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

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...

Updated on 2023-11-14

Hey folks,

 

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Idea Exchange and voting to make this happen.

 

We're happy to announce that a Compact mode which hides the album art and displays the song's title and artist under two separate columns in playlists and albums is now available on the desktop app and the Web Player! Check out @MattSuda's post here for a detailed overview.

 

Once again, thanks for helping us make Spotify better by participating here on the Community 💚

Top Answer
MattSuda
Spotify Star

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.

 

Desktop Compact List Mode.png

Comments
lungan24

Example: After you press the Artist name (Sigala), then discography, then you see 4 pictures of the same song (Lasting Lover). But who was it? That did that great remix I know by text! And I also know the artist who did the remix but I only see pictures. Now I need to hold my mouse under the picture to see the full songs name. And the song next to "Lasting Lover" is 3 "Heaven on my mi...". wth, come on. I used spotify for music. Not looking at pictures. Otherwise, good update but change this fast or at least give an opportunity to sort/change view when I search around spotify. Cheers

JohnR

Why are songs now listed by album rather than by artist. As a DJ, I use Spotify to organise my set lists and need to scan down lists by artists name - not by album. I also need a simple playlist view (as in iTunes) to organise my sets. I do not need need thumbnails of the albums. Can we have the option for a simple playlist/artist view please.

l_n5mhe4-g14o

The new update has merged the artist and title column and it's just horrible cluttered now. It feels like they tried to make the desktop app into a mobile app, which just doesn't work. Desktop and phone users don't use spotify the same way, so please don't try to force us to.

 

Bring back the artist column or even better; let us customize our UI to our liking and needs

Edit: 

As a software designer myself, I know why this was done, but it just doesn't work. They are hoping to reduce development time so they don't have to program new features into two different applications and can just use the same one instead.  Desktop ain't phones and therefore this both looks and feels ridiculous. Another great example of UI and UX team not communicating (or doing their job). 

I have personally just said "screw this" and downloaded a custom player from github (Spicetify) that looks almost exactly like the old Spotify. This brings back the artist column which I use most of the time. 

 

 

coralweb

Totally agree.  Please put Artist back in own column.  Plenty of space, especially when not viewing Friend Activity.  Thank you.

 

And I also agree with others that we should be able to choose columns.  It's a common convention.  Thanks.

TheBigBadPanda

There is no reason not to do this, when looking at a playlist theres is tons of wasted space, more than enough space to retain a column for Artist. When making the window smaller the "Date Added" etc. colums are hidden currently, why cant Artist just be similarly collapsable?

maeveynot

A good way to solve this would be to let users right click on the heading to choose which columns to display, like pretty much any media player app (e.g. VLC).

jdyzzle

YES! Personally I care more about the Artist than the Album name and this new view feels like it's hiding that in favor of the Album name and Date added, which I really don't care about. It's so much harder to scroll through song titles and Artists now. "Cluttered" is the optimum word here. 

Electronic_Dreams

You might aswell rollback to the previous version and fire the current design team, they dont understand ui design. this version is a mess.

Rewt127

Yes Please! 

 

For those of us who sort by Artist having artist clumped right up next to the title is frankly ridiculous. It makes it so unnecessarily difficult to scroll quickly through my playlists and find the artist I'm looking for. It's ridiculous.

 

I find that much of the UI Decisions recently have been truly atrocious. I was going to post something about this, and it took me 15min to get to the place to actually post about this. then this was the first result. It's RIDICULOUS. Why are they making everything so much more difficult to navigate?

volcanic

Indeed!

 

There is plenty of room for both columns - so why mess it up? When I make my genre (metal, rock, pop, etc.) playlists I always sort them by artist. Even if I can do the sorting from the title column the readability is terrible with different titles and images of the albums!

 

Secondly why can't I give direct feedback from the application? All of my friends have complained about this artist sort thing but no one wants to see such a hassle with forums and registrations!