[Desktop][Your Library] Bring Back Separate Song Title and Artist

[Frostman233]

Not sure who thought it was a great idea to reformat how one can view songs by artist or by title...? It is much more convenient to have the two, side by side, while viewing a library rather than only being able to view the artist name or song name under the other...

[Frostman233]

Good news!

There is now a new Compact Mode for track lists (playlists and album pages) in the desktop app and Web Player

The drop down menu now has "Sort by" and "View as" options. To turn on compact mode, open up the drop down menu at the top right of a playlist or album page and click on "Compact" under "View as".

On Playlist pages, it removes the album art, and breaks out "Title" and "Artist" into their own separate columns again. This view is similar to before the redesign that added album art into playlists a few years ago.

On Album pages, it moves the artist and featured artists from below each track title, to a new "Artist" column to the right of the "Title" column.

When you turn on Compact Mode, it will be remembered and stay on when you are viewing both playlists and album pages. You can switch back to the regular "List" view at any time.

The new Compact Mode for track lists is rolling out in the desktop app and Web Player right now so you should be seeing it soon. This has been a highly requested feature since the redesign came out a few years ago.

[neonscion]

Hey guys! I'm curious why you have chosen the new design over the previous one. I think you should focus on removing the horrible gradients that you keep using for whatever reason.
You have removed the option to see when exactly was a certain track added to a playlist. I follow many music blog profiles and check them regularly for new music added to their playlists. With the new update I cannot keep track of which track was added when. I know I can order them by "Date Added" but I can't exactly tell which new tracks were added as I have no reference to the exact time they were added. Please consider bringing this option back.

[GianlucaBianchi]

Not space rocket science. Just let us choose what columns we'd like to see AND how wide they should be. I do not need two inches to know a song lasts 3 minutes expecialy if I do not have enough space to read its title 😶

Just force your designers to actually USE the website for a week or two and they might just come up with all the answers themselves.

[GianlucaBianchi]

There used to be a widely shared opinion about things that are working nicely and that we all more or less love: If it ain't broken don't fix it!

[aaronplave]

As 10 year Spotify desktop user this has been the most jarring and unfortunate update since I started using the app. Basic capabilities like always visible global search and a separate artist column are now gone. To me, the album is secondary if not tertiary information – the artist is really important to me when scanning through playlists. I've never used the web app as it wasn't as convenient and the previously mentioned issues were present.

As a UI developer I understand the need to unify the desktop and web apps but to me it would have made more sense to wait for the web app to be made even more like the desktop app instead just porting the web app to the desktop and throwing it to users who now find themselves without important features they've had for 10 years? 😨

As a UI designer I'm looking at some of these web app (now desktop app) designs and wondering what was driving these decisions. For example, the design of the song title, artist, and album art area in this web app is objectively more difficult to scan compared to the old desktop design. The album art is flashy and yes, it's so tempting to display it because it exists, but it increases cognitive load (especially when so small) when scanning the first column of the list. The stacked title and artist design means it's also quite difficult to scan by title and artist which are really the two most important pieces of information in this whole table.

And look – I'm all for that sweet sweet negative space but please, please consider separating out title and artist into separate columns and adding an option to hide album art because this is literally giving me a headache. I don't if this scales down nicely to 500px, I'm on a laptop/desktop and I don't squish the heck out of my applications because.. why would I? Let me see the information I care about!

Also if you just happen to be taking design advice from a random stranger on the internet I'd also love if you could add back lines between row entries (think this existed in old desktop app) or do zebra striping or something because my eyes are struggling on a normal monitor to line up all the text in a single row. 

Thanks for listening! Change is hard and I complain because I care and do enjoy using Spotify!

[JanNetm]

Removing the artist column is one of the most baffling UX-decisions I've ever seen. It should be brought back asap.

[Mmaxwell7281]

This is seriously a bad update. Artist and Title combined to match the UI of the mobile UI? How small do they think desktop screens are? Yet another feature they've removed then publicly commented stating 'we'll consider' bringing it back. What?! Are we going to get a UI in the future that is just one massive play button, that feel dumbed down enough Spotify?

[Bun-Bun]

@aaronplave

Don't encourage negative space! That's what got us here in the first place! 

[GianlucaBianchi]

I do not think aaronplave was actively encouraging it 🙂

I guess what we all are trying to say is: let us manage/personalize our desktop as much as we like, It's not so difficult or uncommon for an app to have, removable/variable width columns.

What I personally miss much is the possibility (on a Mac) to enlarge (zoom in) the whole page in order to be able to read the small print. Now if I use a small character I can't read it, if not I have All my playlists titles and all song titles cut short.

...and why get rid of useful informations? when I search for a playlist I get all my playlists first (annoying) and I do not know anymore how many followers the other playlists have and how many songs they contain unless I open each one of them.

I know sometimes number of followers don't mean much, I have cr@p playlists with 1000s followers and awesome ones with 2 or 3...  but please: let ME choose! not all of us care about  how many people follow us, I create playlists for my enjoyment and it's useful to look what other people that like the same stuff I do are listening to AND I also like to know if a playlist only contains 5 songs or 2000.

[bryyyson]

Please bring back the artist column for the desktop version of Spotify. It was a really annoying idea, what was the reasoning behind this choice? To clutter up the far left column and annoy your users? While we're at it, thanks a lot for making it an extra step / click to search for things. Can't wait to see how much more complicated and annoying you make the next version. Typical of all software changes though - never improves, just clutters and annoys. 

[GianlucaBianchi]

everytime I use it is a bigger mess.

I cannot read the title of many playlists

 

I cannot read the title of the songs or the albums

I don't hve info about my searches but guess what?

I'm being told what music I like, real big! btw pop is nowhere near my favourite genre 🙂

You know what? Mess your app, I give up. I hope some kid is enjoying himself, cheers.