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!

[davidyork]

This is my first forum post on Spotify, despite having been a Spotify user for years. But I can't sit here quietly any more - please please please sort out the line height/padding for playlists that you have just changed.

Why not offer a range of viewing options such as compact, wide etc. Services like Yahoo! mail offer this type of choice. 

Also, I am not a fan of the artist pages being white.

D.

[clemsen]

Hi,

although it has been said numerous times i would like to emphasize:

Give your users an option to change the font size and line spacing. I know that for certain languages more spacing is needed; why not increase the spacing only when needed?

This is also my first post here and wont be the last until there is an option 🙂

Clemsen

[martindines]

This has been brought up countless times and seems to be being ignored by Spotify devs..

We need Retina support. The application is almost unusable on a retina device. Fonts are unreadable which is not acceptable to paying customers

[Leon]

Please bring back View as Album List.

[eSheep]

1) Please revert change to font size and padding or allow us to change it via prefs.

2) Please revert change to font size and padding or allow us to change it via prefs.

3) Please revert change to font size and padding or allow us to change it via prefs.

4) Also it would be nice to be able to completely remove/disable all the social networking "spam" from Spotify but I guess that won't ever happen.. 😞

Regards,

eSheep

[drsolaris]

Please, please, please add an option for font size, or to only use the new scheme for Chinese characters. There's a reason I have a 1080 monitor, so I can fit more things on the screen. At the minute, this reminds me of a tablet layout.

The new layout feels extremely claustrophobic. I always do my best to stick with new versions and attempt to see improvements, but I'm unsubscribing and using grooveshark until this is fixed. Genuinely awful update.

[CMR]

I just can't fathom why someone thought this whole update thing was a good idea.

-The white colour is ugly and clashes with the grey/black borders it is not attractive or enjoyable  to look at. I know a lot of people preferred the darker colour scheme/

-There is so much wasted space on the artist pages and personal pages, the space isn't used to its full potential.

-The font is too large and feels like I'm reading from a children's book (though I think its great Spotify is becoming available to others from different countries.)

-There is still no time stamp on the activity feed so I don't know when someone listened to a song.

-People's profile pictures aren't on the activity feed but the garish album art is, I personally enjoyed seeing people's pictures more.

-For me, at least, (when creating a new playlist this morning) it kept being slow and taking a few seconds to start a song.

-I thought I was paying for no advertising? I keep being badgered to 'follow' people

-I miss the old activity feed, it was a really good feature that I enjoyed and didn't need fixing.

-My starred playlist keeps being hidden.

-I'm being followed by an ex I had removed and blocked from facebook. Who now (upon inspection) is following my boyfriend too. Fantastic.

-There is no indication of the duration of a playlist, which was always a useful feature which I used for timekeeping before having to leave the house

-Spotify is focusing too much on 'following' people, this is a feature that I detest and would never pay for.

-I have never seen such poor customer service, I'm referring here to the lack of response on the public forums.

-I keep getting notifications for when a friend joins spotify, this is irritating and if I had the old activity feed I would already know.

-'Following' turns it into a popularity contest (certainly between my age group and peers).

These are all I can think of for now.

This is just so frustrating, Spotify really took a step back on this.

[merten]

Like most people, it takes a lot for me to start complaining about a service I used to love unconditionally (and paid for happily for many years). But the last two big updates have just been terrible.

The artist view with its white background and the massive waste of space was already abominable. I can't understand how anyone in his right mind could have come up with such a bad idea, let alone a designer.

But when I updated to 0.9 yesterday, I felt downright insulted. The bold font is not only disgusting to look at (OS X 10.8), it also makes makes my eyes hurt. Spotify's current design makes the early version of Windows Media Player look nice in comparison.

I hope you take the community's feedback seriously and do something about it. These are easy fixes, just a few design changes. But those changes make all the difference.

[drsolaris]

I've just been thinking about this a bit more, and it's becoming very apparent that automatic updating is probably the only major con of the system. Spotify have already taken my money this month for a product I paid for as it was, then the product gets changed in a way that I don't like, and there's seemingly no way to get a refund (just unsubscribe). The only way I see of fixing this is to support old versions until a very small amount of people are left using them.

I have been using Spotify for years without ever seeing a true down side, but this is seriously made me consider going back to the days where I can purchase my own music and use a player that I like.

[camembert]

It is, for me, literally unusable. It's caning one of my processors and completely unresponsive (I've had it open for an hour in case this was just a first time start-up thing). The new version is a horrible piece of software even when it works, but it doesn't work.

The old version worked. The old version was almost perfect. It used to be that when software was updated, it was to improve something - add features, or improve performance, or fix bugs. I have the feeling that these updates are more about making things easier for developers. I could accept this if you were paying me to use the client, but since I am paying you, it's hard to swallow.

I've used Spotify for years. I wish I still could.

[rhodesy22]

I got all excited when a saw the new logo but no...still no Retina support.

[sirreblet]

Please bring back View as Album List.

Going back to 0.8.5 and look for Spotify alternatives while you guys sort out of this mess...

[BigKev57]

Do not hold your breathe that anytime soon any of your requests, comments or complaints will be acted upon guys. Spotify are just merrily continuing along their own route. The thread for "horrible update 0.8.8" ran for over two months with 100s of comments just like in this thread. End result? Update 0.9 (lmfao) with next to zero of the comments, requests and complaints acted upon. You the paying subscriber are now the product that Spotify are selling to investors. They have little or no interest in your needs. This thread is just to mollify you. I am not even convinced that the moderators or support are even Spotify employees but just a sub-contracted company employed to give you pat answers and mollify you into acceptance of their unknown future plans. I suggest if you have the time that you go read the thread "horrible update 0.8.8" which the moderators shut down rather than re-titling and adding the comments from this thread too. Probably because the close to 200 pages and 1000+ comments and complaints are an embarrasment to them. If you wish to downgrade to a working version try here http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Horrible-update-0-8-8/m-p/280204/highligh...

