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Updated Spotify desktop client yesterday (about says v0.9.8.258) and the 'Library' option has dissappeared and been replaced by a rather useless and blank looking Your Music 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?

[jazzyjez]

I totally understand not wanting to have a loads of albums saved as playlists and I thought the point of Your Music was going to be that you could drop albums straight into Albums and artists into Artists but you can't.

Previously, you could hit Artists or Albums using the library function to list them alphabetically. The only improvement I see in the new system is bigger album artwork - which is nice but doesn't improve useability.

[noble_fail]

Wow, I honestly can't believe that I'm in the minority on shuffling my whole library at once. My thought is I have so much music that sometimes I just want to hear a little bit of everything so I shuffle it while I'm working or playing a game. I listen to albums from beginning to end too, different times call for different things.

So yeah, I don't think other ways to use it are absurd, but if they'd just let me put local files into Your Music that don't exist on Spotify I'd be totally on board with the new system. I have a lot of stuff Spotify doesn't have and they've always accommodated my whole collection before, which is why I loved the service. Now I feel like a good chunk of my collection has been separated from the rest because it's not allowed in with the new system.

[jazzyjez]

I can't believe you're in the minority either. Where are they getting their figures from?

But I would believe that people who listen to whole albums are in the minority as it's well documented that most people don't these days. And I am not saying there's anything wrong with listening to whole albums, far from it.

[mdewater]

Well, I have no idea where they might be getting figures, just going by what the guys on the beta forum said. They mentioned that they got rid of features that weren't being used and transferred some of the functionality to Your Music.

I never said that you're in the minority in shuffling music - I'm sure you're probably not. But just that you're in the minority in using the library or starred panels.

I personally don't shuffle my entire library, as it would be far too all over the place to have any kind of cohesive listening experience. I'd just end up skipping through half the stuff. But for those that do, you can still just as easily go to Songs, and shuffle from there. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't get why Library is so essential when you have the songs list, that can also be sorted by artist/album/etc just as the library could. If it's the issue of local files, they've already confirmed that Your Music will support local files, so thats coming.

[mdewater]

To expand on why power users like myself don't shuffle our entire library, it's because of the sheer amount and variety of music that I have saved. I have thousands of albums of "music" - from Classic Rock to Pop to Indie to whatever you can imagine. Then I have hundreds of soundtrack albums - everything from Frozen to Singing in the Rain to Oscar Nominees to Broadway. Then I have a ton of children's music saved for the kids - Disney Junior soundtracks, silly songs, etc. Then there's themed playlists that include everything from "day in the sun" to "music from Disney Theme Parks". Then I have a bunch of ambient music stuff. And more. To shuffle through ALL of this would just be completely pointless. I'd spend more time skipping to find a song I want to listen to than actually listening. Many of the beta testers for this particular service are similar.

[Garichigô]

How is it possible to make such a big mistake ?

- Starred songs are not imported automatically in "my music"

- If imported manually, sections " artists" and "albums" are not completed.

Shame on persons who work on this update. Really.

[bettmo]

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@mdewater wrote:
To expand on why power users like myself don't shuffle our entire library, it's because of the sheer amount and variety of music that I have saved. I have thousands of albums of "music" - from Classic Rock to Pop to Indie to whatever you can imagine. Then I have hundreds of soundtrack albums - everything from Frozen to Singing in the Rain to Oscar Nominees to Broadway. Then I have a ton of children's music saved for the kids - Disney Junior soundtracks, silly songs, etc. Then there's themed playlists that include everything from "day in the sun" to "music from Disney Theme Parks". Then I have a bunch of ambient music stuff. And more. To shuffle through ALL of this would just be completely pointless. I'd spend more time skipping to find a song I want to listen to than actually listening. Many of the beta testers for this particular service are similar.

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So?  That's why it's on shuffle, cause you never know what you're going to get, makes it interesting.  I mean you can always skip to the next song if you don't like the one that comes up.  You colored in the lines as a child, didn't you?

[jazzyjez]

So we're agreed - Your Music doesn't do anything you couldn't do before!

One of the key objections to the change is that the Songs list (effectively the same as Library) has started empty. For people with vast numbers of playlists that is a) a pain in the arse and b) makes people suspect that Spotify couldn't give a monkey's about them.

