- Spotify has launched its new organization tool, Smart Filters, which can be found in Your Library
- This new function sorts your saved music by activity, mood, or genre, allowing you to explore specific areas of Your Library
- It’s started rolling out to Premium users, but doesn’t filter individual songs just yet
Spotify’s infamously cluttered interface is getting some long-overdue TLC thanks to the music streaming service’s new filtering tools. Smart Filters bring some order to your saved artists and playlists while allowing you to explore Your Library on a deeper level.
The new Smart Filters features, which Spotify announced via a blog post, are designed to make sorting your library of saved music a smoother and more personal experience. Divided into three broad categories, Activities, Moods, and Genres, each one will present their own range of sub-filters – an easier way to narrow down the content in Your Library when searching for a specific vibe.
For example, your Activities category shows presets such as ‘Running’, ‘Party’, and even ‘Crying’ – because we all need to let it out at times. In recent years Spotify has really pushed its focus on ‘mood’ listening, and it’s no different with Smart Filters. You can select from its ‘Relaxing’, ‘Melancholy’, and ‘Happy Dance’ presets, as well as genre subcategories from ‘Indie Pop’, to ‘Female Soul’ and decade-specific filters.
Smart Filters have started rolling out to Premium users and will be available in the coming weeks in select markets including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa. Once you have access, Smart Filters are very easy to find:
- Go to Your Library in the Spotify app, and you’ll see the new Smart Filter icon in the top left under your profile image.
- When you tap the icon, a pop-up will appear displaying the three categories (Activities, Moods, Genres) and their sub-filters.
- Select a sub-filter, and Your Library will reshuffle to match your selection.
In a pre-Smart Filters world, Spotify’s library section has been one cluttered mess, displaying your Liked Songs and recently played albums, artists, and playlists all in one chaotic jungle of music.
While filters have been integral to Your Library for some time, Smart Filters allow you to dive further into your saved music and make them easier to navigate. So far, Smart Filters have been positively received by users, myself included, but there’s one setback that’s shadowing my view of the new feature.
If only it included my saved songs
At first glance, Smart Filters do a splendid job of grouping my saved artists and albums into subcategories.
When I select the ‘Barbecue’ filter under ‘Activities’, it generates an extensive list of artists it thinks would be a perfect fit for such an event, and it will even give you an ‘Albums’ filter if it finds any related ones lying around in Your Library. With that said, it would be even smarter if this included tracks saved in my Liked Songs, or individual songs from albums I’ve saved.
More often than not, I rely on a queue of individual songs rather than the playback of a specific artist to bring the energy to a particular social gathering or solo activity. The option to filter songs would also make the responsibility of adding songs to a Jam queue much less daunting.
However, Smart Filters are still in their infancy, so I’m not shutting them out just yet. Besides, I can already see a lot of potential when it comes to building on my own playlists as well as making fresh ones. For example, enabling the ‘Dinner Party’ preset under Activities presents a narrowed-down list of saved artists, which would be a lot easier than scouring through other places in the app – though I do still quite enjoy doing this.
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rowan.davies@futurenet.com (Rowan Davies)
