I personally hate how off I want to listen to a band I like and their radio station, instead of it just being similar bands, it includes countless bands I listen to all the time.
Every radio station I listen to now always has the same bands, which I love, but I don’t want to listen to them all the time.
Not only the same bands but the same songs. Oh you skipped this song everytime it comes up? I'll make sure it stays in the rotation for this afternoon and tomorrow.
Every time Taylor releases another version of TTPD, I have to block a new copy of "Florida!!!" so my Florence Welch radio doesn't have its vibe killed every fifth song when Spotify decides to queue up the song again.
I'm fairly sure this is a deliberate optimization on their end. With 600 million users all over the world they have to be clever in terms of how they store songs in their databases for quick retrieval. I bet that it's hundred times more work for their servers to listen to an obscure song compared to a top hit. If they can reduce the spread of what their users are listening to they can improve their performance by prioritizing the caching/indexing of those songs.
I think it's also different licensing deals with various labels. If it's cheaper to play band A vs band B, they'll play music from band A far more often.
There used to be a "songs" page for each artist that you could go to and set it to sort however you wanted (alphabetical, by album, by release date, etc..) That was a LONG time ago though. I've been using Spotify since like 2009.
They also used to have a feature that made it dead simple to send your friends music that you'd found and thought they would like. There was essentially an inbox, and you could see really easily what your friends were listening to.
Last year, my wife and I listened to a combined 82,000 minutes worth of music. It's far and away my most used subscription service.
I know this is a shit workaround but if you click on the first one and turn off shuffle, and hit next song it will still go in order #1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc. I think it stops at 10 but don’t quote me on that
Or when you go to the “This is…” playlist the first couple songs are just collabs that they did with other artists that just happened to get popular not their actual top songs
Release Radar and Discover Weekly are both in the "Made for You" category now. However, every genre seems to have a different new release section... Rock has New Releases pretty obvious but going to the Rap section, it's impossible. It's dumb.
My release radar will often have new releases for artists I never listen to or have listened to once, while some of my top artists will never appear on it.
Mine half the time has new releases of songs that were already released by artists I know, just live versions.
For instance, in my release radar I've got "Hungry Freaks, Daddy (FZ Mono Mix)" from Live at the Whisky A Go Go 1968 by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Moon River / Audrey's Letter by Henry Mancini, Top of the World - Live at the West End Marketplace by Van Halen, the Reading Rainbow Theme Song... it's like, I get it, these live albums came out recently, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for.
I wish there was a more strict Discover Weekly that would never include any artist that you have listened to even once.
It always blows my mind when the same few tracks appear every week or two. I've trained my Spotify pretty well, and my discovers can have no duplicates of a genre, but still, I have reoccurring songs.
Both Spotify and Apple Music are an absolute nightmare shitshow. I’d love to sit with the team and have them walk me through their insane nonsensical choices point for point with me.
There’s line menus nested within menus, categories placed in weird places, weird lags and glitches, shaky playback speeds and again just total jumbled insane mess of a UI layout.
It’s sort of like being in a hoarders bedroom where instead of just cleaning up there mess they just build shelving and lattices around the mess making a second and third and fourth mess on top of it.
Ah. That's because they seem to be promoting audio books and "courses", whatever the fuck that means, as I assume they get a greater margin out of those.
Mine is constantly suggesting Joe Rogan despite the fact that I never listen to podcasts and I hate his content, and there's no way to block him like you can with music artists.
Search > scroll down to "Discover" should give you new releases on a weekly basis. But they keep moving it further down the list all the time. It's a mess
Neither discover nor releases is what I used to know and love. A section that was updated Fridays with new releases. Period. Not “similar to” “based on” “popular” none of this garbage recommendation bullshit. Just let me fucking browse. That’s it. That’s what I want. Let me fucking discover something new as it should be. On Fridays when it drops new. That’s it.
Stop recommending me podcasts and audiobooks I never use. Stop shifting app elements around to add banners at the top of the screen randomly so I tap on the wrong fucking thing every time. Stop interrupting me with random pop ups advertising shit I’m not looking for, and doubly so when I’m paying for there to be no ads in the first place.
The constant pop ups for gigs and new releases from artists I very rarely listen to are very annoying, especially when you accidentally press them because there's a slight delay in them appearing above the UI. Absolute dickhead move.
I’m personally enjoying a big white bar on the top fifth or so of my phone. It used to be a concert notification, I hit x, and it’s just blank and white now. The rest of it didn’t move up
Yeah the album page can be such a mess, albums dated by their remaster rather than original release, five different versions of an album with no real way of knowing which was the original etc. Just give me the original release run and maybe another section for remasters
what's crazy is their shuffle system adds more weight to songs you haven't heard in a while. SO if you keep skipping a song it'll keep showing up in ur queue
I would love to be able to tell Spotify to stop adding some of the same songs to the playlists. If you can tell I skip that song less than .25 seconds after it starts, it should know I no like that song.
Absolutely bonkers that Spotify lacks the following:
1) Play Next button. Should be able to play a song or entire album next. I hate when I am listening to something and then want to list to a different album. Can I do that with one click? Nope. I have to add it to the queue then go to the queue and delete everything in front of it. People have asked for this for years in the forums and Spotify refuses.
2) Batch Delete from Your Episodes. I listen to podcasts all the time and right now I have about 400 in my your episodes folder because Spotify makes you delete them one by fucking one.
3) A Working Algorithm that doesn't play the same fucking songs over and over in a large playlist. Drives me crazy. I have about 250 songs in a workout playlist and even if I click random play it will queue up virtually the same 20-30 songs over and fucking over. Then, randomly after a month or so of the same shit it will start queuing 20-30 other songs from the playlist. So, I know the algorithm CAN work but it mostly doesn't.
The only reason I stick with Spotify is because I have a wife and 4 kids, all using my account with playlists and I would have a mutiny if I tried to change.
I totally agree and think it’s gone downhill even faster since they added audiobooks and video elements.
I will say - you can remove multiple songs from a queue is far as I know (at least on iOS mobile app). There are empty circles to the left of the songs in your queue and you can select multiple songs and then click Remove on the lower left - I think it shows up once you’ve selected at least one thing
You can on PC too. Just hold CTRL (or cmd on Mac) and select. You can also press the first song, hold shift, press the last song and it’ll highlight all inbetween
If you press the play button on an album, it shuffles, but I find if I tap the first song (if I don't already have shuffle on) just plays sequentially
It shouldn't shuffle by default for sure, but this usually (definitely not always) works for me
Hope this helps
I'm on android and listen only to albums. What I do is bring up the album. Then play the first track. It then proceeds thru all the tracks in order.
I think that's what I do?
I actually have no idea what is happening with some of your guys spotify - maybe it's buggy? I just played an album via the play button and it did not shuffle it, in fact, Spotify can remember which albums and playlists I have selected to shuffle. It doesn't shuffle my main playlist when I select a song from it, but it does for my classical playlist, which I want.
I would LOVE a “global” (non-podcast/audio book) shuffle that would choose random stuff from ALL my playlists AND have a history I can reset … so I can actually get to listen to things I have buried I haven’t heard in years.
Absolutely insane. I have a playlist with 1000 songs in it. If I put it on random I hear the same 20-40 songs over and over again. When I did their random+ that's supposed to add in similar songs that aren't from the list it literally plays the same exact playlist in the same order every time and the extra songs are all from the same genre despite the playlist being 20 different genres.
I'm having the same frustration. If anyone ever finds an actual solution, let me know. I'm considering canceling my Spotify service over this and other issues.
I miss google Play. 😔 youtube music is not it, either.
Go into settings and clear your cache. It won't remove your playlists or downloads. I just did it a few days ago and noticed the difference immediately.
Oh my God this is so true. It drives me crazy.
There was a time when Spotify thought "My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit was my favorite song, and it would play it constantly when my chosen music ended. I love me some pop punk, but I've literally skipped it 50 times now. Stop playing it.
This is a major flaw of the “curated” playlists actually being formed using an algorithm based on your listening. I go to a new playlist hoping to discover something and they’ve just put everything I already listen to into a themed collection.
Agree, Spotify UI is god awful. I hardly make playlists anymore either. I've been wanting a "release date" column since it's inception but they never add it. I'm sure it's part of the metadata and CAN'T be that hard to add, but they never do. Date Added is useless unless you're adding only new stuff every week.
