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New Desktop Experience - your feedback wanted!

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New Desktop Experience - your feedback wanted!

Spotify is testing a new way for you to connect with your music on Desktop. The new desktop experience features an all-new design, streamlined with the Spotify apps on all your devices. 

 

This is a brand-new experience and some parts are still being fine-tuned. Be sure to give feedback with the steps below to let the right folks know what you think could be improved.

 

The other Rock Stars and I got the chance to test the new desktop experience first and now more users will be able to test it out and give their feedback for the team. If you are a passionate Spotify user and would like to join the Rock Star Program and be part of cool experiences like this, then check out this help article.

image.png

 

How do I know if I’m using the New Desktop Experience?

The new desktop experience is not hard to spot with its new design! Your Library looks like this for example:

Why did the app change? 

This test is rolled out to a specific group of users at this moment. It’s not possible to sign up for this right now, but your interest is really appreciated. If you’re interested in testing out new versions of Spotify before everyone else, check this out: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Answers/How-do-I-become-a-Spotify-Beta-tester/ta-p/4551518

 

If you’re looking for more information about how tests work and about how features are released, take a look here: https://support.spotify.com/article/why-am-i-seeing-different-features-than-my-friends/.

 

How to give feedback?

This thread is your go-to destination for asking questions, getting help for issues you may have, as well as to share your impressions and feedback on this new desktop experience. 

 

Keep in mind that pictures can say a thousand words, so if you have any screenshots of something you’d like to share of your experience be sure to post them here as well! The right teams at Spotify take their time to read the posts in this thread and use your feedback to fine-tune this new experience for everyone.

HuboSpotify Star
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So I got the new UI as well, and the below is based on my first glance.

 

+ I like that tracks in my playlist are numbered again. I kind of missed this.

- Unable to Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V a selection of songs into specific spot in the playlist. This makes managing my #promoday playlist very difficult.

- Where is the URI under Share? I can't make small play buttons in here or use stuff like playlistmachinery without it. Lots of sharing options are gone tbh.

- I can't seem to drag and drop a selection of songs either. This is bad. This actually works now. I guess something was not right before.

? I feel a bit confused seeing this blank space:

Sebasty_0-1605886982142.png

as if something's missing. Idk, I'm on Linux. Is it supposed to be an empty space?

 

Similarly freaked out by the following:

Sebasty_1-1605888631337.png

..I also see it fortunately scales with length to fit in one line, like this:

Sebasty_2-1605888723810.png

Liking the less in-your-face font sizes, I will probably rename my playlists to have longer names. : )

 

- Search stashed one extra click away. 😫 I like browsing playlists and then suddenly having an idea of what I want to hear, and then going straight to search. Ctrl + L is a decent shortcut, but we the keyboard players are unfortunately a minority.

- On last version, hitting Esc to take focus off the Search tab took me back to where I was before (a playlist or whatever). Doesn't do that anymore.

+ A popup for keyboard shortcuts is awesome tho! Ctrl + / (but only people with numpad can get it?)

+ I like I can make use of my dropdown menu key when browsing tracks on playlist. While I am very disappointed the Ctrl + Q for queueing the highlighted tracks has not returned, this makes it possible to queue tracks fairly decently.

What happened before was it was intermittently opening two different menus (for artist and for the track).

 

- Storage location cannot be changed anymore. Bad for users who have small SSD for OS and huge hdd for storage. This will mean Spotify will put its huge load of storage (it was 11GB on Windows last time I checked) on the small SSD and clutter up the drive.

- Proxy.... Many users work behind corporate firewalls and using a proxy is their only way to get Spotify work.

 

? browsing the playlist is kinda clunky. I can't fly through it anymore because i'll only see grey boxes and lines instead of names of the tracks and stuff. I can understand why it's slow (the pics), and while I like that there are pictures, I.. am also all in for smooth and fast scrolling experience.

 

I'm also not certain about the touch-screen desktop hybrid user interface. Kind of reminds me the legacy Spotify app for Windows Phone (especially the scrolling playlist part). You seem to have come full circle... : )

SebastySpotify Star
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Plan

Premium

Country

US

Device

PC

Operating System

Windows 10

 

My Question or Issue

The November update took away the ability to dislike songs in Discover Weekly. Please restore.

Yes, we need it again. Also, I marked a song as "Remove from this playlist" in my Android phone but in Windows Desktop version it´s still in the playlist. 

 

Plan

Premium

Country
UK

 

Device

HP Envy (circa 2014)

Operating System

Windows 10

 

My Question or Issue

My Spotify was updated today though I am not sure whether I received this update late as any Google searches for an update through November 2020 returns 0 results and rather many issues I am having seem to relate back to an update rolled out in May 2020.

