Retirement of our Running Feature

[meahtenoha]

Hey everyone, the Spotify Community team here.

We’re here to let you know we will be retiring our Running feature on 26 February 2018.

We always take retiring features in Spotify very seriously. We’re pouring our energy into new ways of creating the best experience for our users.

Of course, you can still workout with Spotify as your Running companion. You can find Running playlists in the Workout section of Browse section.

You can also connect your Spotify running music with an exercise app. Check out our support articles on Nike+ Run Club and Runkeeper for more information.

If you’re interested to learn more about how the app evolves, check out our article about testing and why features change.

Please post here with any questions or feedback you might have. We’ll be sure it reaches the right teams.

Thanks!

[JaimeRivera]

Wow, the one thing that got me hooked on Spotify. Why not offer alternatives. Not this either-or approach? What I liked was a BPM calculator. How hard can it be to keep at least some of the functionality?

[emcollins3]

I encourage folks to drop an email to Spotify's Chief Marketing Officer, Seth Farbman,  to let your voices be heard on this since apparently 481 votes to bring this back, and 600+ comments on the thread where they tried to hide published the announcement, are not enough to help them realize how upset users are. 

EMAIL REMOVED

[Kcvw]

Wow, this is really disappointing and I hope Spotify reconsiders and brings it back. There are many music services available, and the running feature was the thing that set Spotify apart, and convinced me to use them over any other service. Without it, there are lots of other places I can take my money. I also took the advice of the previous poster and emailed the Chief Marketing Officer as well. 

[Marsif]

This is very bad move, running was of the best featured of Spotify. This was one of the main reasons why I kept my subscription. Very sad and very disappointing.

[dcskate0122]

Really don't know why you make such bad move to retire the most important and useful feature. Maybe you think that users like us are so hooked and will not leave Spotify forever. Keep doing such kind of stupid move then u'll see no one care Spotify anymore cuz we already leave and won't subscribe again. 

[Triplebben]

Just cancelled my subscription. Gonna check out deezer, apple music, fit radio. Need a music subscription beyond that of the running feature but the way this has been handled annoys me enough to not want it to be Spotify.

[jonas1973]

I need to find an alternative music service for running. Time consuming and annoying. In the meantime no point in staying with Spotify. I pay 99 SEK per month, next period I will start a free month with Deezer instead.  

[Oslopaul]

I was flying home to Oslo 2 years ago and sat next to and consequently overheard a guy that managed one piece of playlist software for Spotify, and I was shocked at the kind of figures he was throwing around. I am sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with improving ANYTHING on the user-end of Splotchy Fry but is a merger bargaining chip. I did manage to put together a playlist of stuff I liked with a range of 170-180 bpm, and I actually like this better. However, the bull**bleep** PR massage from Spotify should be called out.

[Snommit]

Wow, this is beyond disappointing. And without any real heads up or notification via email. This was the main feature to use your service and what drew me in. Your running choices now are not even close to what you offered through this service. I run at a 190 bpm and as others have stated, anything beyond approximately 5 bpm swing is extremely noticeable and pulls me away from what I’m trying achieve by focusing on the best and keep me in rhythm. You have lost a customer with the removal of this feature. 

[hansvveen]

For me it is inconceivable why you would retire such a strong feature. Bring it back!

[Seleslav]

What is the reason for the removal? This was one of my favourite and most used functions.

I am livid that you actually removed it without any good reason.

And I am long time premium suscriber.

[ollomat]

Very bad !!! That was the main reason for me to order spotify ...

[jacoswart]

OK, so after almost two weeks of making noise, complaining, emailing, tweeting, posting, messaging, I have finally got this email this morning:

*******************************************************************************************

Hello Jaco, Spotify Executive team here, we hope you're doing well. 

We totally understand why you are disappointed when Running retired as it's a feature that's beneficial to you. We can only offer our sincerest apologies for the frustration this has caused and assure you this is done for the betterment of Spotify as a whole.  For various reasons, we cannot share any further information about why this change was made. While we realize this does not provide a direct answer to your question, we hope you understand that it is not always possible to share the cause of some changes happening to Spotify. 