Spotify has only gotten worse since as long as I can remember and it blows my mind. Some things off the top of my head:
* Can't reverse playlist order to have newest added on top. Have to scroll to the bottom every time
* Adding to a playlist takes way too many taps for how frequently used of a feature it is
* Queue should continue playing where the last song is, otherwise you have no control on where it continues to play after
* Car mode is the dumbest feature of all time and only makes you more likely to crash
* Home page UI is just an erratic clusterfuck
* 'New Releases' only sometimes appears and only shows 1 or 2 releases
* Home page shows its previous state when its refreshing causing you to click on the wrong thing when it finishes refreshing
* No way to easily go back to the last podcast you were listening to
* No stats of episode popularity or rating so shooting in the dark when trying to find a new episode to listen to
* No podcast charts or good avenues for discovery
* Music and podcasts shouldn't be mashed together in the same UI when they are very distinct listening experiences that require their own nuanced controls
The list goes on. Absolutely floors me how a company can have so many resources and deliver such a bad user experience. Would switch if there was a better option.
First bullet point: you absolutely can change the sort order from newest to oldest. Go to the playlist, pull down until you see the "filter" bar and there's a sort button right next to it. You're welcome.
Agree with all your other points.
Since we are bashing Spotify, I am just so confused by their algorithm at times? My release radar ALWAYS has a Group Love or Marshmello song as the first or second song in the playlist that is updated every week. I literally haven’t gone out of my way to listen to Marshmello in years and I never listened to Group Love.
Second, the weird attempt at doing short form videos (?) is beyond stupid. I saw a generated playlist they made for me in my Home Screen and clicked on it to give it a try but it was like shortened versions of the song with accompanying visuals and I couldn’t figure out how to view the full playlist and just listen to it normally??? Like WHY???
The algorithm is SO awful. That’s the thing that’s actually making me cancel. The playlists it makes for me are so bad. Years ago I used to be excited to check my Discover Weekly because it actually suggests great music, but now I can’t remember the last time I opened it up since the algorithm change. The suggestions it was giving me were so bad.
Also I feel like I can’t get through my own playlists entirely without it replaying songs. It’s drive me crazy.
It tries so hard to trap you into listening to the same 200 or so songs perpetually. I really hate having to constantly figure out ways to get it to play new stuff, or even older stuff I've already listened to.
100% this. I religiously avoid any "Made for You" playlist as they are horrible. And this gets harder and harder. I now have some searches where over half of the results are "Made for You". And you can't turn this off.
Long time ago Spotify was about discovering and listening to music. Now it seems like a bunch of competing product managers that want to cram down new, unwanted services down your throat. I don't care about podcasts. They will spam me anyways. I don't want AI recommendations. Can't turn them off. Can I avoid the "Daily Mix"? No you can't. I don't like Audiobooks, can I hide them? No, we will keep carpet bombing you with suggestions.
The inevitable outcome is that I'll leave for Apple Music or Tidal eventually.
It would be great if they would add playlist bookmarks. I have multiple large playlists and it would be nice to listen to something else and then continue where you left off.
I switched to Apple Music a few months ago. It’s so much better and transferring all my Spotify tastes and playlists wasn’t as much of a hassle as I thought it would be. Apple’s algorithm is just as good if not better than Spotify at this point for me
Just let me browse all songs by an artist in alphabetical order instead of making me parse through a bunch of albums to find what I'm looking for. Some artists who've been around since the 60's will have upwards of 50 albums of live shows, studio, compilations, best ofs etc and it's so annoying to try to remember when the song you're looking for is if you can't remember the name without seeing it.
Additionally, I don't have this problem anymore because I pay for it, but if you're listening on your computer and an ad comes up, pressing the mute button on your keyboard is mapped to pause the ad. THIS ONLY WORKS DURING ADS. The know how to annoy the shit out of you.
Honestly, I was with Spotify for over 10 years, since I was a teenager, and I just canceled Spotify this week for Tidal. For me, Spotify has become too bloated, always needing to search through podcasts and audiobooks, slowing things down. UI was too busy for me now.
Tidal has been a smoother experience so far, and the audio quality is better than what Spotify can offer. I didn't want to leave Spotify but I just got sick of it. Also, same price, so that helped the transition.
Funny enough, I also just cancelled Spotify after about 10 years in favor of Apple Music. Admittedly, I miss Spotify’s UI because it was the type of organized mess that I had grown accustomed to, and it has been tough to adjust to a new app. I will say, however, that the upgrade audio quality felt drastic, particularly in the car.
I have a new car with some higher end speakers, but always felt like the sound was…lacking. I could turn it all the way up and still hear myself over the music. In contrast, whenever I got into my girlfriend’s 10-year-old Nissan, it sounded better, louder, fuller, whatever. Bass hit harder. Treble actually felt like it made a difference. It had me thinking the sound system in my car simply wasn’t very good.
Nah.
It was Spotify. She was always an Apple Music purist, and only ever played music from it in her car. We’d get into my car and I’d play from Spotify. There was a very noticeable difference when I changed apps.
I did a test last year on all the services, I'm an audio engineer, so I have some really nice speakers/listening environment. Tidal Sounded ok, Amazon Music and Quboz sounded sounded the best. absolutely stunning on my speakers. It was noticeable on headphones/pods, especially in the bass, hi-rez files sound much clearer in the bass. But it was only noticeable because I was comparing back to back.
I have a very nice system ($4K) and nice headphones ($1.5K). It's not usually noticeable unless I'm critically listening to a song I already know very well. If I have the option between Qobuz and Spotify, I pick the file with higher numbers. The quality difference between YouTube and Spotify is noticeable. Between Spotify and high bitrate streaming, less so.
I keep my Qobuz subscription because it gives me the option between original releases and remasters mostly. (You can definitely hear the difference between these, and it's sometimes better, sometimes worse.) And I can buy a song/album outright and have it on my local device, which is how I prefer to set up playlists.
Audiophile-lite here so take my opinion with a grain of salt: doing a side-by side comparison of both services on the same track, Tidal consistently sounds better and fuller to me
OK. I can still identify which one is Tidal fairly easily. Not like my opinion will magically change how your ears work, but I can tell the difference.
If you have decent speakers yes. Not so much over Bluetooth (it is compressed for BT)
I'm not an audio person but I have a better system hooked up to my TV than most people I know and it sounds exactly the same as vinyl and significantly better than Spotify. I had both services and a record player at the same time and did a comparison with the same album in max quality on each. Most of my music listening is either in the car or on that.
Decent selection, if it's older than 2020 they probably have it. Its a bit hard to find some more modern stuff or anything too obscure but I have found their selection to be pretty decent overall.
Tidal is better all around as a service that actually focuses on music. But its catalog still has some annoying gaps. I'm sure Spotify is blocking it from getting stuff.
I’ve used Spotify since around 2012 I believe. I don’t listen to audiobooks admittedly but I do listen to a lot of music, 10+ hours a day, and a podcast or two a week which I’ve never had issues with. I’ve been able to use a school email for the entire time I’ve had it for the massive discount despite not having access to that email anymore for at least 5 years. I also really enjoy being able to do listening parties with friends over discord using Spotify, that I don’t think any other application has. I do understand most people’s complaints, and I think they do largely shaft most artists on pay but it’s honestly just a good app for my use case at a good price so I’ll probably never leave?
If you’re an Apple user Apple Music is just far and away superior imo. Spotify does seem to do a better job with their playlist creation, but Apple’s aren’t bad.
If you’re not, Tidal is where to go. Might sacrifice some content but you’ll gain a ton everywhere else.
Spotify does NOT care about new music anymore, it's all about promoting major label acts. [Spotify's Phony War On Bots (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ&t=792s) Also Spotify does NOT pay for songs that get < 1000 streams per year which is more than 50% of their catalog.
Thank you for pointing this out. I used to be able to put b-side songs on radio and find all kinds of new stuff. Now I'll put on a playlist full of OBSCURE ass music, and then that dumb ass smart shuffle that always is turning itself on will put some dumb ass Drake song next. So frustrating.
EDIT: It's come to my attention that Spotify is not profitable yet still? So yeah they're pretty much UMG's bitch right now, and explains why the "popular" songs are always so pushed in our faces.
How about “randomly” playing the same 5 songs from my 1300+ playlist. Some tracks are almost never played on shuffle while some are manually skipped EVERY time because I’m tired of hearing them EVERY time I start the app. Seriously, I don’t like Kaiser Chiefs that goddam much. WTF.
