Playlists folders vanished?

[theodosiaprevost]

Before the update, I had a pinned playlist and three pinned folders. Now, both on android and desktop, the pinned folders are gone!
Not 'gone' as in 'unpinned,' but 'gone' as in 'vanished entirely.' I can't find any of the folders, or any of the playlists that were in the folders. I just have to search and so far, 0 of my searches (even filtered by playlist) have actually brought up my own playlist.
Basically this glitch has made spotify unusable. There's no way for me to listen to any of my most-used playlists. I can listen to the ones that are published publically to my profile, which is a tiny minority of them. Any help is appreciated, I'm getting desperate

[theodosiaprevost]

Just wanted to post some screenshots of what I mean.

So to take a random playlist as an example: I have one published publically called 'abrupt ending.' No way to access it except from on my profile. I searched for it, and my own playlist doesn't come up. So there's literally no way for me to access 90% of my playlists.

[MihailY]

Hey @theodosiaprevost,

Thanks for reaching out. We're sorry to hear you're having trouble locating your playlists. We'll do our best to help.

As a first step, can you please check if you're able to find the playlists when searching from the general search button located under Home (on desktop)? If you've used that button, try the one located next to the library sorting options.

Also, let us know if you've tried manually going through the list of playlists to try and find the missing ones and whether you've tried any troubleshooting steps like clean reinstalling the app.

Looking forward to your reply.

[theodosiaprevost]

It's the same issue on my browser, my desktop app, and on Android. I've uninstalled both the desktop and my Android app and re-installed. It's not a device issue because again, it's the same in my browser.

So after two and half hours of talking to about seven different support agents, we discovered that I can access each playlist individually if I search by name in 'the my library' search. It's super slow (search takes almost a full minute), I can't add any new songs to them, and it's so inconvenient that for the past few days I just haven't really bothered.

I can search my library to find the previously-pinned folders. But it won't let me pin them again (screenshot attached of the error.)

I literally just want my library to be visible again. I spent hours and hours organising all my hundreds of playlists so that I know where exactly everything is when I want it.

I don't know if it's a direct cause of the awful new UI desktop update but it occured at the same time.

[Alex]

Hi there @theodosiaprevost,

Thanks for the post.

We've passed this on to the developer teams at Spotify. 

You can leave your feedback on the new UI and being unable to pin your folders in this feedback thread. We know it might cause some inconveniences when the UI of the app or a the way some feature works changes, this is why direct feedback is very important, so that those features can be made more user friendly in the upcoming updates.

Cheers.

[theodosiaprevost]

How long do these things usually take to fix? I'm really sick of not being able to access my playlists from my library.

Also, the thread that you linked where I should leave feedback has been closed.

[theodosiaprevost]

Still hadn't been fixed after two weeks. How do we get an issue to appear in the "ongoing issues" section of this forum?

[theodosiaprevost]

Still hasn't been fixed.

Just in case anyone else lurking is having this problem, I managed to find a workaround. I created a new folder for playlists and manually searched for each of the missing playlist. Then I manually moved that playlist into the new folder. It took about an hour and I've barely done 10% of my playlists.

Shoutout to both Spotify customer service and the forum moderators here for being utterly useless ❤️

[Dood]

I'm having the same issue. This morning I was trying to reorder my playlist folders, and, because some of them are pinned, I was unable to move one as high up the list as I wanted to. So, I unpinned a different folder, and now it's completely gone. It was a folder I created, containing dozens of folders, many of which contained further dozens of folders and so on. It was where all of my actual listening playlists are, and now all thousand+ of them are gone. It was my beautifully sorted playlist/folder nirvana that I've literally spent years tweaking to get perfect. Now it's gone.

I can search for it to find it, but I can't pin it, I can't move it, I can't do anything with it other than listen.

I've been using Spotify for over a decade now, mainly because *that's where all my playlists are.* If I can't regain easy access to them, I may as well start looking for an alternative. 

[Dood]

Edit: I found my problem. All of my playlists and folders seem to have migrated into another folder (one of the few still appearing), and I most certainly didn't put them there. I guess now I have to go through all 3,200 playlists in that folder looking for the ones that don't belong there. How convenient.

To add insult to injury, if you're sorting alphatically, you can't drop playlists on your bottom level, so you have to move them to another folder before changing the sort back to custom, at which point it will let you move them back to the bottom level. Fun! 

[foot41]

I have just found that a folder called '1 - Jazz' has disappeared. It has dozens of playlists. How do I recover it?

[foot41]

I found the folder inside another folder but now alphabetical order does not sort numeric folders e.g. 1- Jazz, 2 - Classical in order. Why and how do I reinstate the order?

[AlejaR]

Hey @foot41,

Thanks for your reply in this thread.

The alphabetical sorting option takes into account numbers. If you've perhaps pinned other folders at the top of your library, those will remain in the position you've set them even if you sort your library alphabetically. The rest of the folders in your library should be positioned according to the sorting order.

That being explained, since you mentioned you're having issues with this sorting option, we suggest you log out and log in twice in a row onto your Spotify account. This could sound a little bit odd, but this way the system will force a resync of your account in general.

If afterwards you notice this continues to happen, would you mind sending us the make/model and OS of the affected device along with the Spotify version you're running there?

Lastly, it'd be really helpful if you sent us a screenshot of how you see your library when sorted alphabetically. That way, we can better visualize what's happening on your side.

Keep us in the loop!

[foot41]

Hi AlejaR
Thank you for your email. I have now sorted out the ordering, it was my misunderstanding.
Regards
foot41

[theodosiaprevost]

In case anyone is wondering, this still hasn't been fixed.