[Desktop][Your Library] Bring Back Separate Song Title and Artist

[Frostman233]

Not sure who thought it was a great idea to reformat how one can view songs by artist or by title...? It is much more convenient to have the two, side by side, while viewing a library rather than only being able to view the artist name or song name under the other...

[aliasq]

I just noticed that Song title and artist in playslists are now in same column in desktop version. It is much easier to get an overview when the columns are separated from each other like it was recently, one column for song title, one for artist. Please reconsider this change in interface. 

[Luan]

Updated on 2023-09-28

Thank you for sharing your feedback with the Spotify Ideas Exchange.

Your suggestion has been marked as a New Suggestion and will be reviewed by the Spotify staff once it receives enough votes. We appreciate your contribution and look forward to your continued support of this idea!

For more details about how the Ideas Exchange works, please refer to here.

[zachfjones1]

Agree with everything said above.

Since they're ignoring us anyway, I'll go off topic to say that aside from lost functionality, the layout of "Home" in the new desktop interface is nothing but suggested content - made for you, more of what you like, TGIF, and so on. Your own library is hidden behind a hot key (alt-shift-4).

Hard to believe there's a large market segment of users who prefer "served" content to saved content. The more likely explanation is that Spotify generates revenue from artists and curators pay for higher placement (similar to how Google maps and Google shopping are actually advertising platforms where results depend on who pays up, and not the user's search query. But those platforms are free, we pay for this.

[MattSuda]

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.

[MattSuda]

Hey @aliasq 

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.

[Jendon]

This is great! Thank you for the update, Matt.

I mean, it would be nice if the columns could be manually resized, and if we could have the option to see all columns even if the window isn't fullscreen, but I'll take what we can get for the time being. 🙂

[Yordan]

Updated on 2023-11-14

Hey folks,

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Idea Exchange and voting to make this happen.

We're happy to announce that a Compact mode which hides the album art and displays the song's title and artist under two separate columns in playlists and albums is now available on the desktop app and the Web Player! Check out @MattSuda's post here for a detailed overview.

Once again, thanks for helping us make Spotify better by participating here on the Community 💚

[tinyjams]

This is a horrible workaround. Why can we not make this the default option for all playlists? I have to manually select this on each and every one? Does the custom order remain intact when compact is selected? It hasn't rolled out to me yet.

[tinyjams]

Edit to above: Misread the post regarding playlist order. However I still think this is a weak solution.

[MattSuda]

@tinyjams 

When you turn on Compact Mode, it will be remembered and stay on when you are viewing both playlists and album pages. It should be shown that way for all playlists once you change the view mode. It will be your new default view when viewing all playlists. You can switch back to the regular "List" view at any time.

The playlist view mode can be set separately from the playlist sort order. Your playlist sort order is remembered in each playlist separately, the same as it was before this update.