What's the difference between saving a song to your library versus adding a song to a playlist?

[alexcr_SPOT]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I've dug around a bit and I'm still not totally clear on this.

My understanding is that you can only save 10,000 songs to your library, but you can add an unlimited number of songs to playlists.  Is that correct?

If so, what's the difference between saving a song to your library versus adding a song to a playlist?  Put another way, what does saving a song to your library allow you to do that adding that song to a playlist doesn't allow you to do?

[Xenia · Accepted solution]

Hey there @alexcr_SPOT,

Thanks for posting your question in the Community! We'd love to help you out with that 🙂

Everything you save to Your Library will influence your music recommendations along with your listening activity. For full info on this, check out out this support article. 

You can save full albums and songs as well as follow your favorite artists, which appear under separate menus in Your Library and are easy to find.

And yes, there is currently a limit of 10.000 items that can be saved to Your Library (including songs, albums and artists).

Creating Playlists is another great way to organize your favorite tracks and gives you the option to share your unique music collections with others. You'll also see top track recommendations at the bottom of your playlists to add more. These may vary, depending on how much variety of styles you have in your playlist as well as its title.

Hope we were able to shed some light. Give us a shout if you have any other questions.

Happy listening 🎶

[alexcr_SPOT]

Thanks.

When you add an album to your library, does that only count as one item toward your 10,000 items, or does every song on that album count as an item?

When you add an artist to your library, does that only count as one item? If not, how many items does it count as? Are all of artist's tracks added?

[Xenia]

Hello again @alexcr_SPOT,

If you like an Album it will count as just one item, but if you choose Like all songs every track of that album will be added to your Liked Songs and will count as one item each. Say, you have an album with 10 tracks - liking the album and all songs in it will be a total of 11 items.

It's the same with Artists. If you follow an artist, it only counts as one item and will not add any songs by that artist to Your Library. You can of course like songs manually, in which case those tracks also count as one item each.

If you'd like to learn more about how Your Library is organized, I'd recommend reading this Spotify Answer.

Enjoy your tunes 🎧

[FuriousStyles1]

So following an artist counts toward the 10,000 song limit? Is there any way I can see how close I am to the limit?

[Ra418]

saving to your library helps with music preferences where as saving to playlists organizes your songs

[vrindavan]

This is better - https://community.spotify.com/t5/Community-Blog/Save-save-save/ba-p/4963349

Thanks, maybe throw a like.