Removal of desktop notifications

[Rorey]

On May 15th, we will be turning off the in-app notifications "bell" on desktop. We are continuously working to improve and simplify our notifications features, and this change will allow us to shift our focus to email and push notifications. We are also working on completely new ways of keeping you up-to-date with new album releases, helping you discover new music, and know what your friends are up to.

To make sure you have your email and push notifications set up the way you'd like, check out the steps here.

Please share any feedback you have here in the Community. We're listening, and will pass it all on to the team.

[filipealvaro]

The Bell on my Imac app was the only place I could see the new musics from bands or playlists I follow.

Since a couple of weeks the bell is gonne.

Strangly, only on my office Imac but not on mac Mac Book Pro at home..

I unintalled the app and intalled it again but nothing changed. Still miss the bell sign and so new music releases.

Any solution?

Thanks!

F. Alvaro

[filipealvaro]

The Bell on my Imac app was the only place I could see the new releases from bands or playlists I follow.

Since a couple of weeks the bell is gonne.

Strangly, only on my office Imac but not on mac Mac Book Pro at home..

I unintalled the app and intalled it again but nothing changed. Still miss the bell sign and so new releases.

Any solution?

Thanks!

F. Alvaro

[user-removed]

@Rorey

I know your post only pertains to the desktop version. But can you please clarify if this will also be happening on the mobile versions of Spotify?

I only ask because I still have the Bell icon, but haven't received any in-app notifications for about a month.

[gareth8]

Essential reading for all members of the Spotify Product Development Team:

So yet more vital functionality removed then, to add to everything else that's vanished over the past couple of years? Another slap in the face for the power users.

[brunotaurinho]

That is probably the worst decision spotify ever made.

[titomb345]

Hey, eat **bleep** Spotify Devs. You are literally worse than cancer.

[titomb345]

Cancelled Spotify Premium this morning after 4 years. Best decision ever! Google Play Music>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> TIdal > Spotify

[virtuaxe]

Wow seriously, what the hell!? WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET OUT OF BETA MODE AND GET YOUR CRAP TOGETHER!? So many bugs and poorly thought out design and decisions. My patience is wearing thin

[sparkinspace]

It seems that the only purpose of my account here on the Spotify forums is to log in once a year to complain about something this team has removed. And lo and behold, one of my most used functions of Spotify was completely missing this morning!

Last time it was the friends activity feed, how long before that came back?

I woke up with 11 emails this morning about new songs, I opened Spotify to listen to them, which is usually just one click on the notification bell and another to start the new song that I want to play. Instead, I have to pull up my email account and go from there, for every song.

I pay a lot of money for this service, as does everyone else here. The last thing we should be getting for our money is less than the month before.

If there are no plans to bring this back, I will definitely be exploring other music services. A blow like this every year is enough to make me not miss losing 5 years of my music history. As primarily a desktop user, I couldn't care less about push notifications on my phone. Those clear after a glance while the notification section of the app served as my go-to place each time I start Spotify. Its own list that auto-updated based on the new music from artists I like.

I'd like a response from the team as to whether or not this function is coming back.

[deandob]

Dumb move. This was a useful feature and not everyone lives on their phones for listening to music.

I work in the software industry and constantly scratch my head about how spotify does software development, it seems there is very little community engagement on ideas to get feedback. This is the third instance now where the desktop client has gone backwards in features:

1) Removal of 3rd party add-ins (eg. equalizer, visualizations)

2) Removal of option to turn off volume leveling (which reduced the audio quality). Later reinstated but took a while & lots of complaints.

3) Now removal of in-app notifications which means it is now not as easy to know when your favourite artists have released new material available on spotify.

Do the Spotify developer team ever consider the end user impact when making these changes? Especially when the feature is already in the application (ie. likely more work to actually remove it rather than just keep it there)?

[PJEC]

Given the feedback you've received I highly suggest you rethink that decision.

[PJEC]

NEWS FLASH: Email notifications are so 2003...

[FloDer]

Ahoy there! Please. Give me back my bell. As it's the only way I use to get to the new music the artists I follow create. Thank you ❤️

[wesjuhdabomb]

Well if the windows phone app would have notifications... But it doesn't have. So now I have to re-enable e-mails to get these notifications with all side-effects as mentioned in previous posts.

It was working great so why remove it?

[gareth8]

---

@brunotaurinho wrote:

That is probably the worst decision spotify ever made.

---

Agreed. And there have been a few over the last couple of years!

Does anybody know if they're being removed from the web player, too? Better than nothing, but that's a pain in the butt to use because it closes every single time you click on a song, meaning you have to reopen it, then it doesn't remember where you'd previously scrolled to, which when you have 100+ notifications to wade through at a time is extremely frustrating.

I seriously question how long the development team spend actually using the program. If they did spend any reasonable time on it then ridiculous decisions like this would never happen.

[gareth8]

By the way, I'd also recommend firing an email off to support@spotify.com. You get a better response than the chatbots of @spotifycares, and afterwards you get a 'Tell us how we did' survey., which is an opportunity to affect their performance metrics. You never know; it might focus a few minds.

[gareth8]

Oh and confirmation, just in case you weren't sure, that notifications are being removed from the Web Player, too.

[Zephyr]

---

@Rorey wrote:

On May 15th, we will be turning off the in-app notifications "bell" on desktop. We are continuously working to improve and simplify our notifications features, and this change will allow us to shift our focus to email and push notifications. We are also working on completely new ways of keeping you up-to-date with new album releases, helping you discover new music, and know what your friends are up to.

To make sure you have your email and push notifications set up the way you'd like, check out the steps here.

Please share any feedback you have here in the Community. We're listening, and will pass it all on to the team.

---

Okay, so by "simplifying" you mean removing an already simple and logic in-app notification center, in favor of email (really?) and push (whatever that means on desktop)? For who is this now simpler and improved?

How will we be kept up to date until that "new way" is deployed? How long will that take? How many notifications will we miss? Here's a hint: complete that work and tell us what it is and let us use it. Then, and only then, would it be a good time to replace an old feature with a new and tested one.

Christ, you really need some new product managers. Remove used feature -> limbo -> implement different feature = disastrous user experience.

[user-removed]

I use the Notification (Bell) feature in the Desktop app everyday.  

Its removal is very frustrating as there is no way for me to get the information it provided in any other way inside of the desktop app.  

I do not, and will not, use push/e-mail notifications and simply want to be able to see and access a feed of recent activity of artisits/playlists I follow within the desktop app.  

Please bring this feature back.  As a long time Premium user, this change feels like loing features.  

The feature was not broke, why take it away?  If you want to move to a notification based system fine, but why does that have to mean you remove functinality in the app?  

As a 6+ hour daily user, I feel very uncomfrotable with sitting down to use an application that is constanlty getting trimmed of features I use.  

Please reconsider removal of this feature.  I want it back.