[Desktop] Lost Features, no friend tab, etc.

[mcoutlook]

Since a few days i lost a few features which i would like to have back.

Plan

Premium

Country

Austria

Device

Lenovo Laptop

Operating System

Windows 10

My Question or Issue

My Desktop Version got updated all of a sudden and now i got a completely different look. I don't have the friend activity bar on the right side, i can't change my playlists covers or description. I can't even see my own profile like before on the top right. It is like the phone version because i honestly can't customize anything anymore.

Same on the Web player. I downloaded an older version already, which helps, but it updates itself automatically and gets back to the new(?) design. Is there anyone with the same issues or with a solution?

Thanks.

[Zeebarf]

What kind of "internal discussion" do you have? Is this so hard to just make it optional testing? What's even the point of A/B testing a BROKEN client where half of features don't work yet present in the menu, where albums and playlists dissappear after you close them, where there's no functionality and customisation? Just to make people switch back to Apple Music?

[robgreen]

Reading our comments but not actually taking any action on what is clearly not a well received set of updates, and I appreciate that not all users are paying users, however premium users are paying for this service.

Please communicate to us and actually share the findings of your test, let us know whether you intend to keep going down this route or whether you've received sufficient feedback to reconsider.

Your answers are vague and similar to politicians "we hear you", great, but what action are you considering taking?

Please let us know because those of us that happen to have premium subscriptions can vote with our wallets for this feature instead, if you want to proceed we can simply unsubscribe and stop funding it 🙂

[user-removed]

A quick return to dev team and application managers and you can avoid this "production incident" as I call it. Adding a switch/option/doing a rollback could avoid all this drama...
I am discussing with the support by mail and I guess they are flooded with these demands...

[mcoutlook]

What are your teams discussing?

How much longer you should let us wait?

What are you even testing? A downgraded app - that's what it seems like to us.

And if not - give us information on the tested features. Just like patch notes in games, etc..

Anyways, thanks for the information. Little information is still better than none.

[mcoutlook]

@ Goodman

The easiest solution would be to just make testing optional. 

If you have a new version give some users an information on the screen and let them decide if they want to test it. There are many people out there who want to do that. 

Most important - also let them switch back to the old UI if it's not good like this one. 

Then, let them give a feedback on the new update and what you can improve.

Just like many others companies do it. Simple, optional beta testing.

[mcoutlook]

assuming that this is indeed a test and not a huge mistake from you...

[koski]

can someone tell me what all these people and teams that I keep being told about are doing this whole time. I've had the **bleep** version of the app for at least a month now and from what I've seen there are people that have had it for way longer. What are all these employees doing about it? How much discussion do you need to accept all this negative feedback? Why were we the guinea pigs for this "test"? I was a very heavy user of the service for a long time and I am assuming a lot of these other people on this forum are too, judging from the fact that they took the time to come and discuss here in the first place. Why pick us and not some of the millions of FREE user that depend less on the smooth operation of the service? and why not let us opt- out? Anyways I am so sick of this silence and empty statements you've lost me as a customer already, fix or not. Burn it down

[ItzhakHotz]

They're not doing anything.
And even if they're doing something, they're clearly doing it wrong.

[Stefanole]

I don't understand why my desktop app has been hobbled. It sounds like Spotify don't give a f*ck since this has been going on for months. The app is useless if I cannot select large groups of songs in my playlists with shift-click. I have uninstalled it and will consider canceling my subscription.

[snup]

@mcoutlook I am 100% sure now, after I denied all write permissions for the Update folder it does not update anymore! I am running version 1.1.22.633.g1bab253a

[snup]

@Goodman dude I will never update Sptify again, you guys **bleep**ed with my trust in you, get lost in the web player

[jiri-san]

Hi Goodman,
I think I understand what is happening here and why (developing so many different versions of the application must be insane), however, what kind of experiment is this? I don't see how there can be any A/B measurement of how the features are used, as the embedded web player doesn't do half of things the actual desktop app does, some of the most essential features are missing, there is no feedback dialog, no way to ask to be reverted back while giving reasons why, or to give some overal review of the app *in the damn app* (jeez, it looks like the actual React frontend loaded into Electron shell, you can do some stupid feedback form in that in one day tops).

This whole thing seems (pardon my conspiracy theorist hat here, but you gave me all the reasons to wear it) like experiment in how many people will complain, and if the loses caused by them cancelling the subscriptions are lower than expenses of having so many dev teams, then let it be it, switch everyone to embedded web player and save the resources (hopefully for further development of the web player).

And I wouldn't be opposing that in general, but the embedded web player just doesn't fulfill the minimum viable product requirements for music streaming service's default player. There are things missing, which even the damn Google-we are going to kill it soon-Play Music web player have (like YOU CAN SELECT MULTIPLE SONGS AT ONCE  AND MOVE THEM AROUND).

There is also the little problem, of alienating the kind of power users you want to have on your side, because these are the people other people ask "Which streaming service I should use?", and I doubt that any of the people in this thread is going to reply "Spotify" any time soon.

I switched to Spotify quite recently, wanting to move my whole family to it. Now I feel kind of stupid, because instead of mature product I could use on my main platform (desktop PC) I get some alpha version which just doesn't cut it for me.

OK, end of rant, I accidentally closed Spotify, so I need to reinstall it from exe file I downloaded from some moderately suspicious download site.

Have a nice day!

[Zeebarf]

I really wish I can give you more than one like**bleep** is ridiculous, I already paid to move my whole library of music from another music streaming service to Spotify and now I regret it because I'll most surely won't use it anytime soon nor buy premium

[user-removed]

This is frankly terrible.
While other streaming services gain new features all the time, Spotify is removing basic things like local files, sorting, filtering, playlist covers, multi select, ...

I am fine with the idea of using the webplayer for a desktop app but ALL the functionality should be there before you force a half baked product on to paying customers, without any easy button to opt-out.

If this will not get reverted soon with an apology I will be going to another streaming service with our family.

[poedameron]

Can anyone at Spotify answer this very straightforward question?

How does this update benefit me as a paying customer?

Fascinated to hear your answer. Thanks.

[Katerina · Accepted solution]

Hey there folks,

We received valuable feedback during recent weeks and we are very grateful for that. 

The team will now take the time to analyze it together with the ideas proposed by the Community.

In the upcoming weeks, you'll continue to notice changes to the Desktop client - try restarting or logging out periodically to see these changes. At Spotify, we’re always testing new ways of improving the experience for our users. As with any of our tests, some could potentially make its way onto Spotify, while others are mainly aimed at capturing valuable insights.

Please continue to create Ideas and vote in the Community, this really helps us to understand what's most important to you and your listening experience.

[lenxo81]

Automatic reply. This guys are officially the worst company in the world

[user-removed]

I am now terrorized as I have the notification of a new available update.

@Katerina is this normal to be that afraid for an awesome test deleting every interesting and useful functionabilities ?

[avmane]

I just logged in and out. It's back to normal!! Weird sort of thing to test... 

[bunchykarter]

bs ... nothing has changed , we are tired of this nonsense