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Updated Spotify desktop client yesterday (about says v0.9.8.258) and the 'Library' option has dissappeared and been replaced by a rather useless and blank looking Your Music 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

[andrewdenty]

Please bring the library back!!

It was one of my favourite spotify features. I used it at work every day to access all of the music which was on itunes on my home computer. 

[passingbat]

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@kingkwong wrote:

So after writing the company, I learned they do not plan to change the library issue. And while they acknowledge removing the library, they do not apologize or even acknowledge that they failed to give customers any notice or choice to not upgrade to what I feel like a major change. I still feel like they cannot even justify the change - was it to help them give out fewer royalties to artists? For myself, I used the search option in the library to constantly update my catalog with new music and to make sure I wasn't adding duplicates of songs, not to mention the tons of songs that were only in the library, nowhere else because they weren't good enough to star or put in a playlist but still worth having. The sad thing about the whole situation is that with even just a one-minute notice, we could have just added our libraries to a playlist and all those songs would have been saved. Now they have disappeared into oblivion. Here's the response I received:

"I'm sorry about the trouble the new update has caused you. Unfortunately, as you already know, the Library feature has been removed completely, and won't be returning in the foreseeable future. 

And, as sorry as we are about this, if you had songs in your Library that weren't either starred or stored in a playlists, we won't be able to recover them. We aren't able to restore you back to a previous version either. 

However, if the majority of songs you're looking for are in either you Starred list or various playlists, you can simply drag & drop each playlist into the 'Songs' section of 'Your Music'. That will then create a Library style feature, where all your songs will be in one place. 

Again, if the songs you're missing aren't in either you starred list or a playlists of yours, we won't be able to recover this. I'm sorry if this has caused you any kind of inconvenience. 

As our way of apologising, why don't we go ahead and add a month of Premium to your account, free of charge? Hopefully that'll make up for the inconvenience caused, and also show some gratitude for being such a loyal user! 

Let me know 🙂

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

Jon
Customer Service Advisor
Cambridge, UK"

If nothing, if you express your anger about the change, they will probably offer you a month free of service. Hope this answers some things.

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That reply from Spotify just goes to demonstrate both their arrogance towards customers and what a completely dissorganised mess the update was. How can they not have considered tracks that users would loose by doing the update? They could have at least warned people before doing the update.

[Peter__]

@passingbat - I think they are just covering their own assess, Library was just a summary which showed all of the tracks in all of your playlists and local files - all of which will still be there in their corresponding places. You won't have lost any content.

[passingbat]

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@Peter wrote:
@passingbat - I think they are just covering their own assess, Library was just a summary which showed all of the tracks in all of your playlists and local files - all of which will still be there in their corresponding places. You won't have lost any content.

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I was basing it on the fact that kingkwong says he lost tracks:

"not to mention the tons of songs that were only in the library, nowhere else because they weren't good enough to star or put in a playlist but still worth having. The sad thing about the whole situation is that with even just a one-minute notice, we could have just added our libraries to a playlist and all those songs would have been saved. Now they have disappeared into oblivion"

I personally haven't lost any tracks.

[NadiaNadette]

More importantly, how can I revert back to the previous version?? I've seen some stupid complicated "guide" on how to revert but but I'm looking for a link. I'm not a techie, I just want to shuffle all my spotify+itunes music and be able to search it in a filter. I'm not asking for much, just a link to the old version.

[lisalove4]

My problem with library going missing is that not only could I play ALL my music at once and just shuffle through everything as I pleased, but I could also search for certain songs in my music. I don't see an option like that anywhere now, and it would be nice to be able to find out if I have already added a song or not without having to scroll through, or alphabetically organize, my playlists.

[vonadel]

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@lisalove4 wrote:

My problem with library going missing is that not only could I play ALL my music at once and just shuffle through everything as I pleased, but I could also search for certain songs in my music. I don't see an option like that anywhere now, and it would be nice to be able to find out if I have already added a song or not without having to scroll through, or alphabetically organize, my playlists.

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This is exactly the way I used the Library feature, and clearly a lot more users did the same. To be able to mix and shuffle local music with Spotify music, and the great way to search your entire collection of music.

