Desktop: Jam now available

[MattSuda]

Spotify is bringing Jam to the desktop app! 🥳 🖥️ 💻

Now you can start or join a listening party with your friends, family, colleagues, and classmates, with the Spotify desktop app in addition to the mobile app.

Although you can listen on your own, Jam in the desktop app offers you the ability to share a synced listening experience in real time with other people remotely or in person. For those people who like to listen when they are working, studying, or relaxing, this is a great way to socialize at the same time. The Jam experience is a much better option than just sharing links to songs or playlists with other people.

Let's Jam! Jam is now rolling out to Premium users using the desktop app.

Jam experience overview:

• Start a Jam: To start a Jam in the desktop app, right click on a song or playlist and select the "Start a Jam" option from the menu. You can also start a Jam by bringing up the same right click menu in the Now Playing View or the Queue in the right sidebar.

• Invite people to the Jam: Once you start a Jam, the Queue will open up in the right sidebar. Other people can participate in the Jam from anywhere in the world remotely. Click on the "Invite" button to copy a link to share with other people. Or, the people with you in person can scan the QR code. Spotify users with Premium will be able to join your Jam remotely and listen on their own audio setup and Spotify users (Free and Premium) will be able join with you in person and listen on your speakers. Free users can join an in person Jam using the mobile app.
  
  
• Join a Jam: You can join a Jam in the desktop app via a link shared by someone else. When you click to open a Jam invite link in your web browser, you should see a pop up that allows you to open the link in the Spotify desktop app. Once you open the link in the desktop app, you will see a pop up to join the Jam.
  
  
• Shared playback in real time: Everyone will experience a synced listening session in real time. Any participant can add to the Queue. Any participant can also change what is playing during the Jam session by clicking on a song, playlist, album, or podcast from anywhere in the app. The Jam host has the option to turn off the ability for the other participants to change what's playing, but they will still be able to add to the Queue. The Queue can be edited at any time.

The new Queue experience:

As part of this update, the Queue now opens up in the right sidebar. The Queue now being in the right sidebar allows you to browse content in the main area of the app while keeping an eye on what's playing next or the current Jam that you are participating in. When you are participating in a Jam, the Jam options will appear at the top of the Queue in the right sidebar. You can switch back to the Now Playing View or Friend Activity feed at any time by pressing the buttons that open them.

You can read more info about Jam in the Spotify Newsroom post:

➜ Spotify Unveils Jam, a New, Personalized Way to Listen With Your Entire Squad

You can get more help with using Jam with the support article:

➜ Spotify Support Article: Jam

FAQ:

This section will answer your frequently asked questions and will be updated with the latest answers.

I don't see the option to start or join a Jam when using the Web Player in the web browser? Is Jam supported in the Web Player?

• Unfortunately, the Jam experience is currently only available in the desktop app for Premium users. You can download the desktop app here if your device is supported. When you click to open a Jam invite link in your web browser, you should see a pop up that allows you to open the link in the Spotify desktop app. Once you open the link in the desktop app, you will see a pop up to join the Jam.

I don't see the "Add songs" button in the Queue to go to the Group Recommendations section like I can in the mobile app. Is this available in the desktop app?

• The "Add songs" button in the Queue to go to Group Recommendations is currently not available in the desktop app. Participants can use the mobile app to add Group Recommendations to the Queue.

Feedback:

Where can I give my feedback about the Jam experience and Queue sidebar in the desktop app?

• We welcome your feedback about the new desktop update. The best way to share your feedback is to comment here in this thread.

[oq-io]

Anyones having BIG issues with latency in the new app?

It appears to be running dog-like...I should probably not even use the verb 'run'!

[ItsMaster]

Please let our followings/friends to join without needing link. (maybe an approve pop up to us)
It would be great to have such feature directly or indirectly

[Chuck2389]

Spotify is so poorly run that it's almost comical. Too bad the joke is on us users. 😞

Matt "I'm not a Spotify employee." Suda. I'm not sure what his position is, other than bearer of bad news? Hey everyone, we regretfully inform you that we have added another new feature that you'll "love".

Based on previous experience, the best we can hope for is that in 3 months Matt will respond about how Spotify values our feedback and is evaluating every post we make. Not that they are changing anything. Not that they will consult their fanbase before making more changes. Never anything like that.

I'm throwing my voice in the ring that this is a stupid change and should be reverted. I'm doing so knowing that it won't change anything, but whatever...

[Tymokx]

Please for the love of god stop changing the UI every other month, or at least fire and hire someone whos better at making these UI decisions.  OR make most of these UI changes have a toggleable option rather then having it forced.  If im in my queue there is no reason for me to be browsing the main page, I would rather have my queue up and center.  I also enjoyed having both the queue and now playing up at the same time, unfortunately your decision making thought it would be better to force it to only having one open at a time.  Idc about the jam as this is a MUSIC APP and not a social app, but changing the queue to the squished mini sidebar is an atrocious UI choice.  Please rethink these choices.  -a very very annoyed user whos just trying to get by in life.