[SunSearcher]

The Logo looks nice. Everything else so much so worse.

[marcuss]

The decission to close the other thread is a big middle finger to anyone who tried to voice a complaint about the changes.
Now it will look like only a handful of people have a problem, since not everyone is going to take the time to retype their comments and the old thread will disapear to the last page.

Good P.R. with new users, terrible for old users and their word of mouth advertisement. I know that I personaly brought at least 5 users to spotify that will be joining me when we find a good alternative. I'm guessing most old users have convinced some of their friends to join spotify as well and will convince them again about your competitor.


I'm done, every time I start up spotify I now get frustrated and I'd rather give my money to a company that makes the experience a more enjoyable one. Thanks for a great 3 years. Good luck with the very hard competition you are creating for yourself in the future.


P.S. just for completeness for new people reading this thread, take a look at the old thread.
http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Horrible-update-0-8-8/
If you have an issue, it's probably in one of it's 191 pages of complaints.

[Richard]

---

@BigKev57 wrote:

I am not even convinced that the moderators or support are even Spotify employees but just a sub-contracted company employed to give you pat answers and mollify you into acceptance of their unknown future plans. I suggest if you have the time that you go read the thread "horrible update 0.8.8" which the moderators shut down rather than re-titling and adding the comments from this thread too. Probably because the close to 200 pages and 1000+ comments and complaints are an embarrasment to them. If you wish to downgrade to a working version try here http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Horrible-update-0-8-8/m-p/280204/highligh...

---

To clarify, anyone you see with the green name tag (such as myself) is an official Spotify employee. Community superusers do not work for the company but are also here to help and remain in close touch with the mods.

It's our job to help you get the best support possible. We're not looking to make things difficult or "mollify" you.

We just need to work together in order for the feedback to be dealt with effectively. We locked the previous thread to make sure we're getting feedback on the very latest release, rather than 0.8.8. We closed it with a post detailing all the feedback we'd received from you - and we've posted this same information on the first page of this thread.

We'll keep that updated with the new feedback from everyone and let you know the changes we're making as a result.

I know it requires a little faith in us, but we're on your side here. A lot of changes are going on right now and with your help we can make sure the best possible experience is preserved for everyone.

Thanks! We really do appreciate it.

[marcuss]

Richard, with all the respect I can muster.

The "faith in you" boat, sailed a few very bad design, moderation and support communication decisions earlier.

[yadis]

I only miss one thing: The summary of the length of the playlist. I create lists for my training and it's crucial that I know the length of the play list.

Otherwhise I have no major conplains. I can see you're doing a lot of work right now, just keep those updates coming and we'll see where it lands. Keep up the work!

[Blam]

---

@CamillaRose wrote:

I just can't fathom why someone thought this whole update thing was a good idea.

-The white colour is ugly and clashes with the grey/black borders it is not attractive or enjoyable  to look at. I know a lot of people preferred the darker colour scheme/

-There is so much wasted space on the artist pages and personal pages, the space isn't used to its full potential.

-The font is too large and feels like I'm reading from a children's book (though I think its great Spotify is becoming available to others from different countries.)

-There is still no time stamp on the activity feed so I don't know when someone listened to a song.

-People's profile pictures aren't on the activity feed but the garish album art is, I personally enjoyed seeing people's pictures more.

-For me, at least, (when creating a new playlist this morning) it kept being slow and taking a few seconds to start a song.

-I thought I was paying for no advertising? I keep being badgered to 'follow' people

-I miss the old activity feed, it was a really good feature that I enjoyed and didn't need fixing.

-My starred playlist keeps being hidden.

-I'm being followed by an ex I had removed and blocked from facebook. Who now (upon inspection) is following my boyfriend too. Fantastic.

-There is no indication of the duration of a playlist, which was always a useful feature which I used for timekeeping before having to leave the house

-Spotify is focusing too much on 'following' people, this is a feature that I detest and would never pay for.

-I have never seen such poor customer service, I'm referring here to the lack of response on the public forums.

-I keep getting notifications for when a friend joins spotify, this is irritating and if I had the old activity feed I would already know.

-'Following' turns it into a popularity contest (certainly between my age group and peers).

These are all I can think of for now.

This is just so frustrating, Spotify really took a step back on this.

---

Yes, thanks for taking the time to point out exactly what is wrong with these new updates.

I just hope they listen, there was nothing wrong with the old spotify layout, and making them worse to add a follow feature just really seems stupid to me.

[hans-jürgen]

I was updated tomorrow morning to 0.9.0 and like it so far, it really seems to be quicker on startup and also when using it. As mentioned before, I don't mind the light-grey backgrounds on artist, album and search pages, as I am used to that look from other streaming services and have adjusted my monitor settings to that look. And I even like the bigger font for the tracks listed, looks similar to the web player now. Congrats by the way for expanding to Hongkong and other countries which need the additional font space for their languages.

I think closing the old thread and giving links in the final posting to current ideas is OK, as it helps sorting out the confusion about which version the individual user actually has who is seeking for help. Could you give more information about the distribution of the web player clone which only some users seem to get and why they are not informed that there is a native desktop client, too, and how they could download that version instead?