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.

[Squeebly-Joe]

This is a terrible idea. What's so hard about having a notification history? I loved having an easily accesble place where I can see all of the latest releases from artists I follow. Please add this feature back in, and while you're at it, add the same thing to the Android app.

[palouse123]

I follow over 700 artists on Spotify.  Also, Spotify is constantly changing availability of albums due to licensing.   Sorting through hundreds of email notifications, or worse, phone notifications just to figure out what is available is a terrible user experience.   This is an absolutely awful decision to remove the notification bell. 

[1164181599]

i follow 3632 users and artists right now, don't know the number of the actual artists but it is a pretty high number too, so i totally agree with you!!!

[GerBata]

It's a shame, a bad decision, we take the most used options for users who follow the news.

I do a radio show and need to hear the news in the app, not in the browser or the mobile application.

In addition, emails with link to the desktop app and the mobile notifiaciones not saved anywhere.

These changes markedly worse service.

[clump]

Notifications in desktop app weren't working for years for me anyway... So this seems like a great solution!

[faktory42]

Thanks for continuing to REMOVE features rather than ADDING things. So many people obviously love this change!

Spotify development is mind-boggling.

[Ninachu]

I was reading this expecting a new type of notification function to be implemented but you're literally just removing it and that's it? What's the point of removing it without any plan of replacing it? Especially when a function a lot of people that follow 100+ artists rely on? I should be able to keep-up-to-date with the artists I follow IN the actual desktop app itself -- not have to look through my phone or email.

You say you're always listening but are you? Was /anyone/ out there complaining about that notification bell? Please add it back.

[juniorstonic]

I pay 120/year so that you can hide my new music notifications?? Don't only think about me, what do the artists think of this?

[aleatorystory]

I don't want email and push notifications. I want to view them manually when I'm listening to music. I don't want them when I'm in a meeting or at the grocery store. I want to view them when I'm listening to music. How do you not understand this? 

Please listen to your community. This feature was great. This feature encouraged us to use your product *more*. You should have expanded its capabilities. Instead, you are taking it away. That makes us angry. This is "How to Lose Subscribers" 101. 

[SecretAgentFrog]

After using Spotify for a couple of years, I only started regularly reading notifications a couple weeks ago. You know why? Because most notifications are people subscribing to your playlists, and I only started getting subscribers a couple weeks ago, when I posted on Reddit. (Spotify doesn't want people to find your playlists if you don't post on social media.) But I loved those notifications for the brief time I got them, because I could look at the playlists of people subscribing to my playlists, and find some stuff of interest there. What I'm saying is that if only a small fraction of users looked at notifications, then it was because of Spotify's stupid policy of not making their playlists findable if they don't publicize outside of Spotify. Spotify should have opened up searching to all playlists rather than getting rid of notifications.

Spotify has bugs from 2013 that remain unfixed, like the radio and "recently played artists". Instead of fixing them, you destroy perfectly good features. WTH?

[Chooga]

I'm not usually one to complain, but if this isn't remedied within the month I'll switch to a different service. There's just no reason for me to subscribe to any music service without artist notifications.

[WafflesUp]

Absolutely the worst decision Spotify could have made.

This is completely unacceptable.

I'll be cancelling my premium subscription at the end of this month and strongly encourage others to do so as well.

[TTFfred]

Is the Spotify PC-client ever going to get some love?

Are the team ever adding new and useful features other than improving device-hopping and a slightly slicker UI?

If it's going this way I wouldn't put it past them to include a trojan in the download just to screw with non-mobile users.

Why is an external community-created plugin needed for something so basic like an EQ or an audio-device manager?

I'm going back to Winamp, physical CD's and .mp3 files for the time being, that's for sure. Sure there's more hassle, but it's worth it over this.

As the current Winamp team can confirm, it's sometimes better not to do anything at all than to fix what isn't broken.

[jw-76]

Really? This seems extremely backward and a bad decision. This was a simple way to find new music.
You've long since removes the notifications for playlist additions so I guess why not follow up with another poor usability choice.

[XsomX]

Ok, I've made up my mind. Today I paid for another month of premium.
It will be the last one if notifications bell doesn't come back.

[mustafaözkan]

where is the dislike button on this website

[M_artyJ]

I want my notifications back or I will switch to another service.

I can't see  why I should pay for this anymore.

Thank you

[Skiifnik]

What is wrong with you guys? You aren't able to fix those 3000 issues Spotify has (which are still present after over a year), you make it worse and worse every update and remove essential features and replace it with absolutely obsolete and idiotic alternatives.

Who the hell wants to receive notifications via Mail? I most certainly not, I'm already fed up with all the other spam. Every darn portal/website/app has notifications so you get them right there. Why would I want that.

For gods sake, the only reason I haven't already switched is because I got massive playlists on Spotify and because of your students discount.

You better rethink your decisions, I rather pay 5 bucks for instead of using this pile of crap any longer... Sorry, but what are you aiming for. If you got some fancy new way to show notifications, then implement it first but don't disable the best available solution, replace it by some outdated approach and ten months later implement your new (probably not even better) solution.

Unbelievable that such a huge company can't even develop an actually working application.

PS: I get push notifications for new releases, but do you really think I have the time to start that track on my phone and switch over to my PC then? You're terribly wrong.

[thellyrem]

Why!? This was one of my most used features! I was already using email notifications but WHY would I want to use those exclusively!?

I can't use push notifications because I don't own a smartphone or tablet that supports spotify.

This change is 100% negative for me and I find it extremely unlikely that I would recommend Spotify to anybody else if this is how you're "developing" it.

[Skiifnik]

The worst part is: I had 25 new releases and no time to go through them. Now I won't ever find out what those were, because I follow way too many artists. Thanks Spotify, cudos to the incompetence.

Re-Enable it fast! It shouldn't hurt you if we can still access them, or get going with your "fancy new system" quickly.