Spotify has officially announced a redesign for its desktop app that aims to provide easier access to details about the song or podcast you’re currently listening to, as well as give you new ways to organize your playlists and other content. According to a blog post published yesterday the changes – which Spotify calls “one of the biggest innovations yet” – are rolling out to “all desktop users worldwide” starting this week.
The biggest change you’re likely to notice after the update is the Your Library sidebar on the left side of the screen. Instead of displaying a simple text list of playlists, the interface now features colorful icons. It also shows recently played artists and albums to jump back to quickly, in addition to playlists. You can minimize the sidebar to see just these icons, or expand it to see the name of each item and even extra details like the last time they were played. Or, if you just want to see text without the icons, go to the Spotify settings and check the “Use compact library layout” option.
You can filter your library sidebar to only show lists of artists, albums or playlists using the icons at the top, and there’s a search box to search specifically your own library, rather than having to search all of Spotify with the main search tool. Users have signed up seeing a similar interface popping up for a few weeks now, and Spotify seems like a earlier rollout of the feature in April.
Meanwhile, Spotify adds a Now Playing view to the right side of the screen that shows the currently playing song or podcast alongside additional information. This could be tour dates or merchandise for music artists, or podcast transcripts or episode descriptions. On the right side of the interface, Spotify used to show what your friends are listening to, but this is now hidden behind the friends icon at the top right of the screen.
The official launch of the new interface comes as Spotify is reportedly working on a much more substantial update to its service. This week, Bloomberg reported that the audio streaming service is preparing to launch a new, more premium tier that could finally add support for the long-awaited lossless HiFi streaming feature.
