After interface update: Missing artists column and jump to song in playlist fails

[Joen7]

Plan

Premium

Country
Netherlands

Device

Desktop PC

Operating System

(Windows 10)

1) Question: Can you please bring back the artists column? Via a setting in the preferences would be fine for me. The update makes it really hard to look for the artists under the bold song titles. Looks very messy to me. Also sorting on artists is now hidden in a dropdown. Not very user friendly.
2) Issue: When I click on the current song in the left-bottom, I would like to jump to the song in the playlist. It does jump but mostly to the wrong location in the playlist.

[Novy]

Hey there @Joen7, 

Thanks for getting in touch with us, and welcome to the Community. 

We’re always listening to user feedback, and we will continue to innovate the product experience. We really appreciate your comments and you can find more info about this here. 

Regarding the issue you mentioned, could you let us know if you notice anything new after performing a clean reinstall of the app? This is more thorough than a regular one and can help deleting any cache that might be causing issues. 

Let us know how it goes.

[Joen7]

Hi Novy, 

Thanks for the advice, I followed the procedure. With respect to the jumping in the playlist, still the same behavior. It jumps to a section which is not related to the current song. Very strange. I have the same behavior on my other PC. 
When I sort on artist, sometimes it jumps ok. Though now something worse happened. I sorted to Album and now it does not jump at all anymore when clicking on the album picture in the left-bottom. Also when changing back to sort by Artist it does not jump in the play list anymore. Also after restarting Spotify it still does not jump to the song in the playlist.
I guess we caught a bug.
Best regards,
Jeroen

[Novy]

Hey @Joen7, 

Thanks for getting back to us with this info. 

If possible, could you ask a friend or a family member to log in to their account using your device to see if they can replicate this? 

You could also give it a try using another internet connection. 

Let us know how it goes. 

[Joen7]

Hi Novy,

We tested. My son does not have this issue on the same PC with his account and playlists, but after I share my list with him, it happens to him too. I think it is related to my playlist AND songs which it contains that are no longer available (greyed out).

How to reproduce? You can open this playlist (remove the space):

open.spotify.com/playlist/ 3qqFMizB519tZ8TW8aSwds?si=baa392cf6f9f426b

When you start one of the last songs from the Doors, and then scroll away and then click on the album image (left-bottom) of the current song, it start to go almost wrong. After the Doors (alphabetically) there are a number of songs which are not available anymore. Next songs are from Duffy. If you start a song of her and then scroll away and click on her album in the left-bottom again, it jumps to the Doors. So I think the songs which are no longer available are messing up the jump-to location. But please see for yourself, I might be wrong.

Best regards,
Jeroen

[Novy]

Hi @Joen7, 

Thanks for this info. 

Just to confirm, is this happening with all playlists or only this one? 

Were you able to test this using a different network?

Keep us posted.

[Joen7]

Hi Novy, it only happens with playlists which have 'greyed out' (unavailable) songs. It is not network related. After I removed all songs which were no longer available it worked fine again. The playlist I shared, still has the missing songs and therefor the issue.

Best regards,

Jeroen

[Novy]

Hi again @Joen7, 

Thanks for your reply. 

You should be able to find a toggle in the app's settings to show (or hide) unavailable songs in playlists. Could you make sure that it's turned off so that these songs don't appear in the playlist? 

Let us know if you notice any difference after this. 

We'll be on the lookout.

[sunnysammut]

I too have the 'Artist' header missing. I have Title, Album, Date added and Duration. See attached

[Jeremy]

Hi there @sunnysammut,

Thank you for your reply in this thread.

In this case we suggest that you perform a clean reinstall of the app. This will make sure there's no old cache files causing this.

If that doesn't do the trick, can you try to attach the screenshot again?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Take care!

[MattSuda]

Hey @Joen7 @sunnysammut 

Good news!

There is now a new Compact Mode for track lists (playlists and album pages) in the desktop app and Web Player

The drop down menu now has "Sort by" and "View as" options. To turn on compact mode, open up the drop down menu at the top right of a playlist or album page and click on "Compact" under "View as".

On Playlist pages, it removes the album art, and breaks out "Title" and "Artist" into their own separate columns again. This view is similar to before the redesign that added album art into playlists a few years ago.

On Album pages, it moves the artist and featured artists from below each track title, to a new "Artist" column to the right of the "Title" column.

When you turn on Compact Mode, it will be remembered and stay on when you are viewing both playlists and album pages. You can switch back to the regular "List" view at any time.

The new Compact Mode for track lists is rolling out in the desktop app and Web Player right now so you should be seeing it soon. This has been a highly requested feature since the redesign came out a few years ago.

[datsunlaurel]

YESSSS, thank you, thank you, thank you! 🙏 I found the Compact mode accidentally yesterday and couldn't believe my eyes. Everything is faster now, I can see more songs at one glance, and the artists are back where they belong - in their own column. You sure take long with some issues, but apparently it's worth to never give up hope. That's why, even though I may sound like a broken record, I'd like to repeat just about the only real issue that seriously bothers me, other than that the desktop app is really great now. 
The only thing you could still improve is to make the app remember where I last scrolled to in a playlist when I click on that playlist in the sidebar. Right now this only works when you use the back arrow, but very often this doesn't help much/is useless. I'm not losing hope you'll bring this back one day, because it used to work like this for years in the old iteration of the app.