Hello Spotify & Spotify Community,
I am a longtime user of Spotify (I have playlists dating to 2011) and I have become increasingly dissatisfied with your service. To be sure, I still like Spotify for my daily use and will continue to do so; as time goes on, however, my goodwill towards your company is decreasing. I will go over some reasons why.
1) This Forum.
This is poorly designed, opaque, and disappointing. I did not even know how to post to it and spent 10 minute trying to do so. A 10-year old should be able to post to your forum swiftly and without any difficulty. I am 20 years old and have been posting to various forums since I was 10, yet the design (powered by Lithium, apparently) of this one is lacking and frustrating. All of the most concerning questions that have led me (as a last resort) to this forum have ended in disappointment. I will concede that usually the disappointment is very clear: Someone, sometimes a Spotify representative, acknowledges the very problem and their lack of inclination to do anything about it. There are, no doubt, reasons for this within the company that we should not be privy to. However, this pattern has, over the many years I have come to this forum, increasingly created the impression that Spotify does not care deeply enough about its users.
2) Your service.
There simply isn't enough features that ought to be there. I am not contesting that another service is doing better, but, after this many years, I expect that there be a way to see who is following your playlists. I expect a "Copy Playlist" button. I expect that there be a way to customize your "Public Playlists" independently of your playlists on the lefthand side; the organization of your most current and unrefined music should be independent of the organization of your finalized and well-constructed music. In fact, some features have been removed from your service without explanation. For a company of your size, this is unacceptable and I cannot fathom why. Again, I can fathom there being a "why," but not the actual reason itself. This lack of transparency regarding this aspect of your product leads me to my third point--
3) Your image.
I appreciate the simple and effective aesthetic of Spotify. You go to some lengths to keep things at a manageable level, and, for that, I am grateful. But this carefully maintained corporate image is beginning to crumble. The promotion of hype-generating features as opposed to functional ones makes sense: this is what the average, low-intensity user wants. The reduction in usability of the free version, which happened years ago, still irks me in the sense that you started at one level and increased the barriers to use. Finally, as gatekeepers of music taste to the world, my interpretation of your focus has been a gradual movement towards big money as you grow and take more market share. I'm thinking of Scorpion and Kamikaze.
Thank you for reading this essay. I wish to keep my criticisms respectful but strong. I have saved this and intend to reproduce it until I receive a satisfactory answer. Something beyond the expected "apologize and brush me aside" that I've come to expect from browsing this forum. I still have great respect for you, Spotify--music is such an important part of my life, and nearly every bit of that journey has been with your service--but I perceive a general directional shift that is debasing this product I've loved so much. Perhaps casual users may not be so perceptive of these faults, (and I'm sure you're aware of exactly how willing we are to take action) but there is a not-insignificant well of anger and dissatisfaction growing by the day that you would be foolish to ignore. Thank you very much for your time, and I hope to see a response.
Best wishes,
Lardarius
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random