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WTF happened to Spotify?

WTF happened to Spotify?

Everything is over sized and there so much wasted space everywhere. The header bar is huge.

The system menu should be next to the logo and no under it, you would win a good 25 px. And whats up with the 10 pixels above and under the search bar.

When I browse my playlist I like to go through songs using the playback buttons at the bottom left and then some songs are louder than others so I adjust the volume right next to it.

Why is it all the way at the right?! Why can't I use CTRL+F anymore in my playlist or anywhere else?

Why can't I drag offline songs from windows explorer into playlists anymore?

Why can't I resize the playlsit columns anymore?

Why can't I access the playback button on the windows taskbar anymore? Same on my mac...
Why can't I edit ID3 tags for local songs anymore?

The UI is complete garbage compared to what it used to be, there's so much empty space everywhere. What's the point of the play icon at the right of tracks. I already know what song is playing since it's highlighted in green and I can just double click the song to play it, that column together with the ... column is completely useless. If I want options for a specific song, I just right click it, just like anything else on Windows.

Sometimes when I open spotify, it re-opens the friend feed even though it was closed on exit.

Also you have a huge header but only 1 third of it is actually grab-able. The title "Spotify Premium" is huge compared to everything else. You get rid of all the apps, yet it still uses musicxmatch for lyrics?
The New Playlist button is as big as the song artwork, title and artist. Either make new playlist smaller or the song info bigger, use the same font size across the app, it looks really inconsistent right now. Most of it is oversized and some is under sized.

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20 Replies

I think you said it all.
Bring us back the former version!!

I can't fathom what they're doing to their program, I really don't get it.

Hey Fellas,

 

 

Also, THE BATTERY DRAIN IS REAL

 

 

I have posted this in another thread on my beliefs; I have a Macbook Pro Mid 2012 (SSD installed & Ram upgrade)

but anyways, if anyone can find a complete release note history for every single spotify version, let me know

 

Read Below if you have time and lets bring attention to a more effiecient Spotify or at least a little button that makes it more efficient for us laptop users

 

 

"

Hey,

 

I noticed that in the lastest version of spotify 1.0.1, the battery was draining heavily

 

I was doing my work at college and looked up and was like gjgghjthtngtngt howd my battery drain so quick?

 

I realized it was the lastest update and been monitoring it on my mac

 

The older versions of spotify were much lighter. I have reverted back to 0.9.15.27 and have saved the installation files because spotfiy when restarted installs the latest edition automatically!!

 

I simply just want all my playlists and songs, i dont need any activity feeds, messages, what's new, whats being heard around the world etc, i just want plain simple with a nice sleek black look. So far im happy at 0.9.15.27 theres easily a 40% more efficiency in this version compared to the lastest.

 

If any spotify developer reads this, please create an option in the lastest versions of spotify that can allow a user to enable a powersaving simplicity mode that just allows access to the playlists and songs in a nice clean sleek black appearance cause that is all most of us want.

 

 

Also, increase your cache, i have increased mine from 2gb to 8gb. This will help ease spotify from using excessive power and wifi to stream tracks when it can rather just keep framents of the song/ most recently played songs on your computer

 

 

Let me know if you do any testing and find any more efficient versions. Im a busy person, so I have no time to look for a clean stable and simple version. If it bother me enough, I will look but i like this version for now. (Energy impact on activity manager 4-6 while playing a song and having spotify in the back while doing your work. With spotify open, and browing the internet I'm at an energy draw of 8.4 watts, which is not bad at all. (I'm a tech freak in a sense that i keep track of how much power my macbook is drawing and its temps/ fan speeds) (Love Macs) 

 

 

Best,

Mv826"

For me as a developer in a marketing agency it's also "confusing" for me what they might think in the developing unit. "Hey what's about doing it completeley different than all the others on ther market. WOW that would be very exciting". Like **bleep** all the well known user experience functionalities...

I hope that they are just experimenting, and after seeing how big mistake they have done, they will bring back the earlier look and feel.

and now the volume bar is on the right side, separated from control buttons like play/pause
this change makes me go crazyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

 

PS: JUST GIVE ME BACK THE OLD UI

I agree I don't like this version at all. There is also the issue that the now playing page in last fm scrobbler does not display the song in now playing anymore. The placement of the volume control is not good on the right. The program seems not to be as resposive and hangs a lot more often with new version.

I'm asking myself the question you've named this string, while jumping up and down screaming about my Spotify apps disappearing. PITCHFORK! I can't believe this actually happened. Plus all the other stuff you've described.

 

Give me Pitchfork back! 

Going by their track record on how often they update their PC app... this client will be the standard for awhile. 

 

 

Ctrl + F pissed me off, if it won't be fixed soon I'll try Google...

wow 0.9.15.27 is like fresh air now. nice layout, apps still working, only 95mb memory usage 🙂

I really hope they fix these issues.  They are jarring enough for me to find this place and create an account today.   Yo spotify! Stop overthinking stuff!  

