Local files organized by album

[quentinp]

Plan Family Premium

Country

USA

Device

Windows 10 laptop, Samsung S7

My Question or Issue

I have searched for this, and it seems very basic, but I can't find an answer. I have added 10,000 mp3s to Local Files. This is bought and accumulated material over decades, some is totally obscure (old spoken word lectures etc). The music all appears as a totally useless list of 10,000 files in alphabetical order in Local Files.

If I go to "Albums" there is nothing there.

If I add tracks to a playlist they still don't appear in Albums or Artists.

How can I browse my Local Files in a way that makes sense? 

Many thanks indeed

Quentin

[AeroZ]

This is unfortunately the way Spotify handles local files. You see them as a list under Local Files menu and if you want to sync them to your mobile device you have to create playlists of those local files. For example a playlist per album. They don’t integrate with your artists nor albums sections.

[quentinp]

Un-fing-believable. So it's all about their choices, not mine. I'm gonna make 500 playlists for my albums? I don't think so. Bye bye Spotify. 

[pauloneves]

Spotify local files is a shameful hack. They could just add an "Album" column to it.

[pauloneves]

In the music app from Google, I could upload my own files and automatically have it available in all my devices. I'm seriously planning to return to it.

[Ver]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for posting here in the Community 🙂

Currently there is no option for the local files to appear under Albums or Artists in Your Library. We always strive to improve our app and the experience with it. We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and will make sure to pass it on to the right team.

You can also have a look in our Idea Exchange to see if someone else has already made a similar suggestion. If there isn't one, you can give these steps a go and submit your idea. That way other users can support it. Rest assured that the higher the number of votes an idea gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented.   

If you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We'll be happy to help.
 

[DraakjeYoblama]

I remember this was a thing at some point. Local songs would be sorted under artists along with their songs that are on spotify. The feature (or bug maybe) disappeared a few years ago.

[grahampen56]

OK, been trialling Spotify vs my current Amazon Prime. This is a killer. Prime just sorts the local library by everything....easy.

Won't be switching.

[Meh00]

Really wish Spotify would invest in local file support. But it goes against the machine, they don't make money helping you sort your music. YouTube and Prime actually enable artists to thrive.  

[mike-gallagher]

I too would really like this. Spotify doesn't have *all* of the world's music, so if I go purchase something or rip something, it would be really nice to be able to access it just like online stuff. Sure, put a little star on it or something to indicate it is local only, but being able to see this music outside of the "local files" playlist, or just search for it, would make it feel like Spotify gave any sort of a hoot about people who want to go beyond the library they curate. I get that this feature won't make Spotify money directly, but it might cause a small number of users to decamp. If I was trying to sell a product manager on developing this my pitch would be "listen, failing to support this feature means you have a cohort of users who *need* to use some other app, so they will be constantly tempted to just go use that app full time". 

[park3r__]

The fact this isnt a feature is insane, it feels like the bare minimum they could do to make this system not awful compared to competitors. Customers really should not have to use jump through janky hoops just  to use there own files because spotify is too lazy to improve their app.

[ds_]

Spotify on Windows displays Title, Album, and Duration for each track. Also has a dropdown so you can sort by Album, Title, Artist, etc.  I need this on my Android phone where I listen to 90% of my music.  All I see on my phone is the thousands of tracks listed alphabetically. It does play local FLAC files uncompressed.  Maybe they will update the Android app when they come out with Hi-Res someday.