"We welcome your feedback about the new desktop update. The best way to share your feedback is to comment here in this thread."
Man, I really hope u mean that because you have dozens of mostly negative responses here (as well as more unofficial complaints on Reddit, app store reviews, and online forums). Get the memo that this update has, for the most part, NOT BEEN WELL RECEIVED by your users (aka the people who PAY for your services) to try to have a pleasant listening experience, regardless of the platform. It makes no sense that you're trying to make the desktop UI more similar to that of a mobile, TikTok-ized UI. And this is what this new update is eventually trying to get at with all this newly introduced, unsolicited invasive micro-content everywhere, interrupting (at best) or completely removing (at worst) the features and content that are actually of interest to users.
It fails massively.
Not only is it ridiculous to think that a phone UI will fit a computer, but also, this new update is so poorly executed that it makes me wonder if your engineers actually use the application or understand user experience to begin with. It's not so hard to understand. Your users have valued Spotify's clean and tidy appearance, speed, and relatively friendly user interface for years. You've thrown all that down the drain with these new updates. I'd like to particularly focus on this "new queue experience" and the incredibly intrusive "now playing panel" introduced in June last year, both of which replace the useful "friend activity panel" that rests on the right. While the "now playing panel" update came out about a year ago, I believe, UI-wise, it shares a lot in common with the current update, including a ton of overwhelmingly negative feedback that, let it be said, has been completely ignored by Spotify despite their friendly attempts to make u feel heard. See it for yourselves; I've scanned the entire thread and even left a comment myself, and still nothing, not even an acknowledgment: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Desktop-New-quot-Now-Playing-View-quot-sidebar/td-p.... So maybe, just maybe, you can listen to it now again.
Let me just summarize some of the incredibly annoying, frustrating, useless, and redundant aspects of these new things:
- To begin with, these changes are incredibly unfriendly. For years, users have grown used to very useful features in the desktop application: things so small but so convenient that they made the listening, sharing, and playlist-building experience very, very pleasant. Or having an option to minimize or expand the album art at the bottom left corner. Or things like clicking said album art and being directed to the album or playlist the song is currently playing, often showing on the screen the exact position the song is at (which came particularly handy for locating where in a very long playlist or compilation a song came from). I cannot tell you enough how useful I found these features. And in the past year, they're just simply gone, replaced by the "listen now panel" and "expanded queue view" that literally no one asked for... and your team hasn't uttered a word of support or clarified these decisions further, despite your user base's overwhelmingly negative reception. Unfriendly.
- These changes are also completely redundant, especially the "now playing view." There is already a button to access this panel at the bottom right of the screen (the little rectangle with a play triangle next to the lyrics microphone button) ... why have another function (clicking on the album art) that opens the same panel? Even worse, it does so at the expense of the "friend activity" panel most of your users love. Clearly, your engineers missed some basic design principles there. Redundant. Also, keep in mind that we can access pretty much all of the content in the “now playing panel” (i.e., artist info, mech, videos, concert tickets, tour info) by clicking on the artist name link below the album art at the bottom left of the screen. So again, redundant.
- These updates are also buggy/poorly launched. Taking the "now playing panel" as an example again, why have an option in settings that supposedly allows us to disable the feature permanently and then still have this dumb panel appear when we click the album art? It is my understanding that this disabling feature was present when the "now playing panel" was first released almost a year ago. It worked well and allowed folks who didn't like the panel to still have the "old" option to click the album art and go to the corresponding album or playlist the song was in (albeit it was still quite buggy/stubborn for some users). But now that option is completely gone. Clicking on the album art will ALWAYS open the "now playing panel. So, WHY ON EARTH, do you still keep the option to disable this panel on settings if, as things are right now, it’s impossible to disable. Why trick your users like this with a function that now serves no purpose? Additionally, both features, the "now playing panel" and "expanded queue view," have made the UI so slow because of how much content they're trying to get across. The app is more slow, sluggish, and poorly responsive because of it. Buggy/poorly launched features.
- Finally, I think these new features have very questionable design changes. For the “now playing panel,” as it’s been said many times, we don’t like seeing all this content in this tiny column on the right of the screen. I get that u must pay the bills with sponsored info/merch, but at least make these new introductions aesthetically and UI sound. Why does that monetizable content now have to occupy ¼ to half of the panel? This leaves relatively little space for the album and the “about the artist” section of the panel. This latter one is even more frustrating because it holds a relatively large picture of whatever the artist has chosen as a “profile image,” which I think is completely useless. Moreover, it’s succeeded by, I kid you not, 3 lines of text so narrow that there are rarely more than 6 words per line. So, yeah, the “about the artist” section of the “now playing panel” has a useless/redundant photo and 3 lines of text that barely add up to a complete sentence. HOW ON EARTH is that good design… like… honestly? The “new queue experience” feature also suffers from similar limitations. Having the entire queue crammed into the tiny right corner is NOT a good design. Sure, you can see the queue with a tiny album art (useless imo), but you can’t see which album or playlist the song is in or how long the songs are, which are things you could do when the queue was accessed via the large, middle panel of the app. Both pieces of info, I don’t know about y’all, are quite important to me when putting together or modifying queues. If, for some reason, u wanna argue that having the queue on the right while simultaneously having other content in the center pane will help you build a queue by dragging and dropping content from the middle to the right panel… well, let me tell you that’s not the case. Like, logically, this is the only thing I can think about that could justify this ghastly design change, but NO. They didn’t even think of that. Spotify, if you can’t even do that, then restore the option to have the queue appear in the center panel and simply let us toggle between the queue content and the regular content using the queue button. Again, it’s not that hard! Finally, for both the “now playing panel” and the “new queue experience,” activating them automatically replaces the more default useful “friend activity” panel we all love. What’s even more annoying is that closing the “now playing panel” and the “new queue experience” does not automatically restore the “friend activity” panel. Further, the button to restore the “friend activity” panel is at the TOP right, while the buttons to open the “now playing panel” and the “new queue experience” are on the BOTTOM right. I mean… if “friend activity” is not a default anymore and rather something that we have to actively open (such as the “now playing panel” and the “new queue experience”), then wouldn’t it make sense to have all those buttons together in the same place? Like, if these three things are now basically under the same new category, “things u can add to your right,” why aren’t the buttons to open them in the same area? Just saying… Again, questionable design choices.
Sorry for the long post, but it’s just perplexing how seemingly so little thought went into some of the most basic aspects of these two new features. And yes, perhaps we took the old Spotify with its cool subtle features for granted, but suddenly having them gone has made UI much less enjoyable and, yes, **bleep** off a lot of us. But we are voicing that. We are giving you the feedback you so nicely request and yet choose to ignore. If you haven’t done so in almost a year (ahem, “now playing panel”), please do so now!
Thanks
PS: For reference, here are the official Spotify support threads as of today on these two (and, perhaps most importantly, Spotify's ghosting of each of them)
– The "Now playing panel" original thread is that I've linked above in the main text. It was opened in June 2023 and has 230+ feedback comments, most of them negative. No intervention from Spotify other than to clarify punctual things to a confused user at the very beginning of the thread.
- A Live Ideas thread for the "new queue experience:" https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Return-expanded-queue-view-not-only-sidebar-for-desktop-.... Started 3 weeks ago, has over 50 comments, 250+ upvotes, most of them agreeing that the old queue view was better. No comments from Spotify.
- A help thread for the "new queue experience: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Why-was-the-queue-moved-to-the-right-instead-of-the.... Started 3 weeks ago, has over 80 comments, most of them agreeing that the old queue view was better. No comments from Spotify.