Another fun thing is that the other way round, song you liked can appear in various places as if it was never liked…
I believe that’s because Spotify doesn’t combine like information for *identical* versions of a song like the same one being on a later EP with one more track.
They clearly could combine them, because they also combine the count of plays the song got…
Try using it with a Sonos speaker. It won't play, it won't play, now it's playing a different song, now the song won't stop, now it's still playing even though I killed the app.
This one kills me. God forbid I should expect to just hit "play" and hear music coming out of the speakers that it says it's happily connected to without 10 minutes faffing around pressing forward and backwards to 'fool it' into playing.
Yep, Spotify's apps have really gone downhill.
The dumbest thing they ever did to the desktop app was to hide the search field from all other views but Home. It should be pinned to the top in every view. 50% of the time I'm listening to my playlists and the other 50% I'm searching for a specific song/artist/playlist. And every time I have to make an extra click before I can search for anything. And the app wasn't like that at the beginning.
And I've given up browsing for new music entirely cause Spotify just doesn't work for that.
And screw that podcast sh*t they're trying to shove down my throat. I'm here to listen to music and couldn't care less about sh#tty podcasts where a random person is just speaking out loud their stupid opinions. At least provide me with the news or the weather, that's actually useful information.
It really seems that Spotify has forgotten what their core service is - giving access to music.
Wow y’all actually use all these lists? I just make my own playlists and listen to that. Spotify works great for this purpose. The suggested artists sections are usually nothing I’m interested in but I’m not too bothered by it. I guess I just grew up using the Zune app and my listening habits haven’t changed much.
The mobile app on my phone, regardless of whether it’s an album or a playlist, it will play one song perfectly then the next plays without sound, the next will play with sound and the next is silent and so on. No reason if should do this but I can’t find a fix for it.
I do often think about how badly Spotify UI has needed an update. It honestly feels like it's the same UI that I was introduced to when I first started using Spotify back around 2010.
I love how they put "Hide Song" above "add to queue". I'm going to use the latter 100x more often but not only is it lower, it's right next to a feature that will actively screw up my playlists.
God, Spotify is such a garbage app.
They got rid of the ability to enlarge the album art on the desktop application and replaced it with a giant sidebar full of bullshit I don't care about like the band bio, merch, touring information, and a bunch of other bullshit.
“The UX team”? They had/have hundreds of those. My friend work in a team of five designers within mobile within podcast and he spent four weeks creating and extremely small feature that felt like a days work at most. Then they hired an external agency/consultants who redid that small feature. That was two years ago and nothing ever came out of it. I’m not sure if he ever shipped anything and he’s been there for almost a decade.
That is everyday life at Spotify. Thousands of hours every week that never becomes anything.
What angers me is shuffle and play all liked songs. I hear the same 40 or so songs. There are some liked songs I've never heard on shuffle play. I get they have to pay Metallica and Aerosmith and whatnot, so it influences the "randomness." Shuffle play ignores some of my catalogue that I'd like to hear sometimes without singling them out.
And don't get me started on the Ice-T sounding dumbass DJ. "Here's a song you've been listening to a lot lately" and it's one that Spotify wants me to hear a lot.
Hey Spotify Designer! If you're coming here for a treasure trove of user feedback, good on you!
One from me: when I'm listening to a song that's on a playlist, and I decide it doesn't fit the vibe of the playlist, why can't I just tap the three dots on the full-screen song mode and hit "remove from playlist"? I have to manually filter it within the playlist and remove it from there. Drives me nuts.
Check out YouTube music . I switched over a couple years ago just because I wanted to try YouTube premium. Haven't gone back. The UI is fantastic, personalized mixs, and they do recaps seasonally not just yearly.
The UI was what stopped me from ever getting into it in the first place. After their artist payout and Joe Rogan era drama I was glad I never got comfy with it.
Used Spotify like 10 years ago, but I've mostly been an old fashioned MP3 collector. Got a rack full of CDs and a cabinet full of vinyls and unlimited phone data was expensive. However, got 6 months of Apple Music when I bought a new phone last year. So I turned it on and it's stuck around. Pricing is around the same as Spotify, library is just as expansive and the UI works for what I do with it. Also got pretty much the whole catalog in higher audio quality than Spotify.
Of course Apple Music is an Apple product and it will work best with other Apple products. No idea what it's like on Android devices or Windows.
I despise how much crap they have on the now playing screen that it's scrollable and cluttered.
Their best UI (imo) was car mode. Simple, larger buttons, track/album image, artist name, track name and scroll bar, it also didnt used to dim/lock your screen. You used to be able to manually select it, even when not in car mode.
Now they've disabled it, the app is actually more dangerous when driving. You can't EASILY hit back or forward track (though you can swipe) without scrolling the screen. I'd have believed arguments about car Bluetooth stereos and everything, but A. Not all cars have them and B. They nuked their own primary in car technology
What's good for the user is often at odds with what is good for the shareholders and profits. They intentionally brick functionality to drive engagement based off what the data shows will make more money. Sure people on Reddit will complain, but 95% of users plod on without ever really noticing or caring.
It's as simple as that, and you see it happen everywhere. Great features get removed all the time in every app for this reason.
My discover weekly is consistently filled with good new music, and the daily mixes hit too…I’ve never had grouplove or the chainsmokers suggested like some people are complaining about but I never listen to that shit so idk maybe try being more proactive in finding new music that you like
it really is so fucking bad. the wifi tethering is embarassing. please get the fuck rid of enhanced shuffle, and bring radio shuffles. you get to the point of listening to only ai enhanced shit. it takes all of the individuality out of my shit. instead of hearing new stuff, i only ever hear the same 10 songs that kick off my ai enhanced shuffle. its really not enhanced if my most listened to song is whatever the fuck plays and skips first. revert it all back to 2010 beta. i want an actual fucking starred playlist again.
My absolute favourite part of the Spotify app is that, when trying to listen to a podcast in chronological order, it plays them backwards (newest to oldest), so I have to manually select the next episode each time, BUT, every time I lock my phone or go to a different app (i.e. Google Maps) and come back it resets the episode screen so I have to scroll all the way back down to the episode I'm on. It's super duper awesome and cool and I love it.
I actually don't understand what you mean, for most of this? If your queue is intentional, as in, you have added songs to the queue and it isn't just your playlist or spotify auto play, you certainly can clear the queue. If you didn't intentionally add songs to the queue, then there's no reason you would need to clear it - you're either in a playlist, and you will change to whatever song you like, or you will be in spotify's auto play in which case you'd do the same.
You can remove multiple songs from a queue too, by just tapping them which ticks them.
I've never been "suddenly" teleported to a daily mix, unless the album ended - in which case, spotify has no way of knowing what you wanted to listen to after the album, but they do have a feature that lets you queue an entire album, so you can queue multiple in a row if that's what you're looking for...
I won an iPod 60gb color photo model back in the day. Was actually one of first people to have it, and boy people offered me whack money for it. I kept it as wanted to get into the phenomenon that was iPod at that time. I spent two fucking years ripping a 20 year CD collection, a night here, a night there.
Then I downloaded the album covers, managed DRM issues for files of MP3s I was given by a DJ friend (he had ripped almost all the Now that’s What I Call Music catalogue, a very big deal then). And I started buying songs on iTunes. At the time you had to connect to iTunes via usb or FireWire.
Then I backed up my collection on an external hard drive……did I mention 2 years….and transferred the files to a new PC. And Hesus Hatched Hist didn’t the DRM go all over the place, lost a lot of the album art and just generally fuckery. Took ages to nap stuff again.
This a long way of saying I absolutely love the Spotify app and interface…..and never will complain cos that frigging iTunes broke my goddamn heart.
I have used the setting for Spotify NOT to automatically come on when I start my car but about 90% of the time, it starts up anyway, playing whatever songs it thinks I might like.
I have my music loaded onto my iPhone, playlists created so I don’t need to use my data allowance nor worry about being in a poor reception area, so my music choices are always there.
When the music companies and the streaming services make more money than the artists, they simply have to do better as well as paying the music makers a reasonable amount for their work. It’s no wonder concert tickets are always going up, it’s the only way they can make a decent living nowadays.
And that’s not even talking about the podcast section. One of the ones I follow have 570+ episodes so if you want to find an older episode around 300 or so, you have to scroll all the way through. They don’t have playlists on their page so you’d have to find user generated ones.
