The Spotify Library
Nearly everyone uses a streaming service to play music nowadays, with the most popular being Spotify. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Spotify to listen and save music.
The company recently lifted its saved songs limit of 10,000 tracks, so you can now create a huge comprehensive library of all your favorite music. However, Spotify’s organization features can be quite confusing. Between artists, albums, playlists, folders, and liked tracks, it can be challenging to figure out exactly where to find that song you have on your mind.
Here are ways to streamline your Spotify library to make finding your favorite music easier.
Saving Songs and Albums
There are two ways of saving music to your library: saving songs and saving albums.
Saving songs simply means clicking the heart next to a track on Spotify Desktop and Web, or long-pressing a song and liking it on mobile.
This song will be added to your library and will appear on the “Liked Songs” playlist, a default playlist that includes every track you’ve added a heart to. Like any playlist, you can set Liked Songs to download any new songs that are added automatically.
The second way to add music is by saving an album. To do this, go to an album page on Spotify, and click the heart button next to the album name. This will save the entire album, which can be accessed in the “Albums” tab on Spotify.
This method will not add all the songs from the album to your Liked Songs. However, you can still like your favorite individual tracks to add them to the automatic playlist.
Following Artists
After you’ve saved several tracks and albums, you should then follow artists behind these songs. To find artists you should follow, you can either search for them or use one of the suggestions that appear on the “Artists” tab on the mobile app. You can also right-click or long-press any song or album in your library, and select “Go to Artist.”
When you’re on the artist’s page, select the “Follow” button below their name, and this button should change to “Following.” This will add the artist to your “Artists” tab on Spotify. Clicking on their name will show every song and album you have saved from that artist. If you’re subscribed to Spotify Premium, you will also be able to download all the songs you have saved from any given artist.
Making Playlists and Folders
The last way of organizing your music is by making good use of playlists and folders. Between your playlists and other peoples’ playlists that you follow, there’s a good chance you tens or even hundreds of music lists cluttering up your account.
To keep them all organized, make good use of folders. To create a folder, right-click on your Playlist collection on the left-hand menu, then select “Create Folder.”
Folders allow you to sort your playlists by genre, mood, era, or purpose. For example, a “Work Music” folder might have anything ranging from classical music to ambient noise. While you can only create folders on Spotify for Desktop, they can still be viewed on the mobile app. You can also create playlists within folders on your phone.
You can also use several sorting options for playlists. By default, it’s set to “Custom Order,” which is the order you have them sorted on Desktop. You can also sort them alphabetically or by recency.
If you’re using Spotify Desktop, you can also play music from the entire folder by selecting it. If you have a Rock folder with different playlists from various subgenres of rock, clicking “Play” on the folder shuffles all of the songs from all the playlist.
Good Organization Habits
Our final tip is to use special playlists. If you frequently listen to new songs and new artists but don’t have the time to keep your library organized constantly, it’s good practice to save them into a “Rotating Playlist.” Whenever you discover a new song, add it to this temporary list. Then you can decide later which of your actual playlists they’ll go into.
After you’ve liked the song, artist, or album, and added it to your playlists, delete it from the rotation. This way, you don’t miss out on any underrated gems that you might forget.
RELATED: How to Discover New Music on Spotify
