FIRE THE DEVELOPER TEAM, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE

[giovlms]

Ok, here's the deal...

Ever since somewhere in june the Android Spotify app has turned to utter GARBAGE.

On my case, it all started with an update, when, on my Galaxy S7 Edge - Android Marshmallow, the app made some crackling noises during songs. Since I use the app mostly on my car, I thought "HEY, MY SPEAKERS ARE BROKEN" and there I went spending $150 on a new set of decent speakers. Guess what, the problem kept on, and I thought "frig it". Later on, I started using my phone during workout, with headphones. That's when I noticed THE CRACKLING WAS ALSO THERE WITH HEADPHONES. 

Took the headphones off, and there was the crackling with the bare phone speakers.

Uninstalled half my audio apps, thinking It might be some interference, but no. The problem was on spotify. Youtube worked fine, Soundcloud worked fine, and friggin DEEZER worked wonders. 

Did a factory reset, and nothing. Talket to customer support on FB, and it seemed to be something with my account. They deleted my account, created another one, transferred the followers, and voila - it worked fine.... For 2 days, and the problem came back, friggin crackling making unberable to listen to songs on Spotify.

A while later, the app started being killed by the android - multimedia controls wouldn't work, the notification would be gone, and the music wouldn't stop with phone calls or whatever. 

Well, at least everything was working fine on my tablet........ UNTIL TODAY, now, with the most recent update, the foremost problem is also present on my tablet. Now, basically, Spotify doesn't work on any of my devices, and here I am paying about 30 bucks per month for the Family Premium. 

"ughhh but here's what you do, go to settings, notifications and..."

I already did all of that, and the app remains BROKEN.

Also, I DIDN'T HAVE TO DO ANY OF THAT WITH DEEZER. I HIT "INSTALL" ON PLAY STORE, LOGGED IN, AND BAM - WORKING.  THE DESIGN IS HORRIBLE, I HATE DEEZER, BUT IT WORKS. AND I'M BEING FORCED TO USE IT. 

Seriously, Spotify... What the heck? 

No more MUSIXMATCH, audio issues during playback and complete brokenness of system integration... Your dev team's in need of some serious attention.

I'm not even requesting support on these issues because I simply GAVE UP... But for christ's sake, fire some people and create a brand new app, because this one is GARBAGE, and it only fills up the forums with support requests.

[Joe]

I don't think it's the tech staff'f fault. They're being pulled in different directions by the marketing and finance teams so the chances of getting a stable, mature app seem pretty remote 😞

[Troybaker323]

I've been getting the same crackling and stuttering bs as you for the last few months. It really makes the app unusable.. I would love a solution to this

[giovlms]

I get that causality is a factor here, but I just can't swallow the fact that pretty much ANY OTHER music app works just fine ever since always, whilst Spotify was born and is everlastingly broken, and is currently simply unusable.

[fratenchiappe]

Every time I read these rants and people start calling out the competition I always start wondering whether they are real, especially when they call out how good the competition is. Why are you even here, cancel your account and never look back, but hey, I guess you are on your Good Samaritan deed here, right?

Btw, never had any crackling, like never ever, and I use the cheap chinaphones from banggood.

[Joe]

Emotions sometimes take over from logic. The sad truth is that there doesn't seem to be a mature music streaming service which works flawlessly yet. I've been trying GPM which seems to take the opposite approach to spotify - updates for the android app are almost non-existent so the app is stable but lacks many of the features of Spotify.

Google support for their music app is pretty sketchy too. There is no dedicated community or forum and tech support tends to be "use the app's feedback button". Many problems with the app have (such as the useless album cover display) have been around for years and Google seems to be in no hurry to fix them.

It's a shame because Spotify needs a serious competitor to step up its game.

[Troybaker323]

Just because you haven't experienced an experience ruining bug like us doesn't mean they don't exist. Spotify is awesome but the flaws with the Android app make it feel like it's not worth the subscription which sucks because plenty of free music apps work

[giovlms]

Troybaker323 perfect input

Fratenchiappe, dude.. I thought I made myself clear, I don't wanna migrate to any other service because I love spotify's features.

Spotify is a result of the work of several teams. 

I love the work of the design team, I love the work of the algorithm coders, I love the work of the founding chairboard, the people helping on facebook, the marketing guys are so well trained. You don't find the "song radio" resource on other apps, nor the good suggestion algorithms, music database and general layout.

I can't naturally use Google Play Music because it honestly doesn't feel as natural, nor I wanna keep using Deezer because it has a HORRIBLE layout and usage design. Spotify is BY FAR the best idealized one. But, as I so hardly tried to make myself clear, THE ANDROID APP DEV TEAM is frigged in the head. The windows version of spotify is immaculate. I've never had any problem with the iOS as well. But the android app... Ugh. 

The competition has its Android apps working perfectly, but their general product is **bleep** compared to Spotify. That's why I'm not gonna cancel my account and never look back. I use Spotify on windows and it never ever gave me any headache. But on Android? Geez...That's why my beef is with the dev people. 

Most important of all, thank you Joe for your rationality, it's good to see someone who looks at this impartially. It's something really complicated that gets us in rough emotions.

My absurd frustration comes from the fact that this issue bugged me for MONTHS, I spent money trying to fix my car's stereo, and for weeks I couldn't workout efficiently on the gym because it was like a mosquitoe inside my headphone. So unfortunately my emotions did and do take over from my logic. 

All I sincerely expect is some executive officer walking in the Android dev team's room and saying "fix this friggin thing or you're fired", or simply coding a brand new app. This help section is living proof that the app is BROKEN and deserves a from-scratch version. 

[Joe]

The android app has always been unreliable and I've lost count of the times they reintroduced bugs in updates which they had previously fixed such as the context menu failing if you were using a blue light filter or other screen overlay.

I've been a Spotify subscriber for years and even used to be a Rock Star and it seems to me that the level of support in this community isn't as good as it once was. It seems to take far too long for staff to identify and deal with a hot new issue which may because none of the current Rock Stars are android users. Have you noticed how rarely they venture into the android section?

Anyway, I'm now with Google Play and whilst Spotify offers a far better user experience, GPM works reliably so I can listen to my music on and offline without any unpleasant surprises.