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!

[kurtisteeno]

WHY IS STARRING AN ENTIRE ALBUM NOT ON THIS LIST??

THAT IS AN ELEMENTARY FUNDAMENTAL FUNCTION THAT YOU IMBECILES TOOK AWAY!!!

WTF!    BRING IT BACK!!!!!!!!!

[Rollo_]

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Richard wrote

We just need to work together in order for the feedback to be dealt with effectively.

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Richard,

I would just like to know why you guys keep taking away desirable features, while adding things that are totally useless.  The album art in playlists, for example.  Why was that removed?  All the 'following' garbage.  Why was that added?

How about some straight answers?

[yellowbuses]

I have been a paying member for some time (Premium).

I dont like the new desktop interface with the light colours.

Why not give us some options/skins?

If you must try new things for the sake of it, at least try it on the free version.

Thanks

[yellowbuses]

A (really) useful change would be to show me what bit rate is used for albums/songs!

There are other players coming so hopefully there will be more choice. I've stayed with Spotify mostly because of Ogg V. encoding which is not bad but as I never know what the quality of streaming is ... you get the idea.

regards

[gigiriva]

to change the main font size:

- close spotify

- go to C:\Users\<name>\AppData\Roaming\Spotify\Data

- open resources.zip

- open skin.xml with notepad

- go to:

<!-- default row that everything uses -->
<font ci="MainlistRow" sel="!light"                                                      color="#dddddd" size="12" shadow="#333333" style="shadow_up" id="mainlistRow" />
<font ci="MainlistRow" sel="light"                                                       color="#1d1d1d" size="12" shadow="none" style="none"/>
<!-- <font ci="MainlistRow" sel="playing,unmatched"                                           color="#7b7b7b" shadow="#2c2c2c" style="shadow_up" />

 - change size="12" to a different number

- close & save

- wait some seconds for resources.zip to be updated

- open spotify

BUT

this changes only the font size, not the space between the rows (this is how it looks with size="9")

so it's quite useless

sorry 😞

[Antoine3323]

Please bring back the Album View List.

I have such a large library of music that it is difficult to sort and browse through without it! It's incredibly frustrating.

[Link006]

Yet another bad update, with nearly none of the changes people complained about in 0.8.8, while introducing a host of other bad changes.  The biggest problem is font size - the font size is now WAY too big.  Chinese characters or not, that change is unacceptable.  If they need their own client, then give them their own client.  Ruining the client for everyone is extremely lazy design.

The white background still sucks and is inconsistent.

Heck, you even managed to screw up your logo with this update.

Spotify, you claim you are listening.  Maybe you are.

But you are not HEARING anything the community has to say.  There's a big difference.

[wim_t]

Please can you reduce the text size and spacing, or at least provide an option where we can choose to do so. The size is completely unnecessary and makes navigating large playlists much slower and more cumbersome. It also means less information can be displayed on screen at once. (OS: Windows 7).

[Yokocapolo]

TRACK NUMBERS AND ALBUM ART HAVE BOLTED!!! Why? Please bring them back, I can't see any reason why they should have been removed.

Finding an album was much easier just looking at the album art. Track numbers are so people don't have to slide their fingers down their computer screens whist they slowly count each track aloud till they find the one they are after. Whoever had the idea to remove track numbers needs to be sacked or be sent to an institution that teaches common sense...no offence.

But at least I haven't had any other issues with 0.9.0.

Yokocapolo 

[Sodium]

Has anybody any answer to the big question: why has been the native code abandoned?

I think that the new client, obviously worse even for those who may work at Spotify, may report more enconomic benefits to the company. But how? I still don't understand it. But it certainly must be that. I have no other explanaiton for such "cool" series of changes since the 0.8.8 version.

[multi]

Thank you spotify for (hopefully) listening us customers

Things made worse in the updates:

- White background on search, album and profile views (Hate this)

- No more find function (CTRL + F) in the artist/album view (Hate this)

- No more release year on the album (Hate this)

- New follower system

  - It's good that you can follow people & artists

  - Cant no longer view who are following my playlists (Hate this)

  - The activity feed looks messy (Hate this)

- New profile is messy, top tracks only shows 5 tracks and I cant even find my own top tracks (Hate this)

- Too big font on the playlists (HATE THIS)

Overall, the new updates have not brought me anything good. I know that people hate change, but the good old spotify interface is more than perfect and does not really need anything new. I would be happy to continue using it and paying for it.