By the way, another reason the Library function needed to tell you which playlist a song is in is this: you're listening to your library and you hear a track you don't want any more and want to delete it. You can't! (Well not without going through every playlist 'til you find it. Another example of why Library should have been improved, not removed.

[cohenfs]

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@mdewater wrote:
Well, I have no idea where they might be getting figures, just going by what the guys on the beta forum said. They mentioned that they got rid of features that weren't being used and transferred some of the functionality to Your Music.

I never said that you're in the minority in shuffling music - I'm sure you're probably not. But just that you're in the minority in using the library or starred panels.

I personally don't shuffle my entire library, as it would be far too all over the place to have any kind of cohesive listening experience. I'd just end up skipping through half the stuff. But for those that do, you can still just as easily go to Songs, and shuffle from there. So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't get why Library is so essential when you have the songs list, that can also be sorted by artist/album/etc just as the library could. If it's the issue of local files, they've already confirmed that Your Music will support local files, so thats coming.

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Look, if "Songs" is unlimited (as Library was) and it allows for full inegration of "Local Files" (eventually), then the "Library" has been replaced with a superior organizational feature, one that does what "Library" did but adds the sleekness of "shelves," so to speak, for "Artists" and "Album." I can see that there is no longer a 10,000 track limit for "Your Music."  Also, one can still mix "Local Files" with Spotify tracks in a playlist. I'm still noticing some bugs. Some stuff listed in "Songs" is not showing up under "Albums" or "Artists" for example. When I click on an artist in "Artists," I'm not seeing all the songs I have for that artist (and, yes, that is accounting for artists with two or more variations on their name). But I believe, based on past experience with Spotify, that the bugs will be worked out. Generally, at the very least, I'm now seeing all the "Songs" that I had in "Library" and I can still filter and sort under "Songs" like I did with "Library." Therefore, I'm satisfied now. 

[mdewater]

As for the issue of Your Music starting empty, you can blame us beta testers for that I suppose. When we first started testing, they had already imported ALL out saved music to Your Music. Including playlists, starred, etc.

And almost unanimously, it was the one piece of overwhelming feedback that all of us testers gave them right off the bat - to PLEASE empty out our collections so we could start from scratch. The reason for this is that ALL of that music that I mentioned in my above post - the ambient music, the silly kiddy songs - was included in my artists and albums list. I had hundreds of artists in my artist list that I had never heard of. Just about all of us hated it. It was the first big change they made. They wiped our collections and we all praised them for it.

For more casual users, I feel they should have offered a choice to import all your music. I can see why it must be frustrating.


And yes - I did color in the lines as a kid 😉 And wouldn't ya know it, I now work as an artist at Disney!

[noble_fail]

Whoa let's not start attacking each other. I think the beta testers had a fair point and I completely understand. Can we add local files that aren't on Spotify to it though? I didn't think I could. If I could do that then I think my problems would be fixed.

[Garichigô]

I've just seen that now we can't follow " my music" ...

Wow, i can't believe this.

Are these made by professionnals or inters ?

[jazzyjez]

Agreed, if/when there is no track limit to Songs and you can add local files, the new system will be a slight improvement though some users will still miss the search box and popularity bar. As others have commented, why remove something just because not everyone uses it?

An advantage to the new system is that you can choose to have tracks or whole playlists not included in Songs - I've transferred my own playlists to Songs but not other peoples' that I follow.

[noble_fail]

Wow I thought I missed something so I went back and looked and I just saw someone said the functionality is coming to put local files into your library that Spotify doesn't have so I'm good. Thanks for the info! Still love Spotify.

[mdewater]

Haha dang, I missed the "attack." Thanks for the defense noble. Rest assured that they've confirmed to is that local file support is coming to Your Music, and while they haven't explicitly stated that they will be raising the limit, they've said they're aware it's an issue for some users and are looking into raising it. They said they may implement a separate limit for songs and albums, allowing for a greater total number. (I wish they didn't have to limit anything at all.) so once those features are implemented, I think people will warm up to the new design. I do think they released it to the public too early, but I also think the *intensely* negative response by so many jumped the gun a bit. Everybody needs to understand that it's a work in progress.

Jazzy - that was precisely our problem. All the playlists we followed were being added to our albums and artists lists. It just made it a big mess. While adding everything from scratch is a pain, you only have to do it once and once you do it's a much better system.

