Spotify: Reimagining playlist population

Designing a better way to add multiple songs to a playlist in Spotify’s mobile application

Spotify is a fine app to browse through and discover new music, but not so much when it comes to arranging our music library. One major feature in the app when it comes to our music library is ‘Playlists’. When going through the Spotify app, we discovered addition of songs to a playlist to be a huge problem.

Taking this as a design challenge, we aim to achieve two things –

1. Come up with a better way to add multiple songs to a playlist.
2. Understand iOS/Android mobile UI patterns well to do the same.

As we continue to learn and grow, understanding mobile UI patterns is very important to us. This article will also show how the UI patterns in different platforms influence the user’s experience.

The Why and What

Before we go any further, it is important to answer two questions –

1. Why is it important to add multiple songs to a playlist?
2. What is the problem in the current Spotify app when trying to do the same?

We create playlists to categorize our library in specific contexts — like a workout playlist or a party playlist and sometimes even by mood, artist or genre. Through our own use, and of course, after speaking with others, we have found that each of the aforementioned situations calls for adding a bunch of songs to a playlist. This is especially true when you have just created a new playlist — a new playlist is created with a group of songs in mind. You create a new playlist and add a few songs to it.

DEAD END: Trying to add songs to a newly created playlist sends the user to the browse screen

The other situation is what we call ‘the hunt’ for songs to add to a playlist. Such a use case is perfectly suited for a party playlist or a playlist you create before going on a run. We observed that there is no easy way to add songs to ‘a’ playlist when browsing through songs that are not part of your library. This also applies to the serendipitous discovery of more than one song which the user might want to add to a single playlist — this is a very common use-case for us every Monday when Spotify creates freshly tailored discover weekly playlist from an array of genres. The problem — how do we categorize these songs under a playlist of my choice at one go? Aw snap, there ain’t a way. Yet.

No easy way to add multiple songs when browsing through a song list outside music library

Patterns, Patterns, Patterns

We ideated. A lot. We came up with a plethora of ways to add multiple songs to a playlist. 3D touch, long press, drag & drop zones, swiping — the possibilities were limitless. We realized when we came up with something that required a new type of interaction or gesture, it broke existing patterns Spotify uses for their platforms. Now, is that bad? Probably not. But is that scalable? Probably not either. So we decided to stick to iOS and Android patterns, and with this, we had our design constraint.

Initial ideation phase

Access Points

From there on, we wanted to analyze what are the access points to a list of songs —

1. From a playlist view
2. From a list of existing songs a.k.a the never ending list

On ideating a bit, we realized that both the views are extremely similar and there could just be one pattern for both the access points.

iOS

Adding multiple songs to a playlist on iOS

Another nifty shortcut to adding songs from a saved list would be an option to provide quick access to the most recent playlist on clicking the ellipsis present on each song list.

Adding songs to a recently created playlist

Android

Android was tricky! The inconsistencies with apps following a gazillion patterns really confused us — which pattern makes most sense without breaking the existing flow too much?

We realized that the ellipsis on each song and long press performed the same action. We debated a bit and thought — what if we reduced the redundancy and make room for a widely used Android pattern with the long press.

Other pet peeves on Spotify

Spotify remains to be our favorite place for storing, listening and discovering music; we love it so much that sometimes we wonder how we managed music pre-Spotify. One more thing we wished existed on Spotify —

• A playlist of all offline-music — currently, we have to filter the song list or a playlist by Downloaded/Offline music. What if Spotify managed this for us? A place where I can find all my offline music?

Note: This is an unsolicited redesign; we do not work for Spotify.

Monthly Designs is a design blog written and curated by Adhithya & Shankar — HCI/d graduates from Indiana University. Follow Monthly Designs on Twitter to stay updated on future posts.

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