Missing music after Library update

[JakePT]

Plan

Premium

Country

Australia

Device

iPhone XR

Operating System

iOS 12

My Question or Issue

I've just received the new Library update on iOS, but now I can't easily access much of the music I've saved.

Previously if I saved or "liked" a single song on an album, the album would appear under Albums in my Library. I did this quite frequently, especially from within other playlists.  A recent update changed the behaviour so that opening the album from the library displayed all tracks, not just the ones I saved, but now with this update the only Albums that appear at all are ones where I have saved/liked the full album.

This means that my Library is now missing an enormous chunk of the music I'd saved. How on Earth is this an improvement? With the Recently Added section and For You sections also gone or buried, the most frequent ways I accessed my library have completely disappeared. What am I supposed to do?

Figuring out what songs are missing, and going and finding their albums to save, is now considerably more difficult since even Songs has been removed. The effort I'd need to put into that would be about the same effort it would take to rebuild my library on another music service that doesn't hide my music from me.

[pauljenkins1]

Seriously, this update is making me think about switching to apple music. I always go through my albums to see what I want to listen to but know only 20 albums show up, when I should have like 200. This is pissing me off! I can see that they only show up if you clicked on save album but thats ridiculous!

[6chars]

This straight up ruins the way I used spotify. More than half my music is now burriered in the Songs section, without cover art context to find it again. This is so bad I'm considering other services.

SUGGESTION: Add a toggle in the Album section, that says: 'Only show full albums'. That can't be hard to implement, it's probably either a single client or server side filter operation.

[DanifC]

Hi Jake,

Regarding your last paragraph, "Songs" hasn't been removed, it's just been renamed to "Liked Songs" and can be found at the top of your Playlists tab.

You can find your "Made for you" tab by going to the search tab at the bottom, and it's a button in the "browse all" section, right under Your top genres.

By recently added, do you mean sorting your songs tab by how recently they were added? If so, go to Liked Songs > pull down on screen > Filters > recently added. If you mean recently played, that section is now found at the top of your home tab. 

I can't help with the "Albums" concern, because I think that is working as intended... 

[hayd2398]

This has completely ruined the way I listened to music on spotify on both PC and mobile. All of the songs I saved individually appear as recommed albums underneath the full albums but obviously include all the other songs which I do not want saved.

As other users have said, I do not want to have to find indivual songs through the songs tab, I want to see album artwork.

Why change a system that worked perfectly fine?

[seanrm92]

This is the biggest issue I've had in the new update. I'd love to know what Spotify was smoking when they relegated all individual tracks to the "Liked Songs" list.

Also, reverting to an old version of the app does NOT fix this issue.

Spotify: Put our music back in the Albums list, please and thank you.

[rednarok]

a playlist with around 8 songs is down to two.

what happened to them?????

i wonder if songs from other playlists are gone too?

where do i reach to get this fixed?

[DanifC]

Hi rednarok,

Can you elaborate on this problem? Also, can you access Spotify from another device, such as another phone or desktop, and see if the playlist is still 8 songs there?

[DrRobotronic]

This issue seems to be across devices as well, I noticed it today on Android and confirmed it is also on the desktop app. I'd say 99% of my music I saved by song not by album, I think it's much rarer that someone will want to save every song on an album as opposed to just some of them.

This is especially common in albums that have bonus tracks, or intro tracks that aren't really songs you might want in your library as they only work in context of the larger album. I'm considering looking into removing the update if possible, I think the user interface just keeps getting worse with Spotify.

[6chars]

There are things about Spotify that are great, so instead of switching, I decided to write a little tool to help me fix this issue.

BIG DISCLAIMER, this might leave your library in a state you don't expect nor want it to be in. With that said you can find the tool here https://github.com/Voultapher/spotify-restore-saved-albums.

Also, I'm not your tech support, please read and follow the instructions carefully if you want to have success.

[cpystal7717]

I use to find songs I like and chose to add them to my Library and not yet on a play list. I lost or cant find where all those songs went. I also would use library to listen to all my songs when I didnt feel like using a aprticular play list. The last two update have been a complete miss for me im over paying for this service guess its back to apple so sad. 

[DanifC]

Hi @cpystal7717,

Regarding your collection of songs, you can now find all your saved songs in a playlist entitled "Liked Songs." It will be the first one under "create playlist" in the Playlists tab. It has a blue/purple background gradient and a white heart. You can find more information on the update as well as some tips for getting around the new library here.

I understand your frustration here, though I hope this helps somewhat. 

-Dani

[cruzarte]

Yes, this is an issue. Same problem here. I'm using both Mac Desktop App and Android App, and when I Add an Album to my library, It gets "Liked" just the album, not the songs within. So when I'm going to listen my library from my "Liked Songs" I do not find my favorite music anymore. Is a problem, since that's my favorite way I used to listen music on shuffle mode on spotify. Having to add song by song to my library is simply not user friendly.

[DanifC]

Hi @cruzarte, 

This is the new functionality of the albums tab. You can find more information about it here. You don't have to add each song one at a time. On mobile, tap the three-dot menu at the top of the album page and select "like all songs"; on Mac, click the first song and then shift-click the last song, right click (or ctrl-click) any selected song and choose "save to your library." They will now be added to your liked songs.

Hope this helps!

-Dani

[cruzarte]

Thanks Dani, This for sure helps, I didn't knew about that! 
Anyway, I'm still thinking that's an extra step that wasn't really neccesary before the update. Now I'll have to revisit may latest liked albums to add the songs.

[DanifC]

Hi again @cruzarte,

Happy to help, at least somewhat. I understand your frustration here, as I have felt frustration at times, as well. Anyways... Happy listening, and have a great day!

-Dani

[cpystal7717]

What im really looking for is shuffling all my music. I have made many play
list however at times I dont want to be limited to music saved on that play
list. More than not i would go to my library and shuffle all the songs.
this was songs ive liked songs I added with the + and songs I added direct
to a play list. How can this be done with this new release?

[DanifC]

Hi @cpystal7717,

Any songs that you've saved with the ❤️ button will now be found under "Liked Songs." You can shuffle that whole collection. The only time you hit a ❤️ button that will not add the songs to your liked songs list is if you ❤️ an entire album; doing so will just add the album to your "albums" tab and will not save all the songs to your liked songs. 

[oih09001]

What about the songs I added/downloaded to my library with the plus sign? Those are all missing, which is most of my music, that I've collected over YEARS. Because I didn't "like" them via the heart, they're not in the "Liked Songs" playlist. Please help.

[oih09001]

My "liked" songs are there, but not my "added" songs. Is my music collection from the past 5 years lost forever?