How to re-arrange songs in a playlist (not premium)

[user-removed]

Plan

Free

Country

Canada

Device
iPhone 8

Operating System

IOS 13

My Question or Issue

I can’t figure out how to re-arrange songs inside my playlist. 

[Mario]

Hey @CJM3863,

Welcome and thanks for reaching out about this in the Community. 

It shouldn't be possible to rearrange the order of the songs in a playlist with Spotify free on your iPhone. But you should be able to do it with the desktop version of Spotify, which you can download here. 

Furthermore, you should be able to sort and filter the songs in a playlist on your iPhone by upgrading to Spotify Premium. Take a look at this support site article if you'd like to know more about the differences between Spotify free and Premium.

Hope you'll find this info useful. Let us know if there's anything else we can help with!

[kvoltron2020]

is there a way for non premium users on chromebooks?

[Yordan]

Hi @kvoltron2020!

Yep, the Web Player allows you to set a custom order in your playlists by dragging & dropping songs exactly where you want. Note that this is not possible if you're using the Spotify app from Google Play Store, as it functions similarly to the mobile version on Android devices, meaning you'll need Premium in order to gain access to this feature.

Hope this clears things up. Cheers!

[tomtwalker]

Regarding podcast playlists (non-premium), it doesn't appear you can rearrange play-order (on desktop app or android app) other than using the sort function, which sorts by release date newest episode first, which makes no sense if you want to listen in release-date order (oldest first). So frustrating that Spotify is throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at popular podcasts to make them exclusive on Spotify so that we have to user their inferior player designed to force us to upgrade to premium. This is anti-consumer. Podcasts should be available on any player much like radio stations are available on any radio.

[Susan_GP]

Hey there @tomtwalker,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

You can rearrange the order in the Podcast playlists you've created. Just open Spotify from the desktop app or Web Player and select your playlist > Go to the Sort by option on the right (it is right next to the search icon) > Select Date added. If you want to change from newest to oldest, go to the Date added column and click the little green arrow next to it. That will change the order. 

Now this option is not available in mobile for Premium or free users. However, if you wish, from the desktop and Web Player you can actually order them however you want. Go to the playlist > Sort by > Select 'Custom order'. Once you select that option, you can simply drag the episodes into the order you want. Then, from your mobile, you can also select that same 'Custom order' and you will see the Podcasts in the order you set them to from the computer. You can check out this article for more info about the Sort and filter feature.

We understand you'd like this feature to improve. Thank you for the feedback, we appreciate it. We always aim to improve.

Let us know if you have any questions.
 

[tomtwalker]

Hi @Susan_GP -- Thanks, but the only sort option is in the left panel of the web player (and desktop app) and that sorts the playlists themselves. There is no "sort by" option to in the right panel where my playlist episodes show up. There is a search box, but there is no "sort by" next to it as you indicated. Aslo, the Date Added column has no green arrow next to it. Might this be because I'm not a premium subscriber? Please see screenshot, also attached as a file. Thank you.

[Alex]

Hi there @tomtwalker,

Thanks for the post.

On the Left-Side you can control the arrangement and sorting of your playlists, but not the songs/ podcast episodes within each playlist. I see that you've opened the Web player on your screenshots.

On the Web player - you can open up a playlist and you can drag around the tracks up and down to re-arrange them, however you can't sort them by criteria like Date-Added/ Title/ Artist etc. See Screenshot1:

On the Desktop app - you can sort the playlist tracks automatically by criteria like  Date-Added/ Title/ Artist etc. by clicking on the sorting option button. See screenshot2:

So, in order to sort the playlists in the way you want, you have to use the Desktop app, and not the Web player.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions.

[tomtwalker]

Hi Alex, my confusion was  2-fold:

(1) I didn't realize that in the web player that I could manually drag around the order of episodes, because when I tried that I tried it in the "Your Episodes" playlist, and it doesn't work there, apprarently because it is a built-in playlist. 

(2) Also confusing was the definition of "Desktop App." When using the web player from a web browser, there is the option to download it as a PWA (Progressive Web App), which lets you launch the web player like you would an app, and it brings it up in a non-browerish window (no URL top line, etc) and it's called a app even though it is still the web player. After reading your solution, to install the actual desktop app (so I'd get better playlist sort functionality), I Googled "Spotify Desktop app" and downloaded and installed it.  I now have to uninstall the PWA so I don't accidentally launch that...

...It's frustrating that we're required to do so much manual work to get our episodes sorted how we like them. Popular podcast players let you auto-download in the order you want to listen to them. In the spotify desktop app, you can't click on the "Release date" column in the playlist to reverse the order. In my podcast player (which I can't use for Spotify podcasts because you make us use your app) I can setup a playlist and configure it to automatically add new episodes to the end of the playlist, so that I'm always listening them in the order they were released, even if I get a few weeks behind, without me having to go in an manually sort them. This is extremely frustrating. If you're going to make me listen to your ads, at least ensure your podcast player isn't inferior to the best out there.  But I do appreciate the helpful responses. I just wish I didn't have to spend time moving forward manually adding episodes to playlists and manually sorting them.

@alex @Susan_GP

[strugggler]

using free spotify, can i observe the song order? i do not want to change it just want to know what comes after what. and sometimes there are songs that i never added to playlist(it has 16 songs approximately and the smart shuffle is turned off), and i am surprised when i see them trying to remember when i added those, what could that be caused by?

[Joan]

Hi @strugggler,

Thanks for reaching out. You can see what's going to play next by opening the queue on applicable devices. See here for more info. Additionally, on free songs are often added to playlists courtesy of the autoplay feature as well as Smart Shuffle as you mentioned yourself, so it would seem that what you described is the expected behaviour. 

Hope this clears things up.

[Huskychemist]

So...uh...this whole "sort episodes in a podcast playlist" seems overly complicated. In my other podcast apps, I simply drag the episodes to create the order I want.

I've tried that option, and it didn't work.

I also tried clicking how I sort, and "custom" isn't an option.

This is a deal-breaker for me. I want to be able to set my order for my podcasts. I can do that in the current app where I listen to podcasts. Maybe I'm just missing something, but I can't figure out how to do that here. Seems like a feature that a lot of people want.

Thanks.

[Ivelina]

Hey @Huskychemist,

Thanks for joining the thread!

As a little clarification, keep in mind that the Custom order option is not available in the Your Episodes playlist with podcasts, you can instead create your own playlist and then add the desired podcast episodes to it. In the Spotify desktop app, you can then sort by Custom order and drag each episode to rearrange it in the desired order. In the Web Player you should then also be able to drag the episodes.

If you haven't already I recommend checking @Susan_GP's post here for more details.

Hope this helped clear things up and let us know if you've got any other questions 🙂