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Peter, thanks for responding. I haven't seen Spotify say they don't take money for Discover (I only did a cursory Googling before my post), but usually they tag the content as new, trending, etc. The 1D thing said nothing of the sort, so it only added to my conspiracy theorizing.
To your first point about the "protest": I obviously said it to provoke a reaction and, look at that, you responded quickly 🙂 As for getting banned and losing my voice on the forum...well...what has my voice been able to get me so far? Six months of being ignored and not even being told if this was a bug or not? One measly response many months ago that they were aware of this and looking into it? You'll excuse me if the threat of banning doesn't shake me to my core.
As to your second point: hey, maybe creating a bunch of "work" for the unpaid volunteers doing thankless work for a company that obviously cares very little for its customers would force them to do something about that. I'm not sure how you could refute that their efforts on this issue are absolutely pathetic. I get annoyed when I see someone who doesn't realize their phone is in offline mode or unsupported get immediate responses to their problems while an issue that affects ALL Android users (and again, not sure if it's iOS, too) gets ignored. Why volunteer so much time to a company that operates like that?
if you can refute those points or lead me in a direction that might actually get a result (you know, in less than six months), I'm all ears and happy to comply.
I appreciate your responses, Peter.
Wow, incredible, so it does still work on iOS? That makes this all the more baffling. That would imply this is indeed a bug and not a planned "feature." But as stated so many months ago, the coding is probably something a first-year programming student could figure out. And it's something they already had, we're not asking for the sun and the moon here, just to restore a line or two of code instead of focusing on stuff for free users or those that make up .5% of the user base.
I'm still not sure why you do this. (I recognize this is apples to orangutans, but...) I'm sure there are people in North Korea passionate about humans rights issues, but all their efforts are going to end the same way. It seems the rock stars have just as much influence on Spotify, judging by this issue.
I'm not sure how to accept that support and development can't talk together for a product I'm paying for every month (and canceled my cheaper Google AllAccess right before this bug appeared, but can no longer get the trial rate). As I've said, I'm ready to move on as soon as a viable competitor is found. But I do also plan on continuing to figure out a way to force Spotify to respond (petition? Shame them on Twitter all day?) and am open to suggestions.
I absolutely agree. I could have stopped paying them months ago if I knew it was removed purposefully and not strung along like this. The fact they didn't mention it and still refuse to acknowledge it is the only reason I started to suspect it was more an issue of greed than incompetence. Now, I feel like I can more safely so that indeed, it's just that the Spotify developers are idiots and their support staff is powerless. Good to know!
Thanks for the suggestion on Sony. Here's some links to other alternatives, though I'd love to hear some first-hand Android accounts:
Meredith,
Thanks for responding, glad to hear we haven't been forgotten. But the last update we got was from you on 11/22/13. That was 109 days ago, a month after the thread was posted and months after the problem began.
I think what hurts most about this (beyond paying every day to be annoyed by something), is that I used to be such a Spotify fan, telling everyone I knew how awesome it was and that they should sign up immediately. Those days are long gone. Even if this problem gets fixed tomorrow, all it has done is make me very aware of the dysfunction or incompetence plaguing Spotify. I'll never recommend it to anyone again, that's for certain.
What happens if another vital feature gets ripped out of the app next month? I'll know I can rely on the fact that a) I won't probably be notified about it, I'll have to discover the change on my own, b) I'll never find out if it was a bug or intentional, c) I'll go months between acknowledgements by staff, d) it may never get fixed anyway, and d) I'll get to pay for this privilege every month?
I hate to be a complainer. I waited for several software updates to see if Spotify would fix the bug, only seeking out more information when it became clear it wouldn't magically reappear. Now, I feel dug in and determined to expose Spotify's poor customer service and software development efforts, for the sake of all current, and hopefully not future, users.
I feel like I've exhausted my abilities in this forum (though threatening to take them over in a protest sure did inspire responses today!), so i feel like I have to look at outside ways to force the issue now. I'm open to ideas, fellow sufferers. Anyone have contacts with any writers at the main Android sites?
I have no more shame, I'm bumping this back to the front page any time it falls off. Maybe if the support staff had any actual intent of keeping this issue front and center as we roll into month 7 of this fiasco (if indeed it was introduced in August, though it's hard to remember at this point), they would sticky it and force the dev. staff to look at it once in a while. But don't worry, they're aware of it!
It's also really sad that when I threatened to cover the board with posts on this topic, it spurred immediate action by the community team to placate me and talk me off the ledge, but once I rescinded that request to others, it all dried up.
All you've done is reinforce the idea that a temper tantrum like that may be the only chance of getting anything done (or at least getting attention for the issue, or even for Spotify devs to acknowledge it's an issue!).
There's a link to the side of the page here with a survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MGC2MRC
I implore everyone who is annoyed with this issue to properly rate how horrible the community service response is (but be truthful, not every category is deserving of the lowest ranking, just the majority of them). In the final comment section, link to this thread. If they get enough of an outraged response, maybe some heads roll or they actually do something about their system.
Check out how much people hate Spotify customer service:
http://gethuman.com/contact/Spotify/
http://galexander.org/spotifysucks.html
And of course these are mostly people with a particular issue unique to (and perhaps even caused by) them. We're an entire OS user base that can't get a simple response.
There are other mainstream tech sites that have lots of influence and lots of eyeballs that have written about other aspects of Spotify that suck, whether it's the licensing policies or other technical/interface aspects. I have been in touch with some writers and they're interested in covering other problems with Spotify (some appear to have an ax to grind and are very willing), especially when it comes to paid users getting screwed. There could be a reckoning coming that leaves Spotify with a newscycle-worth of stories regurgitated amongst the tech sites about this, and I feel zero guilt about that and the subscribers it may cost them.
