What's the difference between "save" music and "add to playlist?"

[thekidbaski]

This new "save" feature seems redundant.  The only difference I can tell is that it alphabatizes the music I save.  Also, if I download an album to offline listening as a playlist it doesn't transfer over to my "saved" music.  Why not? 

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

Your Music (the save) and playlists are completely separate systems.

The Your Music system is there to allow people to build up a collection of their favorite content separate to playlists.

[thekidbaski]

Right, I understand they are separate systems, but there are no unique features between the two.  Why should I save an album as a playlist over saving it to "saved?"  There is seemingly no better reason to use one over the other.  

[Peter__]

Saving albums to Your Music is a bit neater, since you don't end up with loads of albums in your sidebar.

[minimejdh]

So there are playlists and your music.  What is the purpose of starred items?  I am new to Spotify.  How do you use each of these optimally?

[Peter__ · Accepted solution]

There is a little more information over on the help site about the features:
https://support.spotify.com/using_spotify/the_basics/what-is-your-music/

[BenjaminP]

Forgive my OCD moment here.  The biggest problem I had with the previous version of Spotify, was in fact, the lack of being able to sort by album or artist, like I could do in iTunes.  Because sometimes I just want to play all of one band.  Simple enough.  But to this point, I had to create Playlists for each and every band I wanted to have this way.

So now, you are saying it is worth going back and dragging my music out of the playlists--the ones specifically designed for this purpose--and put them into Saved Music, thereby reducing the looooong line of playlists I have?

P.S.  The link just above my post here goes to some page in french on my browser.  Not sure why.

[Peter__]

@BenjaminP - That is correct, you can now save albums into the Your Music system, which does give an overall neater collection. However, it is currently blighted if you have a lot of content due to it having a limit of 10,000 tracks in Your Music (which will hopefully be increased in the future).

As for the link, my apologies - the linked to page hasn't yet been translated into non-english languages so if you get directed to spotify.com/fr/ for example you get a blank page. That too has been reported to Spotify to be fixed. 😉

[roego]

Hi...Maybe the wrong place,but I would like to know what happens to my playlist if I do not renew my membership? Does it dissappear?

Can I actually download my playlist to my hard disc?

Thanks

[Peter__]

@roego - If your Premium subscription expires, any offline stored playlists you have will be removed so you can't listen offline, but the playlists themselves will remain on your account and you can continue to stream them on Spotify Free.

[BenjaminP]

Okay so clarify a couple more things for me.  

1)  Some songs have greyed out album names.  They seem to be ones pulled from my library.  May be all the tracks or just one or two of an album.  I cannot seem to drag them from their playlist or the Local Files folder.

So how is this supposed to work?

2)  Some albums (yes, the finally showed up) seem to be split.  I cannot see any difference in the meta data, yet there will be two of the same album shown in YOUR MUSIC with some songs in one and the rest in the other.  Baffling...

[Peter__]

Not sure what is going on with the splitting however I do that local files currently aren't supported in Your Music meaning you can't import any tracks that haven't been matched to the corresponding track in the Spotify catalogue, either due to not being able to match the metadata or if the content doesn't exist in the Spotify catalogue.

[DBell413]

So now a looong playlist becomes a looong Saved music? What was gained? Its still not clicking

[Peter__]

Your Music lets you save content separate to playlists, and you can also save albums directly.

[DBell413]

The mantra seems to be "you can save albums directly to the 'save' category"

But you can also do this with the playlists.

I guess the correct question should be, is there anything you can do in "save" or "playlists" that you cannot do in the other?

[nothinelse]

Are the Songs, Albums, and Artist sections of "My Music" all independent? If I click save on an album I can see it in the albums section but none of the tracks are in my songs section. Shouldn't they all sync together?

[nothinelse]

OK I logged into the web player and saw they were there so I restarted the spotify application and the songs were now in my songs list. However I have a huge list of songs that I dragged in from my playlist, yet none of the albums they come from are in my albums section, so still some issues syncing between the different views.....

It seems like when they are dragged in they don't register in the other sections compared to when the song/album is actually searched for and you click save.

[nothinelse]

Now all of my songs have disappeared from my "Songs" section EXCEPT the album I was testing. WTF?!?!??!

This whole new arrangement is completely broken. Typical of Spotify to implement something that doesn't even work properly (eg EQ in Android, offline cache disappearing randomly). Can't believe I'm giving you guys my money.

[Peter__]

Sounds like you are hitting this bug:
http://community.spotify.com/t5/Bugs/Desktop-Adding-Large-Number-of-Tracks-breaks-Your-Music/td-p/76...

Try restarting your client then adding Songs in smaller batches.

[soapy]

This 'save' thingy is exactly what I needed. Now I can see my collection of (classical) albums by cover - and not as a list in the sidebar. Much easier to choose. 

But can I organise them in folders (by composer or  genre)

I have a long, long list of playlists, filled with albums, organised in folders...wondering if I shall spend the time transferring it all to 'my albums' but I need folders!