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!

[HelloGoodbye]

The 085 fix worked once again.

[user-removed]

If they had disabled the forced updates then my version with the work around stopping the forced update would not have happened. Spotify found a work around to the bogis txt files work around, and installed a new version anyway on me with the work around to stop auto updates.

[nit89ram]

What happened there? Now 0.8.5 seems to work for me (at least for now).
And then I got some 'introduction' guide with 0.8.5 that I haven't seen before. Has the guide been there before?

[Stupify]

They said they disabled it on another thread about OS X 10.5. Seems like Old Mac users have saved us!

[tetsuo76]

It works fine now. Try reinstalling v0.8.5 again.

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@luciantenebrae wrote:

If they had disabled the forced updates then my version with the work around stopping the forced update would not have happened. Spotify found a work around to the bogis txt files work around, and installed a new version anyway on me with the work around to stop auto updates.

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[mutantdog]

Okay, 0.8.5 does appear to be working again without problems. How long this lasts, who knows? Spotify have shown us that they can overcome our little workaround, no doubt they will repeat this again.

[BigKev57]

I managed to use the workaround. Earlier i could not but i tried a few minutes ago and it worked. I am back to 0.8.5 

[mutantdog]

And in the process all my offline playlists have been removed again.

[henrikwils]

I went down all the way to 0.6. Didn't need all the new bloat anyway. Seems to work now.

[user-removed]

Seems to be the issues I got the 8.5 version working, I am at loss of what spotify devs are doing this for. A few days ago I had an issue where my login was not responding correctly took me 4 tries of inputing my login info before the system would let me log in properly. And then today the system took me offline while this new forced update installed. I do not like programs unless it is my anti viruses program updating itself with out at least a confirmation ok on my part. Spotify you could end up with a class action lawsuit forcing software updates without notice to it's customers or at the least allowing the end user given be able to have a system user input confirmation before an update install begins. At least iTunes askes its users before an update begins, but not spotify just install it without confirmation or notice, how nasty of you.

But anyway I am back with a 8.5 version. Until Album view list is back with album art viewable within playlists I will avoid the new version for as long as possible. The follow option does not bother me as I have gotten a few update notices of new releases that way from artists, when a new release was made available. But please dear god bring back the view as album list please. Having the playlists without the album art work makes it insane to keep artists playlist straight even more so with artists who have very large discographies spanning many decades of recording material.

Spotify please stop trying to copy what other streaming services are doing, I do not need spotify to be a carbon clone of iTunes, or an odd slim down version of MOG. I need the spotify that was working under the 8.5 version, with necessary tweaks if needed to fix known issues. I do not need a whole new over hauled version without album art work in playlists which is a feature iTunes forced on it's users with its version 11.0. Kind of curious that spotify would do this same thing as well. Has apple perhaps bought you guys out or what? It is also odd that the playlists look almost like Mog now without the darker color scheme they are using. What they hell gives here.

[Gabhan]

It seems the end is officially upon us.....read this message from Per (Community Moderator)

Glad I've already moved to RDIO - I think many will follow, or move to other services. Interested to hear what service other people choose and why.

[BobsterLobster]

So it doesn't matter at all what we the paying users want, only what Spotify want, and they will 'help' us to achieve this arrogant vision.

I wonder if this customer service is based in Sweden, where Spotify was originally created... I've had the misfortune of living in Sweden for the last few months and have observed that customer service here is probably the worst in the Western World- it's not really in the Swedish culture to care about what your customers want. That kind of attitude is not going to work for the rest of Europe and America.

[user-removed]

Well at least we got some truth about the new version of spotify, now will be continued to be forced into these updates and the old versions will eventually stop working. I guess we will eventually find out if the desktop app will end or be more like what the website version is currently. Nice the way things turn out.

[Gabhan]

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@luciantenebrae wrote:

Well at least we got some truth about the new version of spotify, now will be continued to be forced into these updates and the old versions will eventually stop working. I guess we will eventually find out if the desktop app will end or be more like what the website version is currently. Nice the way things turn out.

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I would say 'hours', or at the very most 'days' by the sounds of it. Such a great product, gone so badly wrong. It's like watching a really slow car crash. You want to look away, but there's a morbid fascination in seeing just how bad it's getting - and going to get.

[user-removed]

Well like I said they could improve the spotify experience by simply doing three things. Bring back the view as album list so cd art is displayed in playlists for easy sorting of cd releases, allow options to adjust of the color skin so the whites can be toned down to grey on the artists pages, so viewing is not so harsh on the eyes sharp grey and sharp white contrasts do not work well, and then allow options for the text displayed for those who do not need larger type for chinese charaters, and allow users to have access in the options for smaller type for playlist sorting. That is it for me my big three issues.

[lapeja]

That´s what happens when Hollywood get the power.

Once upon a long ago Hollywood tried to bann radio...

[DilanG]

I like Rdio because of the way it organizes your music by artist and album, much like how Winamp(my primary local music player) does it. Spotify puts all your music in one jumbled list, which I do not like. I haven't really noticed any less quality from Rdio either like some on here complain about. If you're worried about quality so much return to your FLAC collection, services like this can't really afford the bandwidth to stream lossless codeced music.

[AbsolutelyNoFB]

@Iapeja

That´s what happens when Hollywood get the power.

And here we have it, the essential summary of all the "horrible update" threads.

With sincere apologies to George:

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a Spotify update stamping on your peaceful enjoyment of music — forever."

[dcmargo54]

I just shot off an email to David Pogue at the NY Times. I'm hoping that he'll look into what we're all talking about. I don't what else to do. I'd really hate to leave Spotify, but it looks like that's going to happen for me. I'm hoping that David will at least be curious enough  to check this out. Should he write this up, his influence could make all the difference.

[tjb]

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@Gabhan wrote:

It seems the end is officially upon us.....read this message from Per (Community Moderator)

Glad I've already moved to RDIO - I think many will follow, or move to other services. Interested to hear what service other people choose and why.

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How would Rdio be any different in this situation?  Their app is based on a webpage, so there is no way to use an older version of the app.  If they make a change you don't like, you will be stuck with it.  The Rdio forums looked exactly like this thread when they changed to their all white layout.  Tons of users hated it.  They didn't change back.  People left, or got over it.