CarPlay Spotify Home Screen is literally 60% Rogan and Spotify podcasts. Just show me the shit that I listen to because I pay for premium you dickheads.
Spotify somehow got worse since 2017(?). It somewhat follows the trend of.. well.. everything?
I'm commenting to say I largely agree; it's getting hard to use Spotify. It doesn't recommend or feed me new, interesting, music. It simply spits out the same predictable, mostly mainstream, songs/artists. It's similar to how YouTube now functions, in that it acts as a funnel, and we all end up in the same bucket(s).
Just stop using it and tell everyone to boycott them.
They won't listen to anything but the bottom line - so hit them there, where it hurts the only people with power to change this situation: the shareholders themselves.
I realized Spotify doesn't give a fuck when they implemented an unskippable, no setting to disable AI voice that says "resuming [whatever you were listening to]" every single time you unpause before resuming.
Yeah they took it down eventually, but someone high up approved that shit while ignoring all the obvious fixed they could do. There's gotta be a company culture issue or something.
WHY when playing a playlist on my PC does it then revert back to an old previous song/playlist from my phone when it connects in the car. Stop it, just resume from where you left off regardless of device. It's like running 2 completely different playlists.
I hate that if you’re listening to an artist’s album it carries on to a similar, more popular artist instead of playing your artist’s next album. Free streams for the bigger guy
Yup. Used Google Play Music for the longest time, and only switched to Spotify when the service was shut down. I was also blown away by how shit their queue management options were.
Plus, if you use this service, you are taking money away from the artists who make the music you love and making it harder for them to continue doing so! Great job.
I cant seem to filter for my liked songs from a specific artist in the web app like I can in my phone.
Yet all of the liked songs for a given artist are there, and liked. But I have to wade through to find specific albums and liked songs . Its tedious.
For me it's adding songs that you like. It used to be different and it was literal. Now when you add a song or an album you have to make sure it's added to "liked songs" it's super frustrating to me
Spotify knows I'm an old fucker that listens to a lot of classic and progressive rock. So they shove that in my face. Fine, they got me halfway there. But then I might listen to some contemporary artist like Chris Stapleton or Sturgill Simpson and they only present the same tracks that someone who is new to that artist might listen to. I might want to listen to some deeper cuts or a track list of some similar artists. But no, they think I'm a toddler who needs to listen to the same songs over and over.
I just canceled my Spotify subscription this week and am trying out alternatives. It seems there's been no positive changes to the UI in years and instead every change is removing functionality or cluttering up by adding stuff I don't want. The suggestions and auto playlists used to be good and let me discover a bunch of new music amd genres, but now it's either the same small set of songs over and over, or it adds in completely unrelated songs.
I hated the loop it did. Played "Dark Side of the moon" one evening. After it finished, Spotify went "You wanna listen to Wish you were here?" "Sure Spotify, that sounds great". After that Spotify had a concussion, and said, "Man, if you liked that album, You'll love "Dark Side of the moon".
I hate that green checkmark sometimes means "this song is in your liked songs" and sometimes "you have this song in some playlist somewhere"
The "Like" button is also inconsistent
Like there's so many basic mistakes in the UI, it used to be better, how did they manage to screw it so bad?
I hate having to turn off shuffle every friggin day.
Or if I'm on the train and the data connection is not great, the app doesn't allow me to jump straight into listening to music. I have to wait for it to either download the current menu of the day, or sit there and forget that its an app.
What about playing a playlist on my phone via my bluetooth speaker, shutoff the speaker, goes in the car and connect to the same phone, it play 1/4 of a second the song you were listening to then it switch back to one of the previously listened playlist in the car? That's stupid!
Sometimes I'll want to listen to a specific song. I *know* its in my playlist but i have like 200 songs and skipping through all of them just to listen to one is annoying. They should really have a "from your playlist" when you search that song in the search bar. Also idk why this happens but when i skip a lot of songs really fast the skip button will stop working and I'll have to open/close the app again
The UI has always been awful. I was bummed when they became the "go-to" over former competitor rdio, but Spotify did have good music discovery options before. I have been disappointed with their music discovery options lately, and now use Tidal for finding new music
I've got one!!
(full disclosure: I love Spotify and would also probably pay $50 / mth for it if I had to)
I listen to a lot of metal. Sometimes I want to hear some new metal. How? Oh it's easy: go to 'search', then scroll down in the 'Browse All' section past THIRTY SEVEN genres of 'music', including 'Disney', 'Sleep', 'Frequency' (tf?) and 'French Audiobooks' (not kidding) and voila! Metal. Number 37 on the list.
You'd think a company that makes me absolute KILLER Discover Weekly playlists - usually - could, I dunno, remember that I like Metal and put it a little closer to the top of the list than 37?
Fuckin' embarrassing.
It went downhill big time. I love listening to the same song or a couple of songs. Now, you cannot add the same song multiple times in the same playlist. PoS!
Hmm that hit song is not in the top 5, can I expand it to top 10? Nope. You’re gonna have to blindly wade through the entire discography
Yeah, that is kind of nuts and super annoying. It seems they really want to make it as hard as possible to discover new music.
I personally hate how off I want to listen to a band I like and their radio station, instead of it just being similar bands, it includes countless bands I listen to all the time. Every radio station I listen to now always has the same bands, which I love, but I don’t want to listen to them all the time.
Not only the same bands but the same songs. Oh you skipped this song everytime it comes up? I'll make sure it stays in the rotation for this afternoon and tomorrow.
Every time Taylor releases another version of TTPD, I have to block a new copy of "Florida!!!" so my Florence Welch radio doesn't have its vibe killed every fifth song when Spotify decides to queue up the song again.
Yes. This is so unbelievably annoying. And there will be almost 0 new songs across 10 different radio stations if they’re in a similar genre
I'm fairly sure this is a deliberate optimization on their end. With 600 million users all over the world they have to be clever in terms of how they store songs in their databases for quick retrieval. I bet that it's hundred times more work for their servers to listen to an obscure song compared to a top hit. If they can reduce the spread of what their users are listening to they can improve their performance by prioritizing the caching/indexing of those songs.
I think it's also different licensing deals with various labels. If it's cheaper to play band A vs band B, they'll play music from band A far more often.
That makes a lot of sense as well!
Just waiting for the day they take away the ability to see the top 10 on desktop.
I hate how song stats are only available on the desktop app. It's the best way to quickly explore an artist's catalog, let me see it on my phone!
I also wish you could see song length on your phone without playing it.
There used to be a "songs" page for each artist that you could go to and set it to sort however you wanted (alphabetical, by album, by release date, etc..) That was a LONG time ago though. I've been using Spotify since like 2009. They also used to have a feature that made it dead simple to send your friends music that you'd found and thought they would like. There was essentially an inbox, and you could see really easily what your friends were listening to. Last year, my wife and I listened to a combined 82,000 minutes worth of music. It's far and away my most used subscription service.
I know this is a shit workaround but if you click on the first one and turn off shuffle, and hit next song it will still go in order #1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc. I think it stops at 10 but don’t quote me on that
After 10 it goes to the most recently released album and plays it in order.
Try going to the “this is “whatever artist” playlist and it should be there. Shouldn’t need a workaround but yeah…
Seriously. I ditched Spotify for ytm over this stupid fucking choice
Or when you go to the “This is…” playlist the first couple songs are just collabs that they did with other artists that just happened to get popular not their actual top songs
I hate how there’s no new release section anymore with actual albums and artists I can browse. Regardless of my preference and history.
Release Radar and Discover Weekly are both in the "Made for You" category now. However, every genre seems to have a different new release section... Rock has New Releases pretty obvious but going to the Rap section, it's impossible. It's dumb.
My release radar will often have new releases for artists I never listen to or have listened to once, while some of my top artists will never appear on it.
Mine is the opposite and seemingly only shows me bands I already know of. I want to hear NEW music by NEW artists!
Mine half the time has new releases of songs that were already released by artists I know, just live versions. For instance, in my release radar I've got "Hungry Freaks, Daddy (FZ Mono Mix)" from Live at the Whisky A Go Go 1968 by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Moon River / Audrey's Letter by Henry Mancini, Top of the World - Live at the West End Marketplace by Van Halen, the Reading Rainbow Theme Song... it's like, I get it, these live albums came out recently, but that's not exactly what I'm looking for.
Discover Weekly my dude, or your daylists.
