The latest version of the iOS & Android Spotify apps provides users with much better organization of both their music and podcasts.
At the top of the screen, you now have Music and Podcasts tabs, so these are now kept completely separate …
Within Music, you then have three sub-tabs for Playlists, Artists, and Albums, with playlists as the default view.
- Playlists: All the playlists you’ve previously liked or made are here, plus a new one: Liked Songs. Every time you <3 a song it’s added to this playlist, and you can now quickly download all its content at once for offline listening. When you’re offline, we’ll also automatically sort your playlists to show you the ones you have downloaded and available.
- Artists: This section is just what it sounds like: a true representation of the artists you follow. To add an artist to this section, tap the “follow” button on the artist’s page.
- Albums: If you tap the heart icon on any album, you’ll find it’s saved to this section for quick listening in the future. To save all the songs to your Liked Songs playlist, tap the “…” menu and select “Like all songs.”
Podcasts are similarly much more sensibly organized.
- Episodes: The Episodes tab allows you to quickly find new episodes or resume podcasts you’re listening to, so picking up where you left off is a snap. And further down the list you’ll find newly released episodes of all the podcasts you follow. So, for example, the episode of The Rewind with Guy Raz that you paused yesterday will appear up top, followed by the new episode of Jemele Hill is Unbothered you’d been waiting for.
- Downloads: This tab serves as your repository for the podcast episodes you’ve downloaded—so you can listen even when you’re offline.
- Shows: The new Shows tab allows you to quickly manage the podcasts you follow and explore their past episodes. The higher up a podcast appears on your list in this section, the more recently a new episode became available.
Both iOS & Android Spotify apps should be silently updated over the next few days. I’m already seeing it here.
Spotify has been making major investments on the podcast side of late. It announced the acquisition of two major podcast companies back in February, Gimlet and Anchor, with a third one following a month later.
Spotify has filed an official complaint against Apple to antitrust regulators in Europe, alleging that Apple Music has an unfair advantage as it can use in-app billing without any commission. Spotify cannot do the same as Apple would take its cut. That complaint raises three potential risks for Apple: fines, loss of commissions, and reputational damage.
Apple hit back, and Spotify did the same, with the EU agreeing to launch an investigation. The next step will be a formal response by Apple to the EU.
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