Yes pitchfork was good. There were a number of other good apps too

They've made the exact same mistake that Tapatalk did a few months ago.  They change the format that everyone knew and loved into something inneficient and bloated.  It resulted in thousands of 1-2 star reviews (roughly 0.1% were higher than that).  The sad part is, they will probably be too proud to revert the changes.  Listening to the community is, to my knowledge, unprecedented.

@kbgrr 

 

CTRL + F will be coming back in a future update. Spotify hasn't given an estimate when it will be coming back though. 

MattSudaSpotify Star
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it got a lot worse and no one has said anything anymore??

Cause Spotify give a fck on it. Why? Because they can!

Unbelievable, why would you guys do this to a perfectly good functioning app, Have your never heard the saying, "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".

I have more issues then I know what to do with it not to mention it's so bad it I can't even navigate to try and sort out any of it, what really makes me sick is it appears all of my playlist are non existent plus when I think of all the money I've paid into this app only for it to be completely turned upside down, I'm gonna kill my account on all my devices @$&%#! I'm telling everybody who i turned on to this app, back when I thought it was so great, to kill their accounts as well and recriut them to spread the word for all to kill your Spotify accounts these nippleheads at Spotify made too much money and they got lazy and f***** off the integrity, they probably sold access to the back doors to the CIA or NSA or some 3 letter agency. This is a sad day no more music not even able to go out with a sad song. Spotify You Suck!

OK Really wth? I posted my final announcement 2 weeks ago that Spotify f***** up the service and that I was killing my account so I logged off all devices and uninstalled that garbage all devices and I had a premium subscription so that means $9.99 a monthly transaction right? Well about 15 minutes ago my credit card company sends me a text alert that a tranaction was attempted for the amount of $14.99....  

I could'nt think who would be trying to use that amount on my card, thank goodness the transaction was declined due to insufficiant funds, but out of curiousity I had to know who would be attempting to obtain such an uncommon amount of funds, so I called my credit card company and they tell me Spotify. wth? Are you kidding me I can not believe this bull**bleep**! Now I must figure out the proper way to get rid of these sleazy, grimey, money grubbing, prison wardens who are trying to tax me for more dough than usual. Wake up everyone and spread the word you should boycott this sorry **bleep** app. Here is an article I found that should give everyone a little more incentive to free themselves from this racket.

                        the worst

                             ^

Spotify, you’re wonderful, but I have to quit


 

About one year ago, I decided to commit to Spotify. I silently chose to leave behind my decade’s worth of MP3s and go all in on streaming. Lugging around my 90GB of music and manually copying MP3s from one device to another had grown tiresome. It’s been a year now, and not a terrible year either. In many ways, it was a fantastic year (the world didn’t even end). But after 400 odd days of streaming an unlimited number of full albums without buying them, creating countless playlists, sending dozens of songs, and playing that music on any device I pleased (for the $10 a month premium fee), I’ve decided I need to quit.

I know what you’re thinking: You’re probably shaking your computer monitor (or iPad) violently asking why I’d possibly want to give up a service that lets you stream as much Lady Gaga, Nickelback, and Smash Mouth as you want?! I mean how can you turn down the ability to listen to Bananarama’s full catalog? These are good questions. Especially considering that I’m listening to The Mowgli’s on Spotify as I type this! But I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite. It won’t be easy and I don’t know where to go – all I know is that I need to get out.

It’s an illusion, Michael

Though its convenience is unmatched, Spotify is designed around an illusion. It’s a lie. Not a public lie, but a lie that we’re all buying into nonetheless. Spotify gives you the illusion that you have a music collection. It lets you import all of your local songs on your computer (in my case, 10,000 or so) as well as all of your iTunes and Windows playlists. Once you’ve let it suck in all of your data, it lets you create your own playlists, which are basically just lists of song names, or data. It gives you authorship over those playlists, control over those playlists, and provides you free access to nearly all of the music you might desire. Not to download, like an MP3 file, but to stream whenever and wherever you want. It sounds great, right?

 

Unfortunately, though you may think you’re getting a free deal as you spend hours building playlists from scratch and Starring songs in your Spotify collection (to save them for later), all you’re really building is a prison. Once you’re in Spotify, you’re trapped. And as I’ve learned in the last year, disobeying the warden can have dire consequences.

A couple months back, I was listening to some downloaded (Spotify calls it “Available offline”) tracks on the subway when I got a peculiar error. Somehow, with no connection and in the depths of the earth beneath NYC, Spotify on my iPhone decided that I had synced my playlists to more than “three devices” and completely purged all 4GB of music I had synced. All of it. Gone. Just gone. Deleted. To say I was shocked and upset would be an understatement. Some users have complained that this is a bug, but it isn’t going away. It’s something Spotify will do if you sync “your” playlists to more than three devices. Happen to own a computer, phone, and tablet? You’ve hit the limit. Don’t download the Spotify app on another device or you’re in for a world of annoyance and a day or two of resyncing.

