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.

[johnnyhour]

As a user for many years I am amazed that the desktop notifications feature is being removed.

I would love to know the factors which led to this decision, was it based on user feedback? usage statistics?

This lack of this feature is making me re-consider my streaming service.  There are now many ways to transfer my playlists and followed artists to another platform and although it may not be simple, I am prepared to go through some pain in order to get a service which actually makes use of the data I provide.

Finally switching to e-mail notifications sounds like a shift to the dark ages, why on earth would I want to keep hopping between a mail application and a music application? 

I am hugely dissapointed as it appears I backed the wrong horse.

[jvanwestendorp]

Rightly said! What a f-ing poor decision. 

I should state that the notification bell has been working poorly over the last months. Mail notifications are dumb and also have been far from complete. I actually follow quite a few artist and many new releases have not been notified. I've also multiple times scratched my head over the fact that I do get mail notifications but I didn't get a notification via the bell on the same release. E.g., I was out for 2 weeks, I had over 100 mail notifications but just 20 notifications via the bell. Still many new releases of artists I follow are not notified.

I've made comments in the past about notifications but seriously, it has really gone backwards since a year. It used to work pretty flawless and used to be really user friendly. I f-ing don't care about mail notifications. I already get enough sh*t in my inbox. Please, please Spotify wake up and smell the coffee!

Currently I've a family account and I pay for 3 users, I would like to consider to drop this but if you continue pouring out sh*t, I will!

My 2 cents.

[TheVoice]

Sorry Spotify, but if I can't see what new music is being added by my many favourite/followed artists then your service isn't much use to me. Email notifications have never, ever worked for me and push notifications aren't much use on a desktop player. How am I supposed to keep track of what's been added?

If you're working on a completely new way of keeping us informed about new music we actually care about (rather than the popular crap you plaster all over the main screen) you should have that in place and ready now rather than leaving us with less functionality.

I'm utterly disappointed and am on my way to cancel my premium subscription until your "new ways" are ready. It's a good thing for us that there's no shortage of music streaming services offering new user deals these days.

[gareth8]

Ultimately what I think will happen is notifications will be removed completely (they already have for me, in effect; i've never received any email ones). Of course then people will ask what's the point of following artists so they'll solve that particular conundrum by removing the follow button, too.

Wouldn't be surprised if record industry involvement is ultimately behind this. They spunk away hundreds of millions on Spotify; they want you listening to Rihanna and Drake and the like; they *don't* want you listening to the band from the college down the street. Heck, even playlists might bite the dust in the future.

Or maybe I'm just paranoid.

Here's an actual idea for an improvement, Spotify, seeing as you're continuously looking to improve your notification features. All new material from artists you follow is automatically added into a personal playlist, along the lines of Discover Weekly, or what the Companion for Spotify app does.

Have that one on me.

[soosfarm]

What? How did you figure this was a good idea? It is _the_ most used feature for me. Bring it back.

[emrekrpnr]

I can't really think of any logic about this feature drop. I'm feeling bad about myself because all this time I've been paying to people that actually did this.  Why Spotify? I would at least expect an explanation behind this!

[starrynit]

My guess is that it's been discontinued because of the issues many of us have had in recent months.  Instead of fixing it, they've removed it.  

There is no hope that what's still being offered will be a decent replacement.  As can be seen in many other messages, a lot of us have not been receving e-mail messages with notifications (months and months for me, and I have checked settings everywhere multiple times); and we know that push notifications have had multiple issues as well (sometimes I receive them, sometimes not, sometimes they've been incomplete, etc.)

I, too, am feeling bad that I've paid money to a service that clearly doesn't give a hoot about users.  Taking away frequently used features is insulting.  That's on top of the insult of the runaround I've gotten when trying to pursue fixes for the issues, from canned responses to incomplete ones to outright obfuscation.

All of this so baffling and frustrating, and it certainly doesn't make me feel any kind of loyalty to the service. I used to sing praises, now I'm warning people away.  😞

[starrynit]

I don't think notifications and Activity are related - Activity has been specific messages sent by people I follow vs. notifications being additions to followed artists (and, in the past, playlists) .

Activity stopped working within the past couple of weeks for me, and Spotify hasn't addressed it aside from asking me what kinds of messages I would receive there (?!), then completely ignoring my mentions about it when giving me the runaround about notifications.

[daniellemarcee]

this was by far the easiest way to stay on top of new releases by artists I follow. at this point following someone seems like a useless feature, and is one of the reasons I prefer Spotify and pay for it. not cool, Spotify, not cool.

[hans-jürgen]

This seems to be the related idea to vote for bringing desktop notifications back:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Desktop-Bring-back-Notifications-from-followed-Artists/i...

[javiflames]

I have also lost activity feed

[Jeffrey8]

I'll keep it simple. I want my bell back or I will be no longer a spotify user and find another streamservice. Without the bell, spotify is useless to me.

[flagged]

You, Spotify, should adapt the app/plataform to enable more social features.

Follow a Artist and receive easy notifications should be a requirement as "play music".

If you are pushing alerts to end users when there is a new album realease, you are creating more streaming oportunities.

The artists would be more pleased also.

Is there is no notification center you are as good as any other alternatives.

[XsomX]

Also, where is that new feature suggesting new songs based on those in the playlist, which I had like for the last 3 days?

It was great! All suggested songs were totally in my taste.

[pepeh]

The next feature that will be removed is the Play button:

you will have to send an email to the community manager who will transfer it to the dev team, they will push the play button for you

The pause button will also be removed, you just have to quit the app

The interface can therefore simplified, playlist are no more useful, just see in you sent messages.

The volume can be controlled by your device, suppressed

Like this the team can concentrate on the main activity: collect money

No seriously, we like spotify, let me ring my bell...

[jazzman20]

Perhaps they've hired some of the tech school flunk outs from emusic.com.  I quit that site after putting up with years of complete incompetence.

[1164181599]

i never receive an email from spotify and push notifications are a fail as well because they are slow and you can only see the most recent release, not a list of it. how, where, when are you going to take this to the next level?

[rednblu]

I liked your criticism  that the "push to email" displays only the last item and does not display the "entire recemt list".

@1164181599, you might go to the "New Idea" section under the upper left button at >> this link << to suggest that the Spotify developers should consider making the "push to email" notification to re-display all of the recemt "notification items", for example from [the last week].

What do you think?

[StevoMukke]

What is the point in removing essential features of the applications? I don't want to open my email program when checking for new releases (it actually wouldn't help anyway because I unsubscribed from all email notifications).

[1164181599]

@rednblu it's your idea so you do it 😉