[Lonk]

I am glad Jam has now been brought to desktop, but I must echo the complaints about the queue and Recently Played now being locked to a sidebar. I can understand when it would be nice to have it as a sidebar, but it is quite annoying to force it to be one as not only is it worse for general readability, it is now mutually exclusive with the now playing panel, which I'm sure for many viewing the queue with the Now Playing panel was a constant state in the app. Simply the option to focus the queue as a main page/center panel would surely solve most people's issue with the change.

[crawford13x]

As of 2 AM Central on Saturday, March 16- this thread has over 20 comments totaling over 150 likes denouncing the new format and asking to give users the option to go back to a full screen queue. ATTENTION SPOTIFY:  Listen to your users. Accommodate those who want the full screen queue, including the album and song length.

Pandora is now offering a free 60 day trial so I'll be going to that. If after those two months Spotify allows the full screen queue I'll sign back up.

[BringBackOldQueue]

Please change the queue back or give us the option to decide ourselfs 😕

[unsubbedtrashapp]

absolutely horrible update. i dont know how you guys do it but every time you change the ui it just gets worse and worse. why make it show less info, no track length or album names in queue? less songs shown at once because absolutely humongous album art? im done with this company and unsubbing.

[LR_S3]

Can you stop making the UI of your app objectively worse and more annoying? Why is the queue squeezed in on the right? It's inconvenient, and it isn't like it looks nice, either. Just some incredibly stupid changes.

No one asked for this.

[veryunhappy]

I absolutely hate this change. I just want to see what's in my queue. Why would you want most of the screen space filled with stuff that has nothing to do with what's playing now??? This is honestly putting me off using spotify at all. Completely bizarre decision.

[pastasås]

This UI change is probably the worst to date on the pc client. Managing my queue is now incredibly unintuitive as you cant directly see nor click on the album or see the track length. The fact that you were able to have the "now playing" card AND the queue visible at the same time was way more pleasant in terms of user experience.

At least make it a feature to be able to toggle between the UI options for the queue.

[Bun-Bun]

Stop harassing users with ads for this. Stop all ads entirely.

I do not pay for a premium service to be force fed ads.

[invisiblePants]

Yep, as everyone else has said, I have no reason to not have both the queue and now playing views up at the same time. Having them only toggle between each other while permanently showing some other screen in the centre that isn't actually being used is a tedious change.

Ideal scenario would be to have the centre and right sections customisable and interchangeable, so anything could be displayed on either.

[3DSCarnaje]

First Discord on mobile, now spotify on PC. Can you guys please stop screwing with your good, established UIs and making them worse? As everyone else has said, Queue and now playing at the same time was great, now it's awful having to swap between them constantly if I want to see that info. Like, at least the lyrics tab still opens in the middle, but now that I've mentioned it you'll probably change that too.

TLDR, being more like tiktok isn't a good thing. EVER. Stop letting the tiktok users of the company make the decisions.

[3DSCarnaje]

Want to add to my comment real quick and say, I will never use the jam feature. If I ever want to listen to music with a friend, I'm going on discord, screensharing youtube, and playing it there. Not this garbage. Even then, I rarely (Like maybe once so far my whole life) actually listen to music with my friends online. If I want to share a song, I send them the youtube link and that's it.

[H4nn1]

As almost everyone else has said, the new update makes interacting with the queue very unintuitive and the overall layout kind of ugly. It also makes it impossible to interact with multiple songs in the queue at once - which takes away one of the best features the desktop app had compared to the mobile app: being able to copy all of the songs left in the queue to a playlist in two clicks. It's also annoying to have to choose between the friends tab, now playing and the queue. 

I honestly don't get why spotify can't just make the layout customisable. It would fix so many issues a lot of users have. Just let me decide where I would like my queue to be displayed.

[TheCyberWrecker]

Has Spotify responded to any of the feedback about the queue change at all? Fairly curious if they have said anything yet on if they will change it back or something, Doubt they will but just wanted to check lol. 

Y'all have an amazing day

[lasamoma]

The option does not appear on Desktop app:

I am using the version for MacOs Silicon and I had an alert saying that jam is now available but the option to start a jam doesn't even appear on the app.

[TJT73]

The web player is still functioning the previous way. For now!

[JonClayman]

+1 on this
Please spotify, why do you force things on your users instead of just making the placement of things optional. Maybe I like searching in the sidebar? Programs like blender have had several views you can move to wherever you want them for years. It should not be too hard...