It’s not just multiple devices that will cause your entire downloaded collection to be erased from a device. If you accidentally leave a device’s Spotify app in Offline mode (or don’t turn your Wi-Fi on) for 20 days, everything on the device will be deleted. This user lost 20GB of music. It’s happened to me, and even our Editor-in-Chief at DT. Not cool.

 

Those are not the only setbacks I’ve incurred. After spending a good long while creating an offline playlist on an iPad a few weeks ago, I connected the tablet back up to Wi-Fi to discover my playlist erased and overwritten with a very old, primitive version of … itself. Then there’s the time Spotify erased all of my Starred tracks, deleting the playlist of songs I told it that I liked and wanted to remember.

Bugs are bugs and I’m sure there are sound technical reasons why these and other issues have occurred. The problem is that these limitations only serve to highlight the real problem with Spotify: It makes you feel like you’re in control and still have a music collection when the reality is that you own and control absolutely nothing. Everything can be, and often is, taken away at a moment’s notice because you’ve broken some rule that you didn’t know existed. When you use Spotify, you’re operating entirely in its walls. Everything works by Spotify’s rules. You can’t even share tracks you own (your MP3s) with a friend if they aren’t approved and part of Spotify’s library. So, in that way, it controls the music that you actually do own as well.

Give us everything, leave with nothing

Spotify demands that you create and build playlists, and encourages you to spend hours doing so, and to share your creations with others. I’ve made dozens of playlists that I’ve shared with different people. With one click of a mouse, Spotify will import and suck in all of your iTunes/Windows playlists and make copies of all of your local music that it can. It literally scans and copies every piece of music you own and every ordered collection of song titles (a playlist) you’ve created in iTunes or Windows. Since Spotify is so friendly with the world in what it imports, you’d think it would allow you to export a list of song names too. Wrong. It does not allow you to remove any of the data you put into it. Want to leave Spotify? You’ll be leaving empty-handed. There’s no playlist export function.

Google Play Music allows you to download complete MP3s of your entire music collection. Amazon MP3 allows you to download songs as often as you’d like. Now I don’t expect to be able to remove actual playable songs from Spotify – because it’s not a service that lets you purchase music. But what it does have an ethical obligation to do is let you export and remove the playlists (ordered lists of song names) in usable formats, including your list of Starred songs. Google allows you to export the data you put into it, and other companies like Facebook have reluctantly included the feature as well. With a service like Spotify, this kind of functionality is absolutely essential if it hopes to remain a major player. Imagine how much of a hassle buying a new phone would be if you couldn’t transfer your phone numbers and contacts from one phone to the other? For people like me, our playlists and music libraries are just as important. When we try out new music services, we want to bring our progress with us.

 

The reason companies don’t let you export is usually because they’re afraid of losing users. Having an open data import and export feature doesn’t let services like Spotify rely on trapping us instead of competing on their own merits. If Spotify began opening up export functionality, other services would begin to do the same and we’d all be a lot happier and sleep with a little more peace of mind.

Will you use Spotify forever?

If not being able to get your data back from Spotify doesn’t sound like a problem, I have a few questions for you:

  • How many music services have you used in the last 10-15 years?
  • Can you see yourself using Spotify for the rest of your natural life?
  • Are you okay forgetting about every piece of music you’re listening to?

Maybe some of you just don’t care about your music collection. If so, Spotify is perfect. **bleep**, Pandora is better. If all music is just an endless radio station to you, then nothing I’m saying will matter to you. But if you form a connection to the music you listen to, then services like Spotify are an amazing development, but a troublesome reality.

Spotify could go out of business at any moment. Apple might buy it tomorrow just to shut it down like it did with Lala a few years ago. We have no idea, yet millions of us are investing tons of time creating playlist art projects that mean a lot to us, but are forever stuck within Spotify’s green and black walls.

 

I knew getting into Spotify that I wouldn’t technically own the free music I streamed, but I created these playlists and Starred these tracks. Spotify owns the actual music I’m streaming, but why does it get to own the lists of songs I create too?

I don’t want to quit Spotify. It’s probably the best music service I’ve ever used. But I value the things I create. The longer I am in Spotify’s ecosystem, the greater my loss will be when it inevitably changes, falls apart, or I decide to leave. Outside of the U.S., Spotify used to sell actual music tracks. Now it doesn’t even do that. Right now, Spotify is a cage, and it’s not a particularly attractive one, either. If I have to live like the Gorillaz at the zoo, at least paint my walls like the jungle.

If most of our music services are indeed headed in the direction of Spotify, the music industry may have bigger problems ahead of it. Single companies like Spotify come and go, it’s inevitable. Our entire music history shouldn’t come and go with them.

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