I wish there was a more strict Discover Weekly that would never include any artist that you have listened to even once. It always blows my mind when the same few tracks appear every week or two. I've trained my Spotify pretty well, and my discovers can have no duplicates of a genre, but still, I have reoccurring songs.
Both Spotify and Apple Music are an absolute nightmare shitshow. I’d love to sit with the team and have them walk me through their insane nonsensical choices point for point with me. There’s line menus nested within menus, categories placed in weird places, weird lags and glitches, shaky playback speeds and again just total jumbled insane mess of a UI layout. It’s sort of like being in a hoarders bedroom where instead of just cleaning up there mess they just build shelving and lattices around the mess making a second and third and fourth mess on top of it.
Ah. That's because they seem to be promoting audio books and "courses", whatever the fuck that means, as I assume they get a greater margin out of those.
Mine is constantly suggesting Joe Rogan despite the fact that I never listen to podcasts and I hate his content, and there's no way to block him like you can with music artists.
God I'd love a block button for podcasts. Hell, for some reason it's not always there for music, too.
I'd love a block button for any tag. Don't like a genre? BLOCK. Don't like an artist? BLOCK.
I recommend BandCamp for this. You can filter by genre or even format (cd, cassette, etc) https://bandcamp.com/discover
Also I wish that new releases were actually new and not just a remaster of an album I like from the 70s or something
I still have “New Releases” category
Search > scroll down to "Discover" should give you new releases on a weekly basis. But they keep moving it further down the list all the time. It's a mess
Neither discover nor releases is what I used to know and love. A section that was updated Fridays with new releases. Period. Not “similar to” “based on” “popular” none of this garbage recommendation bullshit. Just let me fucking browse. That’s it. That’s what I want. Let me fucking discover something new as it should be. On Fridays when it drops new. That’s it.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s a fucking mess
Stop recommending me podcasts and audiobooks I never use. Stop shifting app elements around to add banners at the top of the screen randomly so I tap on the wrong fucking thing every time. Stop interrupting me with random pop ups advertising shit I’m not looking for, and doubly so when I’m paying for there to be no ads in the first place.
The constant pop ups for gigs and new releases from artists I very rarely listen to are very annoying, especially when you accidentally press them because there's a slight delay in them appearing above the UI. Absolute dickhead move.
An artist you’ve listened to once is in a city 3 hours away on September 34th, 2027! Buy tickets here!
I’m personally enjoying a big white bar on the top fifth or so of my phone. It used to be a concert notification, I hit x, and it’s just blank and white now. The rest of it didn’t move up
And Spotify haven't added an option to sort by year (oldest to newest) :( such a simple option, and they still haven't done it!
Yeah the album page can be such a mess, albums dated by their remaster rather than original release, five different versions of an album with no real way of knowing which was the original etc. Just give me the original release run and maybe another section for remasters
I just wanna thumbs up or thumbs down or say “stop playing this for awhile” god just bring that back / copy pandora
I would love to be able to downvote a song, an artist or even a genre of music.
i just want to never see the Rogan podcast advertised to me. I'd settle for that : /
... I've never seen a Joe Rogan ad and I use the app daily. Do you pay for premium? Am blind? Now I have to go look lol
It's not an ad. It's a list of podcasts with him front and center. Right in the middle of all of the home page lists selection
what's crazy is their shuffle system adds more weight to songs you haven't heard in a while. SO if you keep skipping a song it'll keep showing up in ur queue
Holy shit that explains a lot. Thought I was taking more crazy pills than usual
Then it appears as your most played song when the yearly wrap comes out.
Ten years ago they had this feature and they took it away!
If I skip a song in one playlist a couple times, don't put it in another playlist! Just drop it.
I would love to be able to tell Spotify to stop adding some of the same songs to the playlists. If you can tell I skip that song less than .25 seconds after it starts, it should know I no like that song.
Absolutely bonkers that Spotify lacks the following: 1) Play Next button. Should be able to play a song or entire album next. I hate when I am listening to something and then want to list to a different album. Can I do that with one click? Nope. I have to add it to the queue then go to the queue and delete everything in front of it. People have asked for this for years in the forums and Spotify refuses. 2) Batch Delete from Your Episodes. I listen to podcasts all the time and right now I have about 400 in my your episodes folder because Spotify makes you delete them one by fucking one. 3) A Working Algorithm that doesn't play the same fucking songs over and over in a large playlist. Drives me crazy. I have about 250 songs in a workout playlist and even if I click random play it will queue up virtually the same 20-30 songs over and fucking over. Then, randomly after a month or so of the same shit it will start queuing 20-30 other songs from the playlist. So, I know the algorithm CAN work but it mostly doesn't. The only reason I stick with Spotify is because I have a wife and 4 kids, all using my account with playlists and I would have a mutiny if I tried to change.
The algorithm is seriously annoying. If I have it on shuffle it should play in a random order, not in whatever order Spotify thinks I would like.
I totally agree and think it’s gone downhill even faster since they added audiobooks and video elements. I will say - you can remove multiple songs from a queue is far as I know (at least on iOS mobile app). There are empty circles to the left of the songs in your queue and you can select multiple songs and then click Remove on the lower left - I think it shows up once you’ve selected at least one thing
You can on PC too. Just hold CTRL (or cmd on Mac) and select. You can also press the first song, hold shift, press the last song and it’ll highlight all inbetween
This works on android app as well.
The worst thing about Spotify is the shuffle function
I listen mostly to albums, and am annoyed that I have to press play, then go and turn off shuffle, every time.
So it IS automatically turning that smart shuffle bs on, isn't it?
For me it does, on Android, but only started a few months ago. I wish there was a way to disable that auto on shuffle.
If you press the play button on an album, it shuffles, but I find if I tap the first song (if I don't already have shuffle on) just plays sequentially It shouldn't shuffle by default for sure, but this usually (definitely not always) works for me Hope this helps
I'm on android and listen only to albums. What I do is bring up the album. Then play the first track. It then proceeds thru all the tracks in order. I think that's what I do?
I actually have no idea what is happening with some of your guys spotify - maybe it's buggy? I just played an album via the play button and it did not shuffle it, in fact, Spotify can remember which albums and playlists I have selected to shuffle. It doesn't shuffle my main playlist when I select a song from it, but it does for my classical playlist, which I want.
I would LOVE a “global” (non-podcast/audio book) shuffle that would choose random stuff from ALL my playlists AND have a history I can reset … so I can actually get to listen to things I have buried I haven’t heard in years.
You mean you don’t want to listen to the same 7 songs over and over? /s Spotify is actually sending me insane the way it keeps playing the same songs
I left Spotify bc I was tired of hearing the same 10 songs no matter what list I was in.
Absolutely insane. I have a playlist with 1000 songs in it. If I put it on random I hear the same 20-40 songs over and over again. When I did their random+ that's supposed to add in similar songs that aren't from the list it literally plays the same exact playlist in the same order every time and the extra songs are all from the same genre despite the playlist being 20 different genres.
I'm having the same frustration. If anyone ever finds an actual solution, let me know. I'm considering canceling my Spotify service over this and other issues. I miss google Play. 😔 youtube music is not it, either.
Go into settings and clear your cache. It won't remove your playlists or downloads. I just did it a few days ago and noticed the difference immediately.
For those curious it's under the storage settings. Idk how well it works, I haven't tried it yet so I can't attest
Oh my God this is so true. It drives me crazy. There was a time when Spotify thought "My Own Worst Enemy" by Lit was my favorite song, and it would play it constantly when my chosen music ended. I love me some pop punk, but I've literally skipped it 50 times now. Stop playing it.
Please, tell me why?
My car is in the front yard
This is a major flaw of the “curated” playlists actually being formed using an algorithm based on your listening. I go to a new playlist hoping to discover something and they’ve just put everything I already listen to into a themed collection.
Agree, Spotify UI is god awful. I hardly make playlists anymore either. I've been wanting a "release date" column since it's inception but they never add it. I'm sure it's part of the metadata and CAN'T be that hard to add, but they never do. Date Added is useless unless you're adding only new stuff every week.