I really wish, you know, that within a month or two of this cropping up, someone could've just added back in the line of code they took away and this could have been forgotten, but I think it's only fair that Spotify receive an inverse amount of negative coverage to the amount of feedback they've given us.
I'd also like to quote my prophecy from late January in this thread: "Of course there was no update on this, it was foolish to think they'd do a simple fix on a six month old problem. They will most likely give another update in a month or two telling us that they're aware of the problem (still) and that it's a priority that will be addressed in an upcoming update. Then they will go dark for another four months. Then they will either tell us it's not coming back, there was a technical issue with reinstating it, or something like that. We would be idiots to assume anything else at this point."
I totally nailed the first part with Meredith's return a month or two later to let us know they were still aware of it (aka still trying to string us along). So we are now entering the dark phase where they forget about us for four months (but still accept our cash!)...
Thanks again. I looked up when that was said just to be certain, and it was a month ago. Meaning we're now at twice his estimate, putting us back in uncharted waters. And there was no reason to remove what was there in the interim, then act like it didn't happen!
This fell off the front page. How about one of the mods stickies this, so that it's front and center and can get the attention it deserves? I know that would be about 1,000 times the effort Spotify has put toward this massive bug/inconvenience so far, but it'd be a nice gesture.
And it's fallen off again. "Dude," the support staff says, hypothetically, "Why do you insist on continuing to bump this thread? Other people don't seem as passionate about it as you, let it go." To that I'd say, well, for one thing, any new users in the last seven months don't even know you guys messed up by removing this feature. A lot of people have quit because of the lack of Chromecast support (or, support in general, as we've seen). Others are not as stupid as me and realized long ago that you'd never be updating us.
Well unfortunately you're stuck with me, so I'm going to again ask for a real update. Was this intentional? Why couldn't it just be put back in until it was rebuilt (in a rumored updated already long past due)? I'm stuck inventing conversations with you because you refuse to actually tell customers anything (oh, right, you let us know you were aware of this many months ago, but still not if it was intentional or not).
Great! Thanks for the help. We can alternate. I want everyone who is mad at this to chime in. Though, like I said, I can understand why it's become less of an issue over time, since no new members even know about it.
I noticed (apparently) I'm one of the top Kudo'd posters in this forum. Since I'm desperate for anything that might help draw attention to this issue, would if people Kudo'd my previous posts, I'd jump to the top of the list. That might help in a small, small way if they see a "top" poster in the forum complaining about something. Though it's clear they're not listening at all to us...
Interesting, my phone has Swype preinstalled, so I haven't been able to take advantage of that, but it's a good tip for others.
I'm up to the second most Kudo'd author! Keep doing it, I have lots of posts in this thread, if I get a gargantuan amount, maybe it will give me slightly more credibility here. It's worth a shot, at least.
I'm going to work on getting this and the Chromecast issue covered by the Android blogs, we shouldn't have to deal with such poor service and development. Remember, Spotify, not only are these people quitting, but they'll absolutely tell friends not to join...who will tell friends not to join, etc. Keep doing what you're doing ignoring paying subscribers (who got you the valuations you have today) and fighting for new customers. See how that works out. When the number of people who have left your service in disgust outnumber the new people, maybe you'll do something, even though it was too late.
Maybe I've become delusional. Or Spotify has gotten even stupider. Help me decide.
I downloaded the new version of the app yesterday. I hadn't used the search, because I try not to nowadays, just browsing through the same self-referential 10 bands showing up in my Discover tab. But today I wanted to find something specific. So I enter the search, and what do I see? The return of the history or this fabled improved search? No...I find a black search box. And the text is light. The reverse of how it used to be, and making it now EVEN MORE DIFFICULT TO SEE AND SEARCH. We're through the wormhole, people, I'm convinced they're now just making it worse to mess with us.
To top it off, when I finally got to the band (you know, now that I can't just type P and have them come up), I played one of the top five played songs and...it didn't go bold and black to indicate it was playing. So I messed around with it, checked other bands, then albums. It's fine in albums, but they managed to take away another thing from the app, maybe intentionally, maybe not. Who knows?
I think this may have been enough to make me quit. This company is awful. Your attempt at support is pathetic. You took me from a problem I loved, supported, and highly recommended to something I pay for, yet use less often because it just makes me annoyed to use.
I get it. Apple is getting serious about making a streaming competitor (eventually), so you're trying to suck in as many people as you can to become subscribers for life by catering to the free users, offering discounts to college students, etc., as well as trying for massive growth rates as you lead up to your IPO. Your mission clearly isn't to create a great music experience for users, it's to grab every piece of market share you can and worry about the rest later. (Side note, to combat the eventual iTunes streaming service, why not make it a point to be the premier Android service. Instead, you make it a half-hearted retread of the iOS version. What, did you hire musicians to become programmers or something, so they'd stop complaining about licensing fees?)
Look at the Chromecast ideas thread. People actively dislike Spotify for being obtuse and saying they have other top priorities even though it's clear Chromecast support is by far the most important. Many smaller companies added support quicker, so there's no excuse. This is no longer a benign annoyance, your brand is going to be known for this. Is this how a company that values itself at $4 billion acts? The internet crowd is fickle, and one popular meme about Spotify completely ignoring public input is all it will take for that to be the prevailing opinion about the brand forever. Spotify, you are the worst.
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