Since the update I have lost the use of basic command functions such as CTRL C & CTRL V (which I use all of the time when moving multiple songs (selected through either CTRL + left click or SHIFT + left click) from one playlist to another. That is to say CTRL C and CTRL V have no response. Similarly the DELETE key-command no longer functions and to remove songs from a playlist I have to right-click and select "remove song from playlist" which is a frustratingly less fluid & less UI friendly means of achieving the same result.

The "search" function returns no results for any search including more than one word. Searching for "Neil Young" returns no results where searching for "Neil" returns all "Neil" keyword results in any given playlist. Another example being searching for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" returns 0 results where searching for "Symphony" returns all "Symphony" keyword results. This is frustrating to no end.

Lastly: prior to the latest update using a sort function on a playlist - e.g. sorting a playlist by artist - would fix the play order of a playlist to the chosen sort, indefinitely. The playlist would remain sorted by whatever filter choice until manually changed back to custom / title or whatever you so choose. Now when changing a playlist sort order after leaving the playlist to look at a different menu/playlist and returning the the playlist the playlist sort order defaults to custom. Every time. I have over 100 curated playlists that I prefer to be sorted by artist as default, as the majority of these playlists are simply genre-based playlists and are not meant to be listened to in any particular order. Navigating these playlists (which can be 1000s of songs in length) is much easier when sorted by artist. When trying to copy records over from one playlist to another I am now forced to repeatedly change the sort order back from "custom" to "artist" over and over again as every time I select a batch of songs to transfer over to a current / new playlist, once I have moved them and return to the playlist from which I was sourcing music, I have lost my place in the list (returned to the top of the playlist) and the whole sort order has changed from artist (a nice easy alphabetical system) to custom - of which there is no real custom order.

Combining all of the above issues together makes curating playlists very frustrating and non-user friendly. I take no issue with the aesthetic overhaul but some basic functionality / customization has been removed and it is ultimately ruining my user experience outside of simply listening to and enjoying music.

Please help!

Issues:

1) CTRL+C, CTRL+V and DELETE no longer functioning

2) Search functionality broken (can only use one key word or search returns 0 results)

3) Unable to permanently fix a playlists sort order by any filter other than Custom

Hey @polyfrog, thanks for sharing your feedback here!

 

The teams backstage really appreciate your comments here. I've also taken a look and a few points are already going to be implemented soon! Your playlist sorting preference will be saved after the new update of this experience after the 30th of November.

 

Also, the search bar on top of the playlist should help you find a song in the playlist, let me know if that works! Lastly, you should still see: 'Fans also like' (similar artists) and About on the artist pages right above the bottom. Let me know if you see those.

 

Have a good one and thanks again for sharing,

Hubo

 

 

HuboSpotify Star
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Not a fan of this new UI. It feels clunky and cluttered, and basic functionality like copy-pasting songs & sorting by artists seem to have been removed, which is really frustrating. I've also noticed the artists' Discovered On section has been completely removed, which is a major setback for independent playlist curators wanting to know how their playlists compare & attract new followers. Overall, this UI seems like a step backwards, rather than forwards. The key features removed are not offset by the handful of improvements, in my opinion.

Hey @Elgrimm1, thanks for posting your feedback in this thread.

 

You've been a part of the Spotify band for a long time - congrats! Your feedback is really valuable to the teams working and tweaking this experience under-the-hood.

 

About point #3 and #4, those seem to work on my end. Could you try to log out and log back in and see if that helps? Keep me posted!

Have a good one,

Hubo

HuboSpotify Star
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@Dan, your update regarding changes that will be included in the 30th November release are noted, but you don't acknowledge other issues raised in this thread. Can you please provide some feedback on the other things that have been raised? Are they regarded as 'no plans to address', 'roadmapped to look at', etc.

Hey @_40998nld-y5r, thanks for sharing in this thread!

 

This feedback is very useful for the Desktop teams in further shaping this experience! Copy-and-paste functionality in playlists should be working. Could you try to log out and log back in to refresh the app and try this again? That might help here. 

 

Also, you should be able to sort by artist by clicking the 'Title'-column a few times. Let me know if that works!

 

Have a great one and thanks again for sharing your feedback on this new experience,

Hubo

HuboSpotify Star
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Strange, I'm still not able to copy-paste within a playlist.

Your trick for sorting by Artist worked, but it doesn't feel intuitive. Having song name and artist name in the same column feels messy overall.

