The New Desktop App

[dan]

UPDATE - May 5th, 2023

Hey folks,

We appreciate the feedback you've provided us with regarding the new desktop UI; it's being taken into account!

We're chiming in to redirect you to the current main thread regarding the latest updates to the desktop app and we'll be closing new comments here as it is an outdated thread 🙂 

Thanks!

UPDATE - April 16th, 2021

Hey folks,

We've tried to cover most of the frequently asked questions concerning the new update in this Spotify Answer - Make sure to check it out!

We'll continue to go through all your posts in this blog, so if you have any other questions besides the ones in the FAQ, feel free to add them in a comment below.

Thanks,

The Community Moderator Team

UPDATE - April 8th, 2021

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday we published a blog post on our engineering blog which goes into more details on the new UI, the reasons behind it and the process of building it.  If you'd like to read a few more details like that you can check it out here.

I'd also like to mention a few things coming in upcoming versions of Desktop

• We're working on bringing back a list-like Discography view, something many of you have mentioned missing in the new UI.  We expect this to land in an upcoming release, so do watch this space and make sure you remain fully updated.
• "Discovered On" playlists for artists will be back in an upcoming release.
• We're working on bringing to Desktop the ability (like in our mobile apps) to see all the saved songs by a particular artist from within the artist page itself.  Again this will be arriving in an upcoming Desktop release.

Thanks,
Dan

ORIGINAL POST -----

Hi everyone

Dan here from the Desktop team again. I wanted to make another post to once again thank you all for your continued feedback, and also give a little more detail about what we’re doing from here on in.

In short, the new user interface is the future of the Spotify Desktop client, and over the coming weeks we’ll roll out the new UI to all Desktop users. Many of you will have noticed already, but we’ve based the new experience on the more modern and scalable Web Player codebase, and in doing so made both versions more aligned and easier to use than ever before.

Why are we making this change?

We believe in the future of the Desktop platform and want to make sure it can still serve the needs of our users now and into the future. 

The existing Desktop UI codebase became increasingly hard to maintain as time went on, and you may have noticed a growing gap between the Desktop and Mobile apps in some cases. For those of you interested in the technical details, a blog post on the engineering blog is coming soon. The short story, however, is that our desire to continue pushing Desktop forward and bringing new features to it became incompatible with the reality of maintaining the legacy experience.

Meanwhile, we had a Web Player serving similar user needs, but built in a much more modern and scalable way — with a more cohesive Spotify “look & feel”. We therefore resolved to use the Web Player UI code as the basis for both Web and Desktop in the future, and have been spending quite some bringing the Desktop-class features that you’ve come to expect to this shared platform. You’ve had a sneak peek of this as we’ve been testing and building things out, so once again I’d like to thank you for both being a part of it and giving great feedback on this thread that has definitely helped us improve.

Benefits of this approach

Firstly, I’d like to say that this really is a new beginning for the Desktop app. Long-term Desktop users will start to notice more rapid iteration on the app than they’ve seen in the past.

I’d like to call out some of the things in the new Desktop, and also give you a little taste of what’s to come.

Design - We’ve focused on consistency, are using more color to enhance the experience where appropriate, and are making better use of cover art and album images in the app. We're also better aligned to other platforms, put an increased focus on accessibility, interactions and animations, and have tightened up our design language, so it’s more in line with what users have come to expect from Spotify.

Functionality - We’ve brought the functionality that users expect from Desktop, like sorting/filtering, drag & drop, and advanced settings and options, whilst improving areas like playlist creation and curation, profile pages, and more. In many cases these improvements have landed in the Web Player, so the work here has benefited our combined users on both platforms.

Tip! You’ll also find new keyboard shortcuts for many tasks (press ctrl+? to see them) which makes certain actions much faster and easier for any user.

We are also aware that there are a few aspects raised in the community that haven't been fully addressed as part of this update, but items like the Search Bar and discography on artist pages have ultimately been brought closer in line with other Spotify applications. That said, we will continue to iterate on the experience across both platforms moving forward.

The future of Desktop

As mentioned above, this change to the Desktop UI gives us the ability to move faster in bringing you new improvements, features and functionality — so you can expect to see continued improvements to the client in the weeks and months to come.

Once again, I’d like to thank you all for helping us shape the Desktop App over the past year on behalf of everyone here at Spotify, and please do continue to post your feedback and use our Ideas section here in the Community to tell us what you’d like to see and why.

Thanks again,

Dan

[dattonz]

They are not listening. If this idea does not help a developer, a PM, a BA make KPI then it will not be implemented. This "community" only exists so that you complain here rather than social media, so as they don't look bad. They are already moderating the Reddit Spotify forum. The only way to invoke change is with your wallet sadly.

[lblackwelluk]

100 pages of comments in the thread. I'm afraid we are no closer to having release notes/change logs, despite repeated posts and private messages to moderators.

I don't see a way at this time for users to provide helpful feedback when we're not told what's changing and updating. I've worked in IT since 2008, mostly on the tech support end, and honestly I haven't ever repped a product that didn't let its users know what was changing specifically.

I still believe that Spotify provides a product with some features and advantages over other platforms, but (for me) that doesn't outweigh how users have been treated throughout this process.

I've returned, checked back, even used Spotify desktop in free mode (having cancelled my Premium subscription months ago after years of use), and I'm afraid I haven't seen any substantial progress. I do understand needing to change foundational infrastructure, but it needs to be in service of product improvement. The idea that was presented was that this would allow for more rapid and responsive development, but it's been difficult to suss out what those updates are. I believe I've likened this before to a relationship in which one partner says, "If you don't know, then I'm certainly not going to tell you."

That's deeply regrettable. It could be different, but the only way to do that is from Spotify's end.

lblackwelluk

[i4-jela8_fyah]

spot on lblackwelluk

"The idea that was presented was that this would allow for more rapid and responsive development, but it's been difficult to suss out what those updates are."
 

I'm pretty sure that the structure was changed so they could mine more data, and customize ad sales, etc.  there is no way in **bleep** these UI format changes are in service of the users AT ALL. 
if they were truly making any changes in service to the users, they would have laid out a priority list, or even better a road map to future development of the UI, and maybe even addressed the many many obvious issues that most users have pointed out. with absolutely zero pro-active response to user complaints, I think its quite glaring as to what future updates will really be in service to and hint hint, its not us.

having very useful utility in their UI is interesting though, since they've laid themselves bare for any competitor to come in and fill those voids. at this point, given the lackluster service, i gleefully await a rival to come scoop up the dejected.
i think they believe their market share makes them untouchable, but they forget how quickly the market can migrate in a digital world. 

[dmaterialized]

@nyarasha, this is the exact reason I can no longer use Spotify. I've mentioned it before and I'm glad you feel the same. This is a fundamental feature of the product, essential to its use as a music service, and something every web form has done since the 1990s. 

Without this feature I cannot manage the simple task of adding songs to playlists, which makes the product nearly useless. Do people only use five playlists or something?

[Azureless]

The missing filters from the old one are sorely missed. Especially being able to filter out played podcast episodes. I am about ready to move to another player at this point.