Many thanks for your feedback on this. If there is anything else we can help you with, please don't hesitate to let us know. Have a lovely day, 

Marlon "The only truth is music" - Jack Kerouac Spotify Customer Support Did you know we have an extensive help section on our website? This e-mail (including any attachments) may contain information that is confidential and/or privileged. It is intended only for the recipient(s). If you have reason to believe that you are not the intended recipient of this e-mail, please contact the sender immediately and delete the e-mail from your computer. ref:_00DD0pxIW._500571iV84H:ref

*******************************************************************************************

I will be moving on and stop flogging a dead horse.

Personally, I believe this has to do with Intellectual Property rights or patent either being infringed or sold. The announcement about Spotify IPO came out on the 28th of February, the Running feature was removed on the 26th. Coincidence, I think not.

I will be testing other products and will certainly make a point of updating everyone in here of what I have found and how they are working for me.

It is very unfortunate and has certainly left a sour taste in my mouth. From the original moment I realised it was gone, through to the level of arrogance and way we were all treated like little children. If only they can change the one line that says they are making it better for us (by removing this), I will already feel a great deal better about the whole situation. This was rather patronising and condescending to say the very least.

[pleribus]

Would explain the silence here, but something from the Spotify Executive team is at least confirmation that the scripts that the Twitter help desk are sticking to aren't because they have been left in the dark, but rather they simply can't talk about it.

All very poorly handled by Spotify however.

Time to switch to Apple Music.

[leenbrak]

This was a very good alternative way in my case. In fact, the pain for me was that spotify removed the feature of own running mix. I created a playlist with all my own music (1500 songs), and filtered it by 165 bpm (thats my ideal tempo while running) with this site:

http://sortyourmusic.playlistmachinery.com/index.html

Overwrite the playlist and there it is, my own running playlist. 

[Zeldix]

The last time I came here was to find out why the song lyrics feature was removed. This time I came to find out why the running genre feature is removed.

Why don’t you remove the “LISTEN TO MUSIC” features as well?

Take removing features seriously? Yeah totally right. Not only did you fail to properly communicate to people who don’t frequent forums but mainly use apps, you failed to tell us the justifications for doing so. And by the way, if I do sound entitled, it’s because it is PAID FOR via subscription. 

Give us a reason why should we even stick with you and not look for alternatives?

God damnned disappointing. Time and time again. I guess it’s about time to find a new app/ company that doesn’t suck. 

A very very very very very very disappointed long time Premium Spotify user. 

[Winchester3000]

My guess is, that since Spotify partnered with Nike, one of the Nike's requrements was, that Spotify will remove anything related to running, since Nike is trying to make the world believe, that Nike = running. 

Well, why not, if it brings some benefits, right? You can install free Nike running app, connect it with Spotify, select desired pace and run the world ... . Sounds too good to me. So I decided to do something.

I put the Nike running app and its "Pace" selector to a simple BPM test. What songs does this app serve you to keep your pace? Well, the summary is, that BPM is all over the place. It does not matter what pace you choose, you most likely end up with song around 127 BPM.

I chose different paces, selected Electronic genre and this is what I got:

With pace 9min/km songs had BPMs 122,125, 110, 125, 100 or 122
With pace 8min/km songs had BPMs 120,127, 127, 127, 121 or 120
With pace 7min/km songs had BPMs 116,114, 113, 123, 128 or 124
With pace 6min/km songs had BPMs 127,120, 120, 142, 118 or 125
With pace 4min/km songs had BPMs 120,142, 124, 122, 130 or 155

So Nike running app is NOT an option for me.

[bedov]

Groupon has RockMyRun premium for $13 per year!

https://www.groupon.com/deals/rockmyrun-north-jersey

That's where money from Spotify premium will go. $110 saved / year :D:D:D:D:D

Thanks for bringing this up!

[cianlim]

This feature was the only reason why I started running regularly.  Please reconsider and bring it back!!!! - Cian

[Fenias]

Exactly. The email response from Spotify translates as follows, to me anyway: “Hi. We know that you runners are upset, but we don’t own the Intellectual Property to make that functionality work, so we disabled it and intend to conceal that fact from the user base and potential investors so that we can cash out before we lose all of our subscribers. Please stop making noise about this.”