I really don't understand this new "Your Music" feature. What can it do that a playlist can't? Ok, I guess it's a way to create some sort of collection, but can someone explain the advantatages of it?

[PaulRx4]

One month is next to worthless compared to many hours spent making custom playlist and star marking favorites.

In one moment you undid much of 100's of hours or work ,, thanks SO MUCH!!  Spotify'a concern for any real or

serious music lover  is very close to zero.  Spotify only cares about money $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

So cater to the subscriber who uses their cellphone for music.  After all how much cold they use you???

I would guess you had little idea how much library was used. It was the first and last thing I looked at

everytime i used spotify.   

[StevenQ]

I definitely want the Library option back on the desktop app and on mobile. Sometimes I just want a random mix of all the music I love. I shouldn't have to hack a workaround for a basic feature that used to exist.

[Agulukuku]

I have never used any application which made such a horrible updates... This is the second time I am desperately searching for any way to get my old version back and seriously considering to give up spotify. Especially the mobile version is one big joke.Yeah let's leave the option to make a playlist of an album, but let's make it impossible to find it afterwards! We can better use this space for some "browsing" menu in which people can see music they don't want to listen to. Much better then some tab with all your playlists which users have been collecting for the last several years. And let's tell people they can download tracks, but hide the actual download button!

It is quite an achievement though, to make a mobile application twice the size as before and completely useless in the same time with only one update. Well, at least I have some free space to use some other apps again.

[waterox]

Hope you're listening spotify. This is a pretty active thread.

Just please please please put all our songs from playlists into "songs" in a future update.

[Rhymko]

After the library disappeared and I resigned to making the update work for me, I started to move my playlists into "my music." I wasn't aware of the song limit bug (more specifically, that I had to log out and log back in after importing ~500 songs), so about halfway through moving everything over (and deleting those playlists), I realized it wasn't all getting transferred.

So I "restored" all of my deleted playlists to get my music back (hundreds of playlists which had been organized by artist alphabetically are now all randomized). It is utter chaos.

Now I have no way to shuffle all of my music and my collection is unorganized and relatively worthless since I have no idea where anything is. I am not going to spend another week re-alphabetizing my playlists in order to make sense of it all again; I'm not going to spend a week trying to import it one artist at a time into "my music" (esp since it seems to disappear even when adhering to the ~500 limit). It is a jumbled mess that has none of the usability it once did for me.

This is hogwash. I don't understand why Spotify can't just add the library feature back. Does it take up an extra server, this one feature? Does it require a staff of twenty to make it happen? What is the reason?

[humaart]

Rhymko, my feeling (and that of many others) exactly. In the old version I used Spotify to stream random music through my whole house, with the assurance that every added artist automatically got added in the library as well. Now that function has gone, Spotify has lost its main attraction, as far as I'm concerned. So I hope they're bloody well reading these threads and come their senses.

[waterox]

Knowing a bit about the software development process, I would say its very unlikely this will be returning. Alarming to hear that there is no way to make a full transfer of the library. I also have around 15,000 tracks in my library. They dont give a darn about power users, the same way Apple screwed over loads of their loyal pro audio users by using bad firewire chipsets at a time when firewire was still dominant for audio interfaces.

Another thing. I have the new version on my iphone and it keeps crashing. Great "improvement". Probably they didnt care about people with iPhone 4 since that is so "old".

I suppose they are in competition with google now. New users will be much more important to them I would guess.

It's sad though, and proves Steve Albini's point about digital music being inherently unreliable. If you dont physically own it then at any time the company could disappear, change its management, whatever... I thought that spotify was one of those cooler companies that cares about loyalty but appraently not.

One thing you can do if you havent yet updated to the new version is drag your songs from the library to the desktop (in OSX anyway) and then rename the file .txt to give a list of all the artist/songs.

[humaart]

Now here's an interesting thing. During a feeble attempt to reorganize my playlists without the library function, an iTunes folder appeared above my playlists. I'm not completely sure it wasn't there before, but if it was, I hadn't seen it. But here's the weird thing: if I click this iTunes folder, ALL my songs appear in one list.

