How to organize your Spotify Liked Songs by genre and mood
Updated
Spotify gives you a few ways to sort Liked Songs, but none of them let you organize songs into your own categories. Here’s what each option does, where it runs out, and how to get a library you can browse by genre, mood or moment.
What Spotify can do
- Genre and mood filters. In the phone app, in some countries, Liked Songs shows filters such as Pop, Indie or Chill once you’ve saved enough songs. Spotify picks the labels from what it knows about each song and artist, so they can be off, and you can’t add or rename them.
- Sorting. You can sort Liked Songs by title, artist, album or when you added them.
- Playlists and folders. Copy songs into playlists like “Indie” or “Gym”, and group playlists into folders.
Where that runs out
- Songs fit more than one box. A song can be indie, sad and great for driving. With playlists you add it three times and keep all three up to date by hand.
- You can’t combine them. There’s no way to ask for songs that are both chill and acoustic.
- The labels aren’t yours. Spotify’s “Chill” might not be your chill, and it has no idea which songs are for your Sunday mornings.
Organize Liked Songs with your own tags
Tags fix all three: give each song as many labels as fit, in your own words, and combine them whenever you like.
- Pick three or four kinds of tag. Genre, Mood, Moment (gym, focus, late night) and Energy cover most libraries.
- Keep each kind short. Five to ten moods you’ll actually use beat fifty you won’t remember.
- Tag as you listen. Tag whatever’s playing when it fits, a few songs at a time, instead of sorting everything in one evening.
- Combine them. Look for songs tagged chill and rainy day, or everything for the gym with high energy.
Where to do it
- On Community, in your browser. Tag songs from any device, click a tag to see everything you put it on, and search for music with several tags at once. Free, nothing to install. Website tags are public, and you add songs one at a time.
- With Tagify in Spotify desktop. Tag your whole Liked Songs right inside Spotify, filter it by any mix of tags, and turn a filter into a smart playlist that adds new matches by itself. Smart playlists are normal Spotify playlists, so they play on your phone. Get Tagify.
Need ideas? The tags people use most right now
See what people put them on, and borrow any that fit your library.
Want the step-by-step for tagging on Spotify? Read how to tag songs on Spotify.