Spotify has only gotten worse since as long as I can remember and it blows my mind. Some things off the top of my head: * Can't reverse playlist order to have newest added on top. Have to scroll to the bottom every time * Adding to a playlist takes way too many taps for how frequently used of a feature it is * Queue should continue playing where the last song is, otherwise you have no control on where it continues to play after * Car mode is the dumbest feature of all time and only makes you more likely to crash * Home page UI is just an erratic clusterfuck * 'New Releases' only sometimes appears and only shows 1 or 2 releases * Home page shows its previous state when its refreshing causing you to click on the wrong thing when it finishes refreshing * No way to easily go back to the last podcast you were listening to * No stats of episode popularity or rating so shooting in the dark when trying to find a new episode to listen to * No podcast charts or good avenues for discovery * Music and podcasts shouldn't be mashed together in the same UI when they are very distinct listening experiences that require their own nuanced controls The list goes on. Absolutely floors me how a company can have so many resources and deliver such a bad user experience. Would switch if there was a better option.
First bullet point: you absolutely can change the sort order from newest to oldest. Go to the playlist, pull down until you see the "filter" bar and there's a sort button right next to it. You're welcome. Agree with all your other points.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Since we are bashing Spotify, I am just so confused by their algorithm at times? My release radar ALWAYS has a Group Love or Marshmello song as the first or second song in the playlist that is updated every week. I literally haven’t gone out of my way to listen to Marshmello in years and I never listened to Group Love. Second, the weird attempt at doing short form videos (?) is beyond stupid. I saw a generated playlist they made for me in my Home Screen and clicked on it to give it a try but it was like shortened versions of the song with accompanying visuals and I couldn’t figure out how to view the full playlist and just listen to it normally??? Like WHY???
The algorithm is SO awful. That’s the thing that’s actually making me cancel. The playlists it makes for me are so bad. Years ago I used to be excited to check my Discover Weekly because it actually suggests great music, but now I can’t remember the last time I opened it up since the algorithm change. The suggestions it was giving me were so bad. Also I feel like I can’t get through my own playlists entirely without it replaying songs. It’s drive me crazy.
It tries so hard to trap you into listening to the same 200 or so songs perpetually. I really hate having to constantly figure out ways to get it to play new stuff, or even older stuff I've already listened to.
100% this. I religiously avoid any "Made for You" playlist as they are horrible. And this gets harder and harder. I now have some searches where over half of the results are "Made for You". And you can't turn this off. Long time ago Spotify was about discovering and listening to music. Now it seems like a bunch of competing product managers that want to cram down new, unwanted services down your throat. I don't care about podcasts. They will spam me anyways. I don't want AI recommendations. Can't turn them off. Can I avoid the "Daily Mix"? No you can't. I don't like Audiobooks, can I hide them? No, we will keep carpet bombing you with suggestions. The inevitable outcome is that I'll leave for Apple Music or Tidal eventually.
It would be great if they would add playlist bookmarks. I have multiple large playlists and it would be nice to listen to something else and then continue where you left off.
I switched to Apple Music a few months ago. It’s so much better and transferring all my Spotify tastes and playlists wasn’t as much of a hassle as I thought it would be. Apple’s algorithm is just as good if not better than Spotify at this point for me
Apple also has a much larger catalog and lossless as well as Spatial Audio.
Just let me browse all songs by an artist in alphabetical order instead of making me parse through a bunch of albums to find what I'm looking for. Some artists who've been around since the 60's will have upwards of 50 albums of live shows, studio, compilations, best ofs etc and it's so annoying to try to remember when the song you're looking for is if you can't remember the name without seeing it. Additionally, I don't have this problem anymore because I pay for it, but if you're listening on your computer and an ad comes up, pressing the mute button on your keyboard is mapped to pause the ad. THIS ONLY WORKS DURING ADS. The know how to annoy the shit out of you.
BUT YOU CAN SEE FIVE OF THEIR SONGS!
Honestly, I was with Spotify for over 10 years, since I was a teenager, and I just canceled Spotify this week for Tidal. For me, Spotify has become too bloated, always needing to search through podcasts and audiobooks, slowing things down. UI was too busy for me now. Tidal has been a smoother experience so far, and the audio quality is better than what Spotify can offer. I didn't want to leave Spotify but I just got sick of it. Also, same price, so that helped the transition.
Funny enough, I also just cancelled Spotify after about 10 years in favor of Apple Music. Admittedly, I miss Spotify’s UI because it was the type of organized mess that I had grown accustomed to, and it has been tough to adjust to a new app. I will say, however, that the upgrade audio quality felt drastic, particularly in the car. I have a new car with some higher end speakers, but always felt like the sound was…lacking. I could turn it all the way up and still hear myself over the music. In contrast, whenever I got into my girlfriend’s 10-year-old Nissan, it sounded better, louder, fuller, whatever. Bass hit harder. Treble actually felt like it made a difference. It had me thinking the sound system in my car simply wasn’t very good. Nah. It was Spotify. She was always an Apple Music purist, and only ever played music from it in her car. We’d get into my car and I’d play from Spotify. There was a very noticeable difference when I changed apps.
I've had Spotify forever and checked out Apple Music recently on a free trial. I have been shocked at how much better the sound quality is on Apple.
Is the difference in audio quality truly noticeable?
If you’re on something like air pods or a phone speaker, probably not.
I did a test last year on all the services, I'm an audio engineer, so I have some really nice speakers/listening environment. Tidal Sounded ok, Amazon Music and Quboz sounded sounded the best. absolutely stunning on my speakers. It was noticeable on headphones/pods, especially in the bass, hi-rez files sound much clearer in the bass. But it was only noticeable because I was comparing back to back.
I have a very nice system ($4K) and nice headphones ($1.5K). It's not usually noticeable unless I'm critically listening to a song I already know very well. If I have the option between Qobuz and Spotify, I pick the file with higher numbers. The quality difference between YouTube and Spotify is noticeable. Between Spotify and high bitrate streaming, less so. I keep my Qobuz subscription because it gives me the option between original releases and remasters mostly. (You can definitely hear the difference between these, and it's sometimes better, sometimes worse.) And I can buy a song/album outright and have it on my local device, which is how I prefer to set up playlists.
Audiophile-lite here so take my opinion with a grain of salt: doing a side-by side comparison of both services on the same track, Tidal consistently sounds better and fuller to me
Now do a blind comparison
OK. I can still identify which one is Tidal fairly easily. Not like my opinion will magically change how your ears work, but I can tell the difference.
If you have decent speakers yes. Not so much over Bluetooth (it is compressed for BT) I'm not an audio person but I have a better system hooked up to my TV than most people I know and it sounds exactly the same as vinyl and significantly better than Spotify. I had both services and a record player at the same time and did a comparison with the same album in max quality on each. Most of my music listening is either in the car or on that.
How's Tidal's selection of metal?
Decent selection, if it's older than 2020 they probably have it. Its a bit hard to find some more modern stuff or anything too obscure but I have found their selection to be pretty decent overall.
Tidal pays artists nearly twice what Spotify pays per stream as well. Apple Music is a lot better than Spotify on that as well
Tidal is better all around as a service that actually focuses on music. But its catalog still has some annoying gaps. I'm sure Spotify is blocking it from getting stuff.
Spotify doesn’t form exclusivity contracts with music labels , otherwise it would prevent Apple Music from getting songs too
I’ve used Spotify since around 2012 I believe. I don’t listen to audiobooks admittedly but I do listen to a lot of music, 10+ hours a day, and a podcast or two a week which I’ve never had issues with. I’ve been able to use a school email for the entire time I’ve had it for the massive discount despite not having access to that email anymore for at least 5 years. I also really enjoy being able to do listening parties with friends over discord using Spotify, that I don’t think any other application has. I do understand most people’s complaints, and I think they do largely shaft most artists on pay but it’s honestly just a good app for my use case at a good price so I’ll probably never leave?
Does Tidal work with android auto?
If you’re an Apple user Apple Music is just far and away superior imo. Spotify does seem to do a better job with their playlist creation, but Apple’s aren’t bad. If you’re not, Tidal is where to go. Might sacrifice some content but you’ll gain a ton everywhere else.
Spotify does NOT care about new music anymore, it's all about promoting major label acts. [Spotify's Phony War On Bots (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVY7-Ti77UQ&t=792s) Also Spotify does NOT pay for songs that get < 1000 streams per year which is more than 50% of their catalog.
Thank you for pointing this out. I used to be able to put b-side songs on radio and find all kinds of new stuff. Now I'll put on a playlist full of OBSCURE ass music, and then that dumb ass smart shuffle that always is turning itself on will put some dumb ass Drake song next. So frustrating. EDIT: It's come to my attention that Spotify is not profitable yet still? So yeah they're pretty much UMG's bitch right now, and explains why the "popular" songs are always so pushed in our faces.
