Spotify has announced a long-overdue visual revamp for its desktop app and web player, which takes a few cues from the mobile experience.
Rolling out today, Spotify says the new design makes both apps easier to use. The home page is much cleaner, while ensuring the sidebar is a little less busy. The experience brings the ability to filter your music or podcast library to find something that matches the mood.
Spotify is also bringing a revamped offline experience to the desktop app, for Premium subscribers, enabling them to save on a little bandwidth for regularly played tunes and pods. Also handy if you’re taking your laptop on the move.
The new redesign also promises a new playlist experience. Playlist creation is now easier with a new embedded search bar that makes it much, much easier to find. Previously users have had to find the songs and add them to the playlist individually. Now they can perform all of the actions from a unified screen.
It’ll also be possible to drag and drop tracks into existing playlists, upload custom images for the playlist and add more detailed descriptions. It’s a good way to build a playlist you can then enjoy on mobile.
Spotify adds: “Listeners will also be able to edit Queue and view Recently played via the desktop app, and apply new sorting options to “Your Library” via a new dropdown menu in the top-right corner, giving them more control for their next listening sessions.”
Spotify is also adding new keyboard shortcuts for Mac and PC users, which can be surfaced by pressing Control/Command + ?.
The music streaming pioneer admits the revamp was overdue. “We felt that our desktop app experience hadn’t kept up, and that it was time for a change,” the company said in the blog post today.
“Since the desktop experience served as the original window to the world for Spotify, this was not a task we took lightly,” the company added. “It took months of tests and research, talking to users, and gathering feedback. Now, we’re pleased to deliver a new, clean design, more controls, and a great new foundation for our listeners to use Spotify across our desktop app and web player for the years to come.”
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
