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.

[nthnhlms]

One last thing:

Is there any benefit to following artists anymore?

[XsomX]

It's so ducking frustrating. We pay for Premium and can't do nothing about this because they don't want to listen to us. The same phrases over and over again "small percent of users". So where are you going with Spotify? Where the duck are you going? Cause with everything you do it looks like you want to transform once a groundbreaking idea into ducking radio with different channels (playlists) available.

Why can't you make it optional? Bell could be disabled by default and you can leave an option to turn it on in the settings.

You've got more more important problems to be dealt with. Like e.g. people cheating on family subscription or pirates who set new account every month on different fake credit card number so they use Spotify Premium for free forever. And yet, the bell is the most evil thing and can minish your income.

Duck me.

[rednblu]

                                                    New bugs-- What programming fixes I have to do

How discontinuing Bell Notifications destroys my listening to Spotify new music.

* ReleaseRadar reinjects as contemnible Advertisements the artists and tracks that I have rejected as NeverAgain. The previous FollowButton permitted me to exclude Artists by NotFollowing them-- I could exclude tracks by NotDragging them to my library.

* Hence, to make ReleaseRadar useful, I will have to make my own "programming fixes" to filter out the NeverAgain artists and NeverAgain tracks from what ReleaseRadar gives me.

I am not sure how useful either *ReleaseRadar or *Follow will be-- I Unfollowed the hundred artists that I do not know personally-- Does anybody know of any other good reason to follow an artist any more?-- I can see that ReleaseRadar merely injects unwanted Advertisements from misinterpreted clues in my Followed artists.

But I have found that the WednesdayOrSo run of *ReleaseRadar has been very useful for New Artists, New Albums, and New Tracks-- However, that useful Wednesday run of *ReleaseRadar is over-written by the Friday run of contemnible Advertisements. (laughing) So I have to be quick!

Does anybody have Solutions for finding new music on Spotify?

[gareth8]

---

Rorey wrote:

"Hello everyone. Spotify here."

"We’ve been listening to the feedback in this thread and we’re happy to finally announce Release Radar."

Excellent! In that case Release Radar will be a weekly compilation of every new release by artists you follow. Happy with that!

"Release radar is a personalised playlist that is refreshed every Friday with 1-2 hours of music released over the past few weeks. It contains artists you listen to most, those your follow and has some discoveries based on your recent listening".

Oh. But that's not exactly a weekly compilation of every new release by artists you follow, now is it?

We know many of you are missing the Notification “Bell”. In the context of our user base, it turns out a very small percent of folks actually used the Notification bell feature.

Like they used notification numbers next to playlists, blue dots next to new tracks, view all tracks in folders in one playlist, notification window closing after every view, copy 'n' pasting playlists to a word document, resizing columns, playlist dividers and all the other functionality you took out to 'improve' the program?

"We think you’re going to like Release Radar for staying up to date on new releases."

Well, I follow 5,000+ artists and I would get 100+ notifications weekly. Looking at the Radar and and seeing tracks I've already listened to, ones that were released weeks ago, album tracks and loads of remixes means I can add six tracks to my new releases playlist next week. So thanks for that.

"We’re going to close this thread, as we don’t have plans to bring back the Notification Bell. You can still offer feedback over here. For feedback on the Release Radar feature, please let us know here."

---

[Anamon]

Are we all in some kind of satire? Is it April Fools somewhere?

"We've been listening to the feedback…" — ignoring everything that has been said and then announcing to shut down the means to give further support to the criticism, that isn't listening to feedback. In fact, it's pretty darn close to the exact opposite of it.

I honestly thought that the product management and community relations of Spotify could not sink any lower than they already were, but it appears somebody is trying to prove a point.

Spotify, time to realise that it's the eleventh hour, and something needs to give, soon. And I'm not just talking about this particular issue… browse the forums for once, you might find it illuminating and slightly disconcerting. Also, remind yourselves that issues that affect "only a small percentage" of Spotify users, is still likely to affect several million paying customers in total numbers.

[Andrew_C]

Still extremely annoyed by the removal of this feature. I now have to track all the releases of the artists I follow via email notifications, which is painful.

And to say only a small percentage of users take advantage of it is missing the point (and condescending) – these people are likely to be power users of the app and most companies listen to the people who use their app most heavily.

What I don't understand, and I haven't read this whole thread, is why you still have notifications in the web player, but not the desktop app?? Seems to me this has nothing to do with tech, but rather just a poor design decision.

[cali-tpk]

this is no longer possible

[Amin2646]

Wow Spotify you are so stupid. Who gives a **bleep** if a user uses the bell or not. Was it really hurting you that bad? That's like saying people who don't add music to the general songs playlist, you'll remove it. 

And of course you're going to close this thread. Stupidest thing you have ever done. Been with you since 2012. I will be collecting my playlists and discontinuing my member ship. You are one dumb dumb dumb platform. Removing something that did something by. Notifying me when I wanted it to. There's no point in following. 

This is is like becoming fiends with someone on Facebook and never seeing anything on your timeline. 

Idiots. Effing idiots. 

Tidal or Apple Music it is. You dumb dumb dumb dumb programmers. Idiots. 

[rednblu]

Shall we close this thread before They do?

