But there are lots of times as well when I just want to shuffle everything I had starred and local together.

[jazzyjez]

I find it bizarre that anybody could use spotify very much and not understand why the library function is essential - in fact I think it needs improving by telling you which playlist/s a song is in.

That's not meant to be dissing you as I'm sure you've done your job, I just don't understand.

Thanks for clarifying that you're not Spotify: anyone else noticed that they've been silent on this?

T

[noble_fail]

Yeah I wish they would come out and talk about it but if we're in the minority then maybe it's not a big enough issue. If I could get my local files that aren't on Spotify into the new system then I would be willing to try something new.

[mdewater]

As for how anyone can think the Library isn't essential - it all comes down to different types of users. The majority of users in the beta test were big, hardcore, power users. Not many casual users, as many in this thread here are.

To use myself as an example - I think of music in terms of Artist>Album>Song. I VERY rarely think in terms of playlists. So naturally, the Your Music function works great for users like me. I would never use the Library because I have so much music in it that it becomes unmanageable. It's too big to quickly find individual songs, and I don't EVER shuffle my music. I choose an album and listen all the way through, or literally pick and choose each song by hand as I go. I personally have a hard time believing that so many people do use Library (even though obviously people do). So, with a group of like-minded users like myself doing the beta testing for this service on top of the fact that statistically the Library doesn't get used very much, it's easy to see why it would unfortunately get overlooked. Same with starred.

Hopefully they figure out a way to make all kinds of users happy.

[bettmo]

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@mdewater wrote:

As for how anyone can think the Library isn't essential - it all comes down to different types of users. The majority of users in the beta test were big, hardcore, power users. Not many casual users, as many in this thread here are.

To use myself as an example - I think of music in terms of Artist>Album>Song. I VERY rarely think in terms of playlists. So naturally, the Your Music function works great for users like me. I would never use the Library because I have so much music in it that it becomes unmanageable. It's too big to quickly find individual songs, and I don't EVER shuffle my music. I choose an album and listen all the way through, or literally pick and choose each song by hand as I go. I personally have a hard time believing that so many people do use Library (even though obviously people do). So, with a group of like-minded users like myself doing the beta testing for this service on top of the fact that statistically the Library doesn't get used very much, it's easy to see why it would unfortunately get overlooked. Same with starred.

Hopefully they figure out a way to make all kinds of users happy.

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I have a hard time believeing you don't play your entire library on shuffle.  Your way is absurd.

[jazzyjez]

Are you seriously trying to tell us that you and the other beta testers don't create playlists and think that most other users don't either?

I'd say that playlists are a primary function of Spotify; maybe the primary function. A quick look at my list of followers shows that the vast majority have compiled playlists; in some cases hundreds. There are hundreds of users following my playlists and I follow other peoples'. There are entire websites dedicated to sharing Spotify playlists.

When I hear music I like, I want to see if I've added it to a playlist already so I use the library function. I might find I've got a track by using library but want to know where it is so I would like the library to tell me that.

[mdewater]

"Your way is absurd."

Wow. Glad we're all being accepting of the many kinds of music listeners. Yes, I don't listen to music on shuffle. I prefer whole albums, the way the artists created them. If I'm in the mood for Bruce Springsteen, I go to Bruce, then choose an album, and listen to that album. I don't think "your way" is absurd. Simply different, and just as acceptable. Let's not attack other people's music preferences.

jazzyjez: Regarding playlists - not that we don't think users use playlists. Obviously playlists are what Spotify was founded on. But it simply wasn't a factor in the testing of Your Music. I certainly don't speak for all the testers, but many would use playlists before Your Music to organize albums. We'd have hundreds and hundreds of single-album playlists, all organized into playlist folders in an Artist>Album>Song heirarchy. Your Music does just that, so we're now able to get rid of those single-album playlists, and instead use playlists the way they are meant to be used - for things like themes or genres. But no, many of us don't use playlists in the way you think of playlists.

I was simply pointing out that we don't think in terms of playlists, which is why Your Music works for us, and the elimination of Library and Starred didn't affect users like us as much. Keep in mind the silent majority. Statistically, users who used those functions were in the minority. Most users are probably not affected by losing them, and so we aren't hearing from them. We're hearing from you guys, who aren't happy about it. And that's totally fair - like I said, I hope they figure out a way to bring the functionality back within Your Music.