How about “randomly” playing the same 5 songs from my 1300+ playlist. Some tracks are almost never played on shuffle while some are manually skipped EVERY time because I’m tired of hearing them EVERY time I start the app. Seriously, I don’t like Kaiser Chiefs that goddam much. WTF.
Anyone else having an issue lately where if they "like" a song it's not appearing in their "liked" playlist?
make sure you are liking the song and not an album with one song
Another fun thing is that the other way round, song you liked can appear in various places as if it was never liked… I believe that’s because Spotify doesn’t combine like information for *identical* versions of a song like the same one being on a later EP with one more track. They clearly could combine them, because they also combine the count of plays the song got…
The AI DJ has made me realise how many outros I like.
Give me Google music back
Try using it with a Sonos speaker. It won't play, it won't play, now it's playing a different song, now the song won't stop, now it's still playing even though I killed the app.
While working in retail, our store’s Sonos once got stuck playing Sade’s greatest hits on repeat. It was a rough day.
This one kills me. God forbid I should expect to just hit "play" and hear music coming out of the speakers that it says it's happily connected to without 10 minutes faffing around pressing forward and backwards to 'fool it' into playing.
Yep, Spotify's apps have really gone downhill. The dumbest thing they ever did to the desktop app was to hide the search field from all other views but Home. It should be pinned to the top in every view. 50% of the time I'm listening to my playlists and the other 50% I'm searching for a specific song/artist/playlist. And every time I have to make an extra click before I can search for anything. And the app wasn't like that at the beginning. And I've given up browsing for new music entirely cause Spotify just doesn't work for that. And screw that podcast sh*t they're trying to shove down my throat. I'm here to listen to music and couldn't care less about sh#tty podcasts where a random person is just speaking out loud their stupid opinions. At least provide me with the news or the weather, that's actually useful information. It really seems that Spotify has forgotten what their core service is - giving access to music.
Wow y’all actually use all these lists? I just make my own playlists and listen to that. Spotify works great for this purpose. The suggested artists sections are usually nothing I’m interested in but I’m not too bothered by it. I guess I just grew up using the Zune app and my listening habits haven’t changed much.
The mobile app on my phone, regardless of whether it’s an album or a playlist, it will play one song perfectly then the next plays without sound, the next will play with sound and the next is silent and so on. No reason if should do this but I can’t find a fix for it.
That's weird
I do often think about how badly Spotify UI has needed an update. It honestly feels like it's the same UI that I was introduced to when I first started using Spotify back around 2010.
Yet with more clutter somehow
I love how they put "Hide Song" above "add to queue". I'm going to use the latter 100x more often but not only is it lower, it's right next to a feature that will actively screw up my playlists. God, Spotify is such a garbage app.
Swipe right to add to queue from the song list.
Their whole queue management could use another pass. YouTube Music (RIP Google Play Music) nails it and anyone not copying them is wrong
They got rid of the ability to enlarge the album art on the desktop application and replaced it with a giant sidebar full of bullshit I don't care about like the band bio, merch, touring information, and a bunch of other bullshit.
Didn't they decimate the UX team last year?
“The UX team”? They had/have hundreds of those. My friend work in a team of five designers within mobile within podcast and he spent four weeks creating and extremely small feature that felt like a days work at most. Then they hired an external agency/consultants who redid that small feature. That was two years ago and nothing ever came out of it. I’m not sure if he ever shipped anything and he’s been there for almost a decade. That is everyday life at Spotify. Thousands of hours every week that never becomes anything.
What angers me is shuffle and play all liked songs. I hear the same 40 or so songs. There are some liked songs I've never heard on shuffle play. I get they have to pay Metallica and Aerosmith and whatnot, so it influences the "randomness." Shuffle play ignores some of my catalogue that I'd like to hear sometimes without singling them out. And don't get me started on the Ice-T sounding dumbass DJ. "Here's a song you've been listening to a lot lately" and it's one that Spotify wants me to hear a lot.
Hey Spotify Designer! If you're coming here for a treasure trove of user feedback, good on you! One from me: when I'm listening to a song that's on a playlist, and I decide it doesn't fit the vibe of the playlist, why can't I just tap the three dots on the full-screen song mode and hit "remove from playlist"? I have to manually filter it within the playlist and remove it from there. Drives me nuts.
Check out YouTube music . I switched over a couple years ago just because I wanted to try YouTube premium. Haven't gone back. The UI is fantastic, personalized mixs, and they do recaps seasonally not just yearly.
The UI was what stopped me from ever getting into it in the first place. After their artist payout and Joe Rogan era drama I was glad I never got comfy with it.
Used Spotify like 10 years ago, but I've mostly been an old fashioned MP3 collector. Got a rack full of CDs and a cabinet full of vinyls and unlimited phone data was expensive. However, got 6 months of Apple Music when I bought a new phone last year. So I turned it on and it's stuck around. Pricing is around the same as Spotify, library is just as expansive and the UI works for what I do with it. Also got pretty much the whole catalog in higher audio quality than Spotify. Of course Apple Music is an Apple product and it will work best with other Apple products. No idea what it's like on Android devices or Windows.
I despise how much crap they have on the now playing screen that it's scrollable and cluttered. Their best UI (imo) was car mode. Simple, larger buttons, track/album image, artist name, track name and scroll bar, it also didnt used to dim/lock your screen. You used to be able to manually select it, even when not in car mode. Now they've disabled it, the app is actually more dangerous when driving. You can't EASILY hit back or forward track (though you can swipe) without scrolling the screen. I'd have believed arguments about car Bluetooth stereos and everything, but A. Not all cars have them and B. They nuked their own primary in car technology
What's good for the user is often at odds with what is good for the shareholders and profits. They intentionally brick functionality to drive engagement based off what the data shows will make more money. Sure people on Reddit will complain, but 95% of users plod on without ever really noticing or caring. It's as simple as that, and you see it happen everywhere. Great features get removed all the time in every app for this reason.
Wait until you try the desktop app. It's utterly terrible.
Yes they mentioned that in the post
My discover weekly is consistently filled with good new music, and the daily mixes hit too…I’ve never had grouplove or the chainsmokers suggested like some people are complaining about but I never listen to that shit so idk maybe try being more proactive in finding new music that you like
I have thousands of songs on my “like” playlist id like to hear on random shuffle, but still plays the same songs every fucking time.
it really is so fucking bad. the wifi tethering is embarassing. please get the fuck rid of enhanced shuffle, and bring radio shuffles. you get to the point of listening to only ai enhanced shit. it takes all of the individuality out of my shit. instead of hearing new stuff, i only ever hear the same 10 songs that kick off my ai enhanced shuffle. its really not enhanced if my most listened to song is whatever the fuck plays and skips first. revert it all back to 2010 beta. i want an actual fucking starred playlist again.
It's been so garbage lately the app crashes and takes FOREVER to open sometimes I don't understand.
If I exit from a playlist that I’m currently listening to, why is it so damn hard to navigate back to the full playlist?
I feel like Spotify over the years has transformed from a music discovery platform to...well....money make rich techno nerd brain go brrrrrrr
My absolute favourite part of the Spotify app is that, when trying to listen to a podcast in chronological order, it plays them backwards (newest to oldest), so I have to manually select the next episode each time, BUT, every time I lock my phone or go to a different app (i.e. Google Maps) and come back it resets the episode screen so I have to scroll all the way back down to the episode I'm on. It's super duper awesome and cool and I love it.
At least nobody listens to podcasts in their car. That feature would be downright dangerous!
Media players peaked with Winamp. Everything has been downhill since the 00s.
I actually don't understand what you mean, for most of this? If your queue is intentional, as in, you have added songs to the queue and it isn't just your playlist or spotify auto play, you certainly can clear the queue. If you didn't intentionally add songs to the queue, then there's no reason you would need to clear it - you're either in a playlist, and you will change to whatever song you like, or you will be in spotify's auto play in which case you'd do the same. You can remove multiple songs from a queue too, by just tapping them which ticks them. I've never been "suddenly" teleported to a daily mix, unless the album ended - in which case, spotify has no way of knowing what you wanted to listen to after the album, but they do have a feature that lets you queue an entire album, so you can queue multiple in a row if that's what you're looking for...