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

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@mdewater wrote:
Haha dang, I missed the "attack." Thanks for the defense noble. Rest assured that they've confirmed to is that local file support is coming to Your Music, and while they haven't explicitly stated that they will be raising the limit, they've said they're aware it's an issue for some users and are looking into raising it. They said they may implement a separate limit for songs and albums, allowing for a greater total number. (I wish they didn't have to limit anything at all.) so once those features are implemented, I think people will warm up to the new design. I do think they released it to the public too early, but I also think the *intensely* negative response by so many jumped the gun a bit. Everybody needs to understand that it's a work in progress.

Jazzy - that was precisely our problem. All the playlists we followed were being added to our albums and artists lists. It just made it a big mess. While adding everything from scratch is a pain, you only have to do it once and once you do it's a much better system.

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Some of us actually pay Spotify every month. We don't want buggy, broken, or "work in progress" client software. We don't want to pay to be beta testers for Spotify's incompetent product development team.  Givng Spotify an "intensely negative response" is something the Spotify user base is accustomed to. There hasn't been a good quality Spotify client for about two years.

[mdewater]

That's fair. I'm not saying "I don't understand why you're complaining, stop whining." Just saying I do think it's blown a bit out of proportion. Like I said, I think they published this release before it was ready for the public. We were still actively testing it and then boom they made it public. They should have waited a little longer to make sure everything was working flawlessly. Unfortunately it isn't, but know that they are actively working to improve it.

Also, don't we all pay Spotify every month? You make it sound as if I don't pay for it.

[kingkwong]

I feel like I've just had a service that I pay for snatched and stolen away from me. I stored a ton of songs in the general "Library" tab. Songs that weren't necessarily worthy of being starred but still worth keeping and because they weren't stored in an actual playlist, they are just gone now, into oblivion??! As a paying customer this really makes me upset that I wasn't warn about this. The software update was done without my authorization or I would have stayed on the previous version. So much time I've put into collecting/importing these songs into my library are just gone...

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

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@mdewater wrote:
That's fair. I'm not saying "I don't understand why you're complaining, stop whining." Just saying I do think it's blown a bit out of proportion. Like I said, I think they published this release before it was ready for the public. We were still actively testing it and then boom they made it public. They should have waited a little longer to make sure everything was working flawlessly. Unfortunately it isn't, but know that they are actively working to improve it.

Also, don't we all pay Spotify every month? You make it sound as if I don't pay for it.

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There is a fundamental disregard and disrespect for the paying customer that seems to be endemic to Spotify and all of its groupies. Note that I am not implying anything vis-a-vis your groupie status, so don't take things personally.

In these forums, there have been many thousands of complaints from paying customers which have been ignored by Spotify. This is how Spotify works as a company. Spotify doesn't "actively work" on anything except some arbitrary set of pet features that their marketers/developers like. There is an entire graveyard of features that customers put a lot of time and energy into and Spotify pissed all over it -- meaning they gave all those people the collective finger and implemented nothing the customers wanted.

Just recently, I read they finally added "delete radio station". You realize that was on the list for somewhere around 2-3 years? Spotify is the epitome of the poorly run company and they exist only because the original team was talented and passionate. There is nothing left of this team now as far as I can tell. The old versions of the client still work, so I am still paying. As are many others. And we know, from long experience, Spotify doesn't care about any of us. But that's okay. We have learned to expect nothing but junk, pretty much all of it released with obvious bugs and before it fully works. Quality is not part of Spotify's core competencies.

Anyway, long story short, if you haven't used Spotify for a long time, it is perfectly natural to not understand the backlash against Spotify when the company releases incompatible feature-reduced buggy junk to their customer base. When you have used Spotify for longer, you will be the one who is writing the messages that I write today.

[mdewater]

Well, I'm certainly sorry you feel that way. I've been using it for about 2 years now, so I haven't been around REAL long, but at least long enough to have a solid impression of it. I definitely agree that they take far too long to implement changes. Even so, I do feel satisfied with the current product. The features they took away were of no use to me personally, so no loss there, and I genuinely like the new features. The "collection" aspect is something I've wished Spotify had since I first started using it, so I'm very happy it's finally here. Certainly there are fixes to be made, but it's still better than anything else out there, that I've tried.

Anyways, I hope they're able to sort all this out in a way that fits everyone.