Hello,
I am writing in here to raise the awareness over this continuous issue. I know is not new, but the way it is been managed by spotify is close to "as silly as it gets" imho.
I do have 3 devices with offline playlists, and I do have two more computers which are stationary, and therefore I don't have/need offline playlists.
The problem is simple... travel from country A to B, do an update on iOS, or do some PC client update; and it is a russian roulette. Next time one of the devices that were offline come online, you might be greeted by the "tough luck, now you will have to resynchronize all you have".
Who thought of this brilliant dumb feature? Why would spotify really think that discarding a device in a FIFO way is a good strategy when detecting that "another new device" has gone into "synching playlists"?.
I can understand that this has quite a lot to do wity simplyfing the UI and user friendliness. However here comes a list of good reasons why this strategy is just working against spotify higher yielding users:
- It is not reliable: the server mistakes constanly when a device is new, the same but updated one, or whatever other condition that triggers this issue.
- It is user unfriendly: If I really wanted to swap one of my "old" devices for a "new" one... why not show me which ones I have? Then I could choose which one I wanted to withdraw offline rights from to make room for my new one. Letting an algorithm do that for me, is a recipy for user confusion and frustration.
- It is not foolproof: If I mistakenly synchronize one playlist in one of my devices that is not meant to have offline rights... I get no warning anywhere! Spotify lets me do it... then I go out for a 5km jog and I am greeted by "spotify has decided that his is the device that will be evicted: now you will have no music for run". Than you!
I really believe that managing "authorised devices" should be a piece of cake. Just simply when I try to synch a "new" device, why not just show a dialogue a such as: "Hello, this is the first time we see this device synchronizing offline songs; please introduce a name for it. Please note that only three devices can shynchronize offline playlists at a time" whist showing the list of the "registered devices". Then, have a simple menu from which the user might choose of which one of your devices gets the priviliege of being able to have offline songs. Simple.
Guys I really appreciate the new functionalities that you are adding, but really, it is time to polish the basic ones. These teething problems are really frustrating. Please, get your act together and just finish our the basic functionalities and sort out well know old bugs.
Best regards.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random