Give us your feedback - 0.9.0

[Richard]

Hey everyone,

Following on from our previous thread on 0.8.8, we've started up this thread to gather feedback from you on 0.9.0.

We want to hear what you love, what you hate, and any other emotions you have towards the app.

You'll find a list of everything that's changed in the app in our release notes here. And we'll be keeping this post updated with the changes we're making, along with where you can give us further feedback.

What we've changed:

1. The app should be a lot quicker now. So if you were affected by any slow behaviour previously, this shouldn't be an issue any more.

2. Clicking anywhere in the Now Playing box, rather than just the album art, will bring you straight to the song. This was reported here.

Where you can give us further feedback with your comments and kudos:

1. Change the white interface [we're currently reaching to users about this directly]

2. Changes to the activity feed -

     i. Bring back the old activity feed

     ii. The Favourites feature

     iii.Greater control of content in the feed: 

3. Bring back the total playlst length:

4. Filter option on artist pages

5. Go back to the old artist layout 

6. Ability to view all Facebook friends in the Follow tab:

7. View all playlist followers: 

8. Block/Remove followers 

9. Separate artists and friends

10. Remove 'who to follow'

11. Revert the font back to the original size (or provide an option to do so)

12. Restore 'View as Album List'

Thanks for all your support. We appreciate that there are a lot of changes going on at the moment and it can be a bumpy road at times. But we're confident that you'll like where we're going.

All your opinions matter and go into making Spotify the best product it can be. Keep it coming!

[miskidomleka]

A summary of my experience with Spotify over the last months. About 10 months of Premium, preceded by 2 or 3 three months of Free, if I remember well.

I looked at features that matter to me. An improvement is scored as +1, whether requested or not. A lack of requested improvement is scored -1. A worsening is scored -2.

-          fix albums that are not gapless even if gapless playback is on: -1 (should be at least -20 if I counted each album separately)

-          fix tagging of classical music: -1 (should be -5 or so due to multiple issues)

-          improve searching classical music: -1

-          stop replacing tracks not provided by the label with tracks of the same piece but played by other artists: +1

-          fix handling of long album lists so that clicking on an album and then on back places me at the same location on the list: +1

-          on multi-soundcard systems, allow choosing which soundcard does Spotify play to: -1

-          fix the problem that Spotify cannot reestablish communication the soundcard after the sound card was reset: -1

-          allow Spotify to play via ASIO and/or WASAPI: -1

-          fix the track remaining/total track time setting being reset after Spotify restart: -1

-          fix the problem when double-clicking on a track starts playback not from the beginning, but a noticeable fraction of second into the track: -1

-          track being played not marked clearly in album view (compared to selected track): -1

-          cache location reset bug: -2

-          jarring white background: -2

-          columns in album view cannot be resized anymore: -2

Balance: -13.

Apple, Amazon, anyone, please build a similar service , I'll switch happily if it is at least a bit better. And it does not seem hard to make something better.

[user-removed]

Dear Spotify:

You're all retarded.

Have a nice day.

[ponyoak]

Local files STILL sync everytme the programme is opened.

Scrobbling to LastFM seems to be broken.

Still no crtl+f function.

Wrong artists stated as 'what you've been listening to"

Oh, and do you still need a Facebook profile to change your Spotify profile picture?

It's a disaster. A perfect product ruined by complete inepitude.

[ephemeross]

This update is the nail in the coffin. I've just uninstalled the client and shall be cancelling my subscription after I post this.

Spotify used to be so good, but now that it's bloated with what all these random people are listening to (I followed a playlist, not a person..) as well as it being so darn slow. I mean seriously, I'm running it off of an SSD and giving it all of my bandwidth, yet it still takes forever and a day to load my searches etc. 

I'm going back to buying music from itunes/pirating stuff & playing it via foobar etc instead. Pandora need to sort themselves out & become global!

[takingbackbenny]

Absolute garbage of an app. The only thing keeping me on Spotify is your catalogue is significantly larger than the competitors, and the fact that I'm now too deep into playlists to move to another streaming service like Rdio, MOG etc. The day your competitors can import playlists and keep songs synced to their own catalogue, I am leaving Spotify. 

I can't wait til you're bought out by Google, Amazon, or someone who has the ability to make an idea better rather than worse.

[olejon]

@takingbackbenny: Well, that's kind of what has happened. Before, Spotify seemed like a "hip" company driven by enthusiasts and geeks with a lot of great ideas. Now, after the US introduction and everything they are largely owned by companies like Goldman Sachs, Coca Cola and major Hollywood labels, which of course only care about money and have no idea on how to create good, fast, clean and good-looking software. They probably think all we want to listen to are Billboard hits, and share everything on social networks.

I would rather say: Bring back the old Spotify

[Gabhan]

---

@takingbackbenny wrote:

Absolute garbage of an app. The only thing keeping me on Spotify is your catalogue is significantly larger than the competitors, and the fact that I'm now too deep into playlists to move to another streaming service like Rdio, MOG etc. The day your competitors can import playlists and keep songs synced to their own catalogue, I am leaving Spotify. 