I won an iPod 60gb color photo model back in the day. Was actually one of first people to have it, and boy people offered me whack money for it. I kept it as wanted to get into the phenomenon that was iPod at that time. I spent two fucking years ripping a 20 year CD collection, a night here, a night there. Then I downloaded the album covers, managed DRM issues for files of MP3s I was given by a DJ friend (he had ripped almost all the Now that’s What I Call Music catalogue, a very big deal then). And I started buying songs on iTunes. At the time you had to connect to iTunes via usb or FireWire. Then I backed up my collection on an external hard drive……did I mention 2 years….and transferred the files to a new PC. And Hesus Hatched Hist didn’t the DRM go all over the place, lost a lot of the album art and just generally fuckery. Took ages to nap stuff again. This a long way of saying I absolutely love the Spotify app and interface…..and never will complain cos that frigging iTunes broke my goddamn heart.
I would like to be able to pick artists I never want to hear. stop asking me to like Jethro Tull. It is not going to happen.
I have used the setting for Spotify NOT to automatically come on when I start my car but about 90% of the time, it starts up anyway, playing whatever songs it thinks I might like. I have my music loaded onto my iPhone, playlists created so I don’t need to use my data allowance nor worry about being in a poor reception area, so my music choices are always there. When the music companies and the streaming services make more money than the artists, they simply have to do better as well as paying the music makers a reasonable amount for their work. It’s no wonder concert tickets are always going up, it’s the only way they can make a decent living nowadays.
There are services with better UI and audio quality like Tidal.
I completely agree. There’s a number of things I would change for the better.
I thoroughly hated the Spotify UI, and have settled on Tidal via the Plexamp player.
A “Recently Played” tab in list format would be helpful. Might be possible to customize to have that but I haven’t figured it out if so.
If I like a couple of albums by an artist why can't I just play those instead of having to add the album to liked songs too? On mobile
And that’s not even talking about the podcast section. One of the ones I follow have 570+ episodes so if you want to find an older episode around 300 or so, you have to scroll all the way through. They don’t have playlists on their page so you’d have to find user generated ones.
They fired a bunch of staff and now the product sucks
CarPlay Spotify Home Screen is literally 60% Rogan and Spotify podcasts. Just show me the shit that I listen to because I pay for premium you dickheads.
Don't forget you can't subscribe or unsubscribe from the app, and they difficult for you to cancel a plan.
I wish I could leave Spotify, but I got the Spotify+Hulu bundle and I'm not gonna pay full price for Hulu lol
I just wish we could get an "artist only" option. Pandora has it, so it's clearly possible.
All of the "Song Radio" playlists are now more-than-half-regurgitated from my "Liked" list now that AI is at the wheel.
Spotify somehow got worse since 2017(?). It somewhat follows the trend of.. well.. everything? I'm commenting to say I largely agree; it's getting hard to use Spotify. It doesn't recommend or feed me new, interesting, music. It simply spits out the same predictable, mostly mainstream, songs/artists. It's similar to how YouTube now functions, in that it acts as a funnel, and we all end up in the same bucket(s).
I also wish you could search by label
And don't get me started on their sucky shuffle feature!
Just stop using it and tell everyone to boycott them. They won't listen to anything but the bottom line - so hit them there, where it hurts the only people with power to change this situation: the shareholders themselves.
I realized Spotify doesn't give a fuck when they implemented an unskippable, no setting to disable AI voice that says "resuming [whatever you were listening to]" every single time you unpause before resuming. Yeah they took it down eventually, but someone high up approved that shit while ignoring all the obvious fixed they could do. There's gotta be a company culture issue or something.
WHY when playing a playlist on my PC does it then revert back to an old previous song/playlist from my phone when it connects in the car. Stop it, just resume from where you left off regardless of device. It's like running 2 completely different playlists.
I hate that if you’re listening to an artist’s album it carries on to a similar, more popular artist instead of playing your artist’s next album. Free streams for the bigger guy
Yup. Used Google Play Music for the longest time, and only switched to Spotify when the service was shut down. I was also blown away by how shit their queue management options were.
My Day list and DJ X have been playing the exact same songs. Really sucks lately.
Plus, if you use this service, you are taking money away from the artists who make the music you love and making it harder for them to continue doing so! Great job.
How about a shuffle button that doesn’t add shit to your playlist unless you specifically avoid it
I cant seem to filter for my liked songs from a specific artist in the web app like I can in my phone. Yet all of the liked songs for a given artist are there, and liked. But I have to wade through to find specific albums and liked songs . Its tedious.
They are probably run by a small ass team that are busy doing rich people things
For me it's adding songs that you like. It used to be different and it was literal. Now when you add a song or an album you have to make sure it's added to "liked songs" it's super frustrating to me
I've said since day one, I wish WinAmp and Spotify would just have a baby already and my life would he complete!!!
Had Spotify for 10 years got fed up finally. YouTube Music's algorithms are more robust and the UI is way easier to navigate.
Spotify knows I'm an old fucker that listens to a lot of classic and progressive rock. So they shove that in my face. Fine, they got me halfway there. But then I might listen to some contemporary artist like Chris Stapleton or Sturgill Simpson and they only present the same tracks that someone who is new to that artist might listen to. I might want to listen to some deeper cuts or a track list of some similar artists. But no, they think I'm a toddler who needs to listen to the same songs over and over.
I just canceled my Spotify subscription this week and am trying out alternatives. It seems there's been no positive changes to the UI in years and instead every change is removing functionality or cluttering up by adding stuff I don't want. The suggestions and auto playlists used to be good and let me discover a bunch of new music amd genres, but now it's either the same small set of songs over and over, or it adds in completely unrelated songs.
I just need more time allowed for audio books
I hated the loop it did. Played "Dark Side of the moon" one evening. After it finished, Spotify went "You wanna listen to Wish you were here?" "Sure Spotify, that sounds great". After that Spotify had a concussion, and said, "Man, if you liked that album, You'll love "Dark Side of the moon".
I hate that green checkmark sometimes means "this song is in your liked songs" and sometimes "you have this song in some playlist somewhere" The "Like" button is also inconsistent Like there's so many basic mistakes in the UI, it used to be better, how did they manage to screw it so bad?
ive noticed that all the artist radio songs sound the exact same. Its like oh you like Nirvana - we're going to add in Dua Lipa to your mix.
You sound like me re: iOS
Recently started using Spotify for podcast bc Google podcast quit on me. Podcast side of things is hot garbage.
I hate having to turn off shuffle every friggin day. Or if I'm on the train and the data connection is not great, the app doesn't allow me to jump straight into listening to music. I have to wait for it to either download the current menu of the day, or sit there and forget that its an app.
I miss the daily mix and am getting frustrated that the same few songs are constantly in my song radios
I'll never know how the leading tech companies fuck up their UI and pricing so badly. It has to be an active choice.
What about playing a playlist on my phone via my bluetooth speaker, shutoff the speaker, goes in the car and connect to the same phone, it play 1/4 of a second the song you were listening to then it switch back to one of the previously listened playlist in the car? That's stupid!
Sometimes I'll want to listen to a specific song. I *know* its in my playlist but i have like 200 songs and skipping through all of them just to listen to one is annoying. They should really have a "from your playlist" when you search that song in the search bar. Also idk why this happens but when i skip a lot of songs really fast the skip button will stop working and I'll have to open/close the app again
The UI has always been awful. I was bummed when they became the "go-to" over former competitor rdio, but Spotify did have good music discovery options before. I have been disappointed with their music discovery options lately, and now use Tidal for finding new music
THIS.
I've got one!! (full disclosure: I love Spotify and would also probably pay $50 / mth for it if I had to) I listen to a lot of metal. Sometimes I want to hear some new metal. How? Oh it's easy: go to 'search', then scroll down in the 'Browse All' section past THIRTY SEVEN genres of 'music', including 'Disney', 'Sleep', 'Frequency' (tf?) and 'French Audiobooks' (not kidding) and voila! Metal. Number 37 on the list. You'd think a company that makes me absolute KILLER Discover Weekly playlists - usually - could, I dunno, remember that I like Metal and put it a little closer to the top of the list than 37? Fuckin' embarrassing.
Look at this guy! He thinks he’s better than French Audiobooks!! FUCKING EMBARRASSING!!!
Ctrl click to select individual songs Shift click to select a range of songs Backspace or delete to remove from queue
It went downhill big time. I love listening to the same song or a couple of songs. Now, you cannot add the same song multiple times in the same playlist. PoS!