No, NOT a copy of my actual iTunes catalog. I tried that out by adding a new playlist of one CD, that I don't have in iTunes. I named it after the artist and dragged the CD to that playlist. And lo and behold: it also appeared in my very long iTunes folder.

I haven't dug into this very thouroughly yet, but a few random tests seem to confirm that it contains all my Spotify songs and automatically adds new ones.

I would really like to hear if anyone can collaborate this or that I completely missed of misinterpreted something.

[PaulRx4]

Gee wiz a whole month for destroying many, many hours of work!  First place i looked when Spotify opened and closed was library.

Also the best place to search my collection, in many ways!  almost all ways, album, artist,length etc. Also it was the last place i looked when I went to sign out. It was where i elminated doubles and kept track of numbers of playlist and selections. I used the star system to keep track of what i liked, or just as a marker to tell where i was last.  So no new stars forever  , thanks. I would be nice if we could add a short note to

some selections, esp since many selections lacked important info ( such as composer )  and i spend time finding this out.

I used stars to eliminate all the music that was not liked and taking up space somewhere.Plus there are limits (500?) on songs and albums.

Actually this is to get rid of "power" users and just hope for people who pay but dont use much (like cellphones), since they pay the same.

Meanwhile since it is so hard to add, search, and sort, i will stop using this service much more and be looking elsewhere. I wont be

adding much any more.  Too bad as you had a good selection and simple desktop client that actually worked just fine. Instead they are

getting worse and wrose,  Most businesses try to get better, not spotify,   really too bad, because i liked Spotify  too bad

Spare these bogus  "work arounds"   which actually dont work, also dont tell solved when not, or fixed when not or answered, when not.

Shame on you Spotify, anybody could just go down hill, no skill need here.

[colake]

We are now more then a month later since the removal of the library and nothing as changed.

No new update of the Spotify Desktop application even no official reaction of Spotify in this threat!

I was lucky to install the latest new version only two weeks ago so I was able to use the great automated functionality of the library a little bit longer. After the install I tried to live without the library and I tried to make the best of it. Unfortunately that's not so easy.

I started to import all my playlists into "My music". At first everything went well but I just discovered that some playlist were imported partially and others were imported not at all. I didn't get any error message or indication that not all the songs were imported.
I only discovered that by 'accident' because I had the feeling that only a small selection of my collected music was played when selecting "Songs" as random playlist. With the Library ALL my songs where played smoothly.

Apparently there are some work arrounds so that all songs are copied. If this was tested well then a workaround was not needed or this had to be fixed at least very soon after the inital release! And then it seems that there is still a limitation that didn't exist for the Library.

I even don't speak about not being able to include my large collection of local files I collected over the years and that I want to mix also with other music of Spotify. With the Library this was done automaticly!

There is one last thing I'm wondering. What with playlist I follow from other people. What happens when they add a new song to their playlist. Will it be included automaticly in "My Music". I don't think so! With the Library this was also something that was done automaticly!

Maybe time that all people who where using one or more function in the library write a mail to Spotify, send a tweet to there account, or put a reaction on their facebook ... and we will probaly get more silence from them!

I'm very very disapointed in Spotify!

[LaRube]

Yeah colake... I decided to try and "recreate" the library as best I could and found it is not posisble... As I added songs from playlists and local stuff I discovered some sort of bug that I have not been able to find a work around... It was not temporary... no restarting did not fix... I can add songs individually now, but if Itry to add a group of songs, it does not work...

I beleive it is time to decide if this lack of user interest on Spotify's part is egregious enough to stop using it and find another service or just live with it... I am evaluating "rdio" it has a function that is better than the old library (combines everything) and offere more control over radio stations; it also tracks your usage very well and quickly starts tailoring your experience... Also there is a function to clear your collection (like library in Spotify) whenever you like... It has as many songs as Spotify and a great Web interface... It works on android and apple/OS... Has offline feature... Really good... The only negative I have found so far is that there is no desktop app... strictly Web based...

I will continue to monitor this situation as I evaluate other services...

[FatalJustice555]

Rdio sounds promising, LaRube.  How much does it cost?

[LaRube]

With ads is free...

Web only ad-free $ 4.99/month

Unlimited ad-free web and mobile $ 9.99

There are also family discounts...