After at least a month of testing, Spotify is rolling out an updated library look for its premium users that will separate podcasts and music more clearly. It’s also introducing some new functionality for podcasts and music. Currently, the layout for a premium users’ library is tricky to navigate, with all your media — playlists, songs, albums, artists, podcasts, and videos — crammed together at the top. This new design, while not necessarily a monumental change to how people listen on the audio platform, makes the experience slightly more pleasant, especially considering that people haven’t loved Spotify’s podcast treatment.
Podcasts on Spotify are currently only organized by shows that users follow, unplayed shows, and downloaded shows, which is to say it’s chaotic. In the new design, the podcast category will be broken up into three sections: episodes, downloads, and shows. The episodes tab will list new episodes or allow people to resume episodes they’ve already started. It will also list newly released episodes of the podcasts people follow. The downloads tab is where downloaded podcasts will live, meaning the ones that can be accessed offline. The shows tab lets people find podcasts they follow and explore past episodes. Shows that populate higher up in the tab are those with episodes released most recently.
The new music section will offer playlists, artists, and albums, as people are used to now. The biggest change will be that liked songs will all be added to a new Liked Songs playlist, and that playlist can be downloaded for offline listening with one tap.
The Verge published screenshots of this test last month, so we knew it was coming. Spotify has had a ton of news this spring, particularly as it relates to podcasts. The team launched its first playlist with incorporated podcasts; launched a web app for creating shows; built its first hardware product to learn about audio consumption in the car; and inked a deal with the Obamas’ production company for exclusive shows. It’s been a big season, and Spotify is only recently getting serious about its podcast business. I’m sure there’s more to come.