MAJOR Nuances of Library Organization, Curation, and Listening Experience removed with UI Update.

[K0nami]

Hello, I am a Premium USA Android User, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 to be particular.

I am a Spotify Veteran for several years now and the Library sorting system has undergone many modifications during my time. If you can recall, we have been able to organize by, at one point or another:

• Starred Songs
• Liked Songs
• Saved Songs
• Saved Albums
• Follow Artist
• Albums Saved to Library

A lot of these seem the same because they are. Some of these distinctions have been used, then discarded, and some seemingly reinstated and renamed, over the years etc. This is especially frustrating concerning knowledge established in older blog posts that are helpful at the time but then the nomenclature becomes outdated with each UI update.

Most of my Spotify library growth and organization was done during Late 2017 through this year, 2019. The primary organization method used at the time was "Saving." The best and most intuitive way to organize and curate a music library with the "saving" system (In my opinion) was the following:

1. Follow Artists you listen to. This made them show up in your Artists tab even if you had 0 songs saved by them.
2. If you like entire albums, then you just hit the big "Save" button on the album at the top and it would save every song in the list without you having to individual hit the + button on it.
3. If you desired more curation, it was simply a matter of individually saving or unsaving songs within albums. If you only like a song or two on an album, it makes sense to just save those few, instead of the whole album. However, if you only dislike a few songs on the album, it makes sense to save the whole album, then go through and unsave the ones you don't want.

Chances are, if you can relate to this somewhat tedious process, you are a huge music buff like me and part of your concern over what songs to save may lie in the fact that Spotify has a 10,000 song limit you keep hitting (a whole other issue that has been raised countless times on this forum but refuses to be fixed on account of what appears to me, to be the logic of "Well it only inconveniences less than 5% of our users so honestly, who cares").

At any rate, I really appreciated this system. More importantly, I oriented my curation and listen experience AROUND this system. And don't get me wrong, I'm not upset that it changed from "saved" to "liked" a couple months ago or whatever. I'm upset because I've encountered a LOSS of functionality, features/user-friendliness, and I'm not certain whether the Spotify Dev Team is even aware of some of these nuances they instated, or took away with the update.

THE 2 HUGE DIFFERENCES AND EXPERIENCES REMOVED WITH THE UPDATE:

1) No More Curated Artists Discographies in Your Library for Listening.

If you put in the work to organize your music, there was a big difference and benefit between just going to an artist in the search results, versus pulling up the artists by going to your library and going to the artists tab. If you're able to save songs within albums and basically have "your own versions" of an artist's album tracklist accessible to you, which means also with multiple albums and singles saved, you have a comprehensive collection/ready-to-play mix of ONLY songs you like by that artists. 

To my knowledge, there is now no way of getting this mix anymore. Since the update, if you have an album saved by an artist, and you navigate through your library to access that album instead of playing it through the search results, it no longer makes a difference. It will play EVERY song on that album, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER YOU HAVE INDIVIDUAL SONGS SAVED OR NOT and you accessed it through your library and not the official search results.

This did not used to happen, and it is a huge disappointment. I would like to know why you guys decided the mechanic for "Saving an Album" and "Saving Songs" should be separated into 2 distinct features, which are currently "Save Album to Library" and "Liked Songs."

2) Managing Existing Saved/Liked/Added Songs Must Be Done One by One.

Part of the update made it so that what used to be the "Songs" tab, which was every single song you had saved, turned into "Liked Songs", which is now accessible in your Playlists tab. Not necessarily an issue on its own.

However, as pointed out in 1) above, the changes in functionality naturally lends itself to another, equally frustrating issue. By making these two distinct systems, the "whole of your spotify library is not equal to the sum of its parts," so to speak.

What I mean by this is, to my understanding, the sum of your "Liked Songs" no longer comprises what your library is truly comprised of if you were to consider the albums saved. If you have ever:

• Liked a song on an album you didn't save
• Saved an album but didn't like any or all of the individual songs

Then the sum of all the songs you've ever "liked" ≠ the songs that comprise all of your "saved albums."

IN THE OLD UI, UNSAVING AN ALBUM AUTOMATICALLY UNLIKED EVERY SONG IN THE TRACKLIST, AND VICE VERSA. NOW, NOTHING HAPPENS WHEN YOU SAVE OR UNSAVE AN ALBUM, IF THE INDIVIDUAL SONGS ARE OR AREN'T ALREADY IN YOUR "LIKED SONGS", NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

The following are screenshots from the Desktop App however the same concept applies to the mobile app. Notice the difference in caption/function when I hover the mouse over the album heart icon vs. the song heart icon:

To add insult to injury, you still even use the SAME heart icon to signify two different functions! From what I can tell, and clearly I use Spotify far more intensively than the average user, this was a completely unnecessary complication to an existing system that didn't yield any net benefit or additional features. Spotify Rep, please feel free to clarify the intent behind these design choices and I will be glad to embrace them but I genuinely feel like some of these things were overlooked in the design process.

This is, again, a pretty major inconvenience when it comes to playing what you want to hear concerning your library vs. official search results, and also is a huge annoyance concerning organizing your library, trying to make sure that you only have songs saved that you like.

I don't know if anyone is aware of these issues or was even aware these were effects of the new system but I'd like some thoughts, on whether they should be amended, whether there are workarounds for the issues I'm encountering, whether they were considered, etc.

Thanks for your time, I know this is a long post and hopefully I shared something that is helpful to your music listening experience!

[Mario]

Hello @K0nami,

Welcome to the Spotify Community and thanks for sharing your feedback regarding the latest 'Your Library' update. 

If you wish to see specific future changes, feel free to formulate this as an idea and suggest what could be implemented by Spotify according to your input. To do so:

• Go to the Spotify Community
• Click on Menu
• Click on Ideas > Idea submissions
• Scroll all the way to the bottom and click on 'Let’s go' 

In the meantime, you can have a look at this Spotify Answer which covers the main elements of the updated 'Your Library' and the related functionalities.

Hope you'll find this helpful. Feel free to reach out to us anytime!

[jakebroulette]

100% agree,this is a big deal to me to skip certain songs, as albums like the Doom eternal sound track require like 14 skips, and i have reworked my library completely to do it in a workaround way, by only playing albums from the artist tab on mobile after the simple, "dont play unliked songs in an album" function was removed. this also necessitated me unliking every albums i want to modify, as that auto likes everything, the new UI update to windows desktop removes ANY way to play albums with songs removed, as the artist tab now goes to the main artist page when you click on it. I don't understand how they keep removing functionality with every UI update, seemingly out of sheer negligence.

[TOverturf]

I agree with all this. I don't get why the two points that you brought up were removed. Spotify just seems to keep removing features. I have a friend that might have wanted to switch from Spotify to Apple Music but Spotify doesn't have any album curation so he probably won't switch.