What's most important for me in spotify:

- Dark and simple interface throughout the client, it's easy for eyes and nice looking

- Clear playlist view (setting for font size would be great, the new one is too big)

- The old profile was better

- Top tracks to show all the tracks on someones profile, and it could show more tracks (like top 20 or 25) I have found that this is a great place to discover new tracks from friends with similar taste

- People list on the sidebar was good for easy drag and drop sharing, I havent received anything in my inbox since the people list dissapeared from the right sidebar.

Three simple fixes I hope to see in the future:

- Possibility to choose the dark appearance

- Possibility to choose font size on playlists

- Top tracks more integrated on the profiles, and showing more tracks without having to open it up.

Thank you!

[tjb]

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@Rollo_ wrote:

 All the 'following' garbage.  Why was that added?

---

Following artists was one of the top feature requests previously.  See here.

[user-removed]

Horrible update topic (legend) is terminated (closed) by moderators in Community.

This seems to be now Horrible update thread number 2?

[BigKev57]

This may help some of you with windows who wish to workaround the update and use a previous functioning Spotify client. I downloaded an old version (0.8.5.1356) from here:

 http://www.filehorse.com/download-spotify/11842/  

 (thanks to AbsolutelyNoFB)

and then used this

Go to C:/Users/<Name>/Appdata/Roaming/Spotify

1. Make a new empy text file

2. Name it Spotify_new.exe

3. Right click the file and make the file read only

1. Make a new empty text file

2. Name it Spotify_new.exe.sig

3. Right click the file and make the file read only

Spotify will not be able to update because it can't delete the files, because they are read only, all future upgrades will fail.

This method is easy to use and permanent.

(Many thanks to skomes)

It all seems to work just fine so far. I'm not very computer savvy but managed to work it out. I feel like i've been in a battle of wills. I guess the battle is won but not the war. Hopefully all the messages will have some positive effect.

[PrinceWatercres]

Oh, boy. Noticed something else has been screwed up.

This is one of the few interesting things that I was the ability to go to a playlist or your Library and do a search based on what you're currently sorted by just by using the keyboard.

Just highlight a song in the Library or current playlist by single-clicking on it, then type what you're looking for it. For example, if you're sorted by artist alphabetical order, you can click on a song once to highlight it and then type what you're looking for like you normally would. It's really helped me find songs and artists I want to listen to at the moment really, really quickly, and I use it a lot. Heck, I still use it in 0.8.5 on my netbook!

Well, guess what? Spotify effed it up in 0.9.0. Pressing Space Bar makes the song you're currently listening to pause/play regardless of whether you have anything highlighted or not. Even worse, when you look stuff up this way, Spotify doesn't want to recognize apostrophes, which can appear in song titles and a few artist names.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. Once again, Spotify "fixes" what's not broken.

[Countrykillen]

When clicking on the now playing - I want to get to the now played track, not just the page where the track is listed.

[PrinceWatercres]

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@Countrykillen wrote:

When clicking on the now playing - I want to get to the now played track, not just the page where the track is listed.

---

Wait, are you talking about trying to find where the track you're currently listening to is located in the Library/current playlist? If you're trying to do that, you have to click on the album cover.

[monarchyanarchy]

The increased font in the new update is intolerable. Though there's much more that's irritating to look at, such as the white page for artists, this is something I absolutely can not stand. 

[BigKev57]

Just a little information for the people new to the Spotify community here. If you have come expecting to give feedback and get a quick response and repair then you might as well forget it. I have been involved since the beginning of February when there were 100s of complaints about the previous update (0.8.8). Little or nothing was done with this new update (0.9) to appease the many in that thread that were unhappy. Many there said they have or will cancel their subscriptions exactly as they are saying here. Did it make a difference? Not one iota. My personal opinion is that spotifuggle have a long term plan for their company and are prepared to ride roughshod over their subscribers to get there. I guess they figure that the numbers they will get on board for a new brand of Spotify will outnumber the unhappy ones who will cancel. Will this work? In my opinion it is a very dangerous maneuvre but obviously one the Spotify management feels will benefit them and their investors in the long term. I feel very sorry for the moderators here who are doing their very best to deal with an impossible situation. They are in a lose/lose position. They cannot keep the Spotify customers or their bosses both happy at the same time.

[BigKev57]

Spotifuggle lol A very apt and appropriate typo!!!!