(laughing)

[FloDer]

pfew! Didn't expect to finally see some movement in here after visiting the thread every few days for months.

To see THAT kind of movement after 71 pages of customer frustration is indeed the worst. Why do they not openly communicate with us?!?!?. I just dont get it. its like they have us and then they have those HUUUUUGE shareholders which are MUCH MUCH MUCH more important so they try to satisfy those instead of us while giving us fake excuses for bs they do.

the thing is, AFAIK we are the one's paying the bills for them. not anybody else. hence its absolutely mindboggling why they dont just give us back that frickin bell. I am at the brink of just calling it quits here on spotify. and i did have patience.

[pinkmoon]

Release Radar launch day stats party!

Matthew Ogle (@flaneur) — August 5, 2016

Seventy four pages of people complaing about this decision. The most replied to topic on Spotify Community. What do you make of these stats, Matthew?

[ankro70]

What an arrogant answer of that guy from spotify!!! I think they have forgotten that their monthly paychecks are coming from us - the premium users!

I follow 200+ well curated playlists and get no notification when new tracks are added. The Release Radar has no benefit for me. Just a senseless autoplaylist.

[makanimike]

You have not been listening at all.

We hate being disenfrachised and being fed edited, editorialized and filtered stuff. We simply want a "dumb", unadulatered list of releases by artists we choose to follow ourselves. A list, an archive that we always have access to.

[pcc]

I just canceled my subscription, because you don't listen to your customers.

[machinemade]

Wow. Release Radar must be the worst solution to a non-existing problem I've ever seen.

Spotify, please. For the love of god. Save yourself the embarrassment and re-enable the notification bell!

[DenisasP]

Good evening.

It's been a long time since I visited this thread last time. I surprised that "no notification" problem is still not solved after few months time and who knows if it will be back.

I will not write nothing new, but I'm one of those premium users who miss  "dekstop notification" feature a lot. It would make life so much easier if spotify could bring it back and let people to choose. 

It so much more dificult to follow your favorite artists and playlists, especialy when I follow around 350 in total. 

In just 1-2 months few of my favorite futures just disapeared: Musixmatch, Dekstop Notifications... who knows what's next. 

Please SPOTIFY, bring it back. I have been suporting you from the begining and I will stay suporting you, but please do not go backwards 😕

[DerMoment1608]

I like the idea of the Release Radar playlist. Really. But only as an additional feature. It still doesn't fulfill all the great things the bell did. Well, not even great things, just the most basic things. Is it so hard to offer a list of every new release of every artist I did choose to follow????? A list that won't vanish after some time. A list without other things mixed in.

Could you at least confirm that all releases are in the Release Radar playlist? (I've 20 songs atm, how many songs do others have?). What's happening with album releases? Do I have all songs in the playlist then? I don't think so. So I'm not really notified about all releases I guess.

Couldn't you just bring the bell back? Can't be that hard. Even if it's true that it wasn't used that much. (Which I can't imagine) So everyone who wants to use it can use it. Really, I don't understand how it must be one thing or the other.

[rednblu]

Oh, Spotify, my love-- You are such a contemnible Cheat-- I can see right through you-- And you take away what I want want want.

This ReleaseRadar is promising me everything, you tell me, and giving me nothing, I tell you. These days, I got more kissable Real "New Releases" from .../user/nytarts than I do from you now. Do you think I am Love's Fool and blind?

This fake ReleaseRadar, yes, gives me some recent Releases-- weeks old-- but Not from the Artists that I either Followed or ListenedTo-- Neither--

You have played the Cheating whine on me, dear Spotify-- You give me only that Pandora RunAround-- Not giving me what I asked for-- You give me "Related Artists" and Recent releases-- weeks old-- Not New-- Not what I asked you For-- You are giving me only Advertisements for something else from somebody else in some Bait-and-Switch game you have in your twisted mind-- Blast you-- At full volume! (I laugh with anger-- and not even in all caps.)

[cp299]

What a terrible answer. No intention of bringing back what is clearly a
popular feature, with a feature which in no way solves the problem or helps
users like myself who want to find out if there are any new releases when I
open the desktop app daily.



This tells me everything I need to know - that it's time to migrate to a
different service (even after having rolled back to 0.9.15.17 just to get
the bell back)

[Shirkhan76]

Hi Spotify

What a shame that you removed the notification bell from the desktop client. I used the notification bell within the web player to keep me up2date for my added artist.

Unfortunately, in most cases if a track is added to a playlist in the web-player the track won't be added at all (no message will be shown or something). 

To use the email notification means that you have to leave the Spotify app and switch to the email app, open the message with the track notification, klick the link track and the app will be switched again to Spotify. Honestly, did you ever tried that? If yes, you should realize that this approach takes tooooooo long and isn’t feasible or user friendly!

I tried the new feature “Release Radar” but I missed a lot of new releases of my assigned artist.

I think it isn’t a big deal, if Spotify bring back the notification bell for those users who love this feature. I wrote something that Spotify want to avoid that users will be spammed with notifications. Should be also no problem to add a new feature section in the settings to activate or deactivate the notification bell.

And why is the notification bell still active in the web-player? For me it makes no sense at all!

Greetz

ShirKhan76