Does anybody have any news on if the Discovered On section will be added back? I also agree with a comment earlier in this thread about returning to an About tab, rather than having that information displayed at the bottom. The current design feels disrespectful to their brand and personalities, the whole thing feels like an afterthought.

Also experiencing the sorting issue which you marked as issue #3! I always keep my playlists sorted by most recently added so it's very annoying to have to click date added twice every time I open a playlist to get it to that order.

Agreed re. About, it really needs to be at the top of an artist page

Hey @_40998nld-y5r,

 

Hmm, could you try to use 'Crtl/Cmd + C' to copy from a playlist and use 'Crtl/Cmd + V' to paste in another playlist? That should do the trick. 

 

Also, I'll pass your feedback about artist pages, 'Discovered on' and sorting in playlists on to the right folks. Thanks again for sharing that here.

 

Keep me in loop! Have a good one,

Hubo

HuboSpotify Star
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@NickParrotte I agree with your thoughtful review 100%! Fingers crossed Spotify addresses these issues ASAP.

I also want to re-emphasize how ABSURD it is that this update was randomly pushed out to unsuspecting users. This needs to stop immediately! There is no reason not to give users the option when to upgrade or even an advanced warning that a MAJOR update is coming.

Hi, I'm part of the test, and I'm really enjoying that! The UI is so modern and clean, exactly like the web player is! And now we have more features like Friend Activity, different from when Spotify rolled out that a/b test early this year without many Desktop features.

Keep up the good work team, I'm really enjoying the experience!
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I'm missing the "duplicate track" feature on playlists.

The ui looks are okay, but there are a lot of features im personally missing:
- Not more able to hit F2 to edit the name of an playlist

- I use spotify on my vertical monitor and im not able to see the Date Add anymore (on collaborize playlists) (as the width is too small) 
( i really dont care who added that playlist as its me 100% of the time, i just share it to someone else.. so please give me option to organize the tabs i see. I really prefer to see added at date!)

xkuyax_0-1605899912707.png

- the duplicate feature is not working at all, please add this gain!

- local songs decoded in aac still produce music glitches

- I personally dont care what number the song in my playlist has, as in the vertical mode id rather have that space used for something else

- Please give me the option to scale the left playlist explorer as big as i want, as its limited in vertical mode!

 

It looks like I was pushed to the new version and Local files stopped working entirely. Frankly I am a bit annoyed now because that feature has always felt buggy (as if you don't want us to use it) and the latest changes seem transparantly designed as nudges to get more people to give up on in. If that's the case, at least say so! Alternatively, if you intend this to be functionality that is actually useful, please don't keep breaking it. 😐

 

First, you removed their display in the library, which really feels like a senseless change just to annoy users of this feature.I had to go look in Settings and find a new options "Display Local files". How about you set this to on by default if you detect a local files db in the user's profile?

 

Second, they're not actually loaded anymore and renaming the folder, adding a new source, and all the other tricks that we had to regularly go through to keep local files working anyway don't seem to do anything now. 

 

Third, the screenshot shows the "Local files" tab as it is now, with an unhelpful message. I did add sources, I did turn on the feature (and is that a typo), I restarted Spotify — nothing. 

 

Help appreciated. It appears the local files feature is pretty much useless for me right now and I would very much like to go back to the prior version please.

 

Windows 10

version 1.1.46.916.g416cacf1-a

Screenshot 2020-11-20 20.35.40.png

Thanks to @markyparky for posting, you CAN at least sort by Artist, albeit very unintuitive...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Can-t-sort-by-artist-anymore-on-the-NOV-30-2020-upd...

"If you click the button to sort by title three times then it will switch to sorting by artist.
Not very intuitive, but at least it's still possible!"

There is a whole lot of awful in this redesign, and a few things that I actually like or don't mind. 

 

Awful:

 

  1. Not having Artist as it's own column that you can sort by. I know you can click Title three times but how unintuitive is that. No one will get that or know about it. And it doesn't solve the problem. 
  2. Moving the artist(s) underneath the track name in smaller text really degrades them and makes it difficult to see. Like it's some kind of footnote. 
  3. Only being able to search by going to the Search tab? VERY inconvenient and a bad design choice. Search should be available across the whole app no matter where you are. 
  4. No track popularity meter or stream count? That's a big omission for me. 
  5. Things are maybe one notch too large overall. Like we're zoomed in a step at default view. 

What I do like:

 

  1. The app feels snappier and more dynamic in general. 
  2. The friends activity feed seems more accurate, compact and in real-time. 
  3. The larger artwork is nice. 
  4. The feeling and spacing in general feel more modern. 

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