I can't wait til you're bought out by Google, Amazon, or someone who has the ability to make an idea better rather than worse.

---

Try http::resp.in

[kazaroth]

Hey guys,

I wanted an easy place for my less tech savvy friends to be able to find details of how to revert to older Spotify rather than digging through forum threads.

To that end, I've collated the methods for reverting to old Spotify on both PC and Mac and put some screenshots along with them on my blog.

I've credited the original authors. Feel free to pass this around if you think it's helpful and let me know if it's clear?

Find it here:
http://supraliminal.net/blog/2013/4/21/how-to-revert-back-to-the-older-better-spotify-client

Cheers!

[BigKev57]

@kazaroth: It looks great. I would just like to say that i used the system for windows but i am using 0.8.5.1356 which works just fine. I was not aware there was a version 0.8.7. It is even possible to go back to 0.8.3 as some have and have zero social app features if you want i believe.

[pyramus]

Activity Feed:

I so miss the feature to drag tracks straight onto my favorite friends. This activity feed is completely useless when you don't follow many people. With 500+ followers I'm more the broadcaster instead, and the activity feed only displays my friends I follow when they're listening to something. I would appreciate it if we could "pin" friends in this feed.

Album pages:

- It's really hard to see what year an album is from. The tiny letters in grey below the trackslist are superhard to read. And sometimes the year/label row is not even listed at all.

 - Also the Additional tracks section is quite confusing. I still don't get it, since most of them are exactly the same as the ones in the original tracklist.

[olejon · Accepted solution]

@kazaroth: Looks good! Can you consider adding instructions for downgrading the Linux client as well?

Here are the necessary steps on Ubuntu:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-vMQvA3A7NWS76PvgUmx3eP-qmSNZzMOKgY1DJH8iZw/pub

I can send you some screenshots later.

The more people who downgrades, the more Spotify needs to listen. Therefore, the more web pages that write about the subject, the better.

[kazaroth]

Ooh, interesting.
Ok, I'll see if I can take a look tonight or tomorrow.

You can email me appropriate screenshots to: my username AT gmail.com

[mutantdog]

---

@BigKev57 wrote:

@kazaroth: It looks great. I would just like to say that i used the system for windows but i am using 0.8.5.1356 which works just fine. I was not aware there was a version 0.8.7. It is even possible to go back to 0.8.3 as some have and have zero social app features if you want i believe.

---

Reverting to 0.8.7 seems to create some sort of hybrid whereby the follow tab still exists (in place of people) but doesn't actually function properly, search also brings up the newer white-page results. (edit: this happens if you don't uninstall first, not sure what happens if you do)

0.8.5.1356 is probably the better option since it brings back the old people tab (if you want that which a lot of people seem to) and was also the last official release before the overhaul.

[kazaroth]

I DID uninstall and I think 0.8.7 reverted 'properly' by doing that, but I'll have to check when I get home...

[flyingpeanut]

I am usually pretty good about adapting to change but this is no bueno. Clearly youll add album view back and hopefully reduce the font size or maybe give us the option to. Besides that the top menu is cut off, the search box is smaller and cut off as well. I tried cahnging to different resolutions but no dice. Overall it just isnt good really. 

[xbrett83]

Spent yesterday using 8.5 and I forgot how much more accessible it was. Sad to see how far Spotify's fallen. Please hurry up with Daisy Trent Reznor! 

[krlewis321]

The most annoying thing for me aside from the fact that my sorting options are not being saved anymore is that the numbers indicating the number of songs in my playlists don't change instantly now, but rather take several moments. 

And yeah, the whole thing looks ugly as hell now.

[user-removed]

completely useless piece of ****

hangs up almost everytime when started, had to use force shutdown and try again and hope that it will be working this time...

what the hell happened, it was working just great before, but after these couple of latest updates it's getting worse everytime when new update is released

[user-removed]

Windows XP Desktop  

0.9.0

Since this morning my spotify friend activity ticker now just hangs as either 'loading'  or just doesnt load at all. I did a clean install which was to an earlier version. Everything worked! Then, I was prompted to download a newer version of Spotify, which I did 0.9.0128. Friends activity feed again no longer works with this latest version.

Also noticing that my followers and the people I follow aren't loading correctly. Or, when they do load, says I'm not following someone when I'm and vice versa.

it seems like everytime a glitch goes away, another one pops up. I'm a very patient premium user. I know bugs/glitches happen. This is just getting ridiculas though. Seriously thinking of dropping premium going back to MOG if there isnt any noticeable imporvment soon.

[Utilities]

What the living f*ck happened to Spotify. (a) Opening the app on my incredibly fancy, brand-new MBPr takes too long (and hangs/crashes at the login screen). (b) The layout is hidious, and (c) so is the new 'modern' logo. (d) The text is too big, which is completely unnecessary (at least make it an option). (e) I liked my shortcuts to favourite friends, what did you do?!

I am incredibly disappointed, and with me thousands of other users. I expect an (extensive) apology over email to every user for the way you messed this up: big time. This is absolutely incredible, I can't find words. Stop using us as beta testers.

I'll reconsider my subscription.