New Desktop Experience - your feedback wanted!

[Hubo]

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.

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.

[joshcygnet]

Since the new update my search function no longer returns results for any search using more than one keyword.

e.g searching for "David Bowie" returns 0 results. Searching for "David" returns every "David" result in the given playlist. So keep searches concise and accurate it is now required of me to search for the likely-to-be-least-numerous key word in any given search that I am implementing. So in the example above searching for "David" would provide too many results where searching for "Bowie" is the best chance for me to find "David Bowie" records without having to sift through everything by David Byrne, David Crosby, David Gray, David Axelrod, David Ackles, David Holmes, David Morales, Craig David, The Kinks's "David" Watts and Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-"Da-Vid"a...

[intellix]

Saw on the BliSS instragram that he has a new track in collaboration with Vini Vici available on all major streaming platforms. 

Had a look on Spotify on his Artist page and... it's not there. It's only visible from Vini Vici's page because it's his album. 

It's clear from almost 20 pages of negativity here that it's time to Revert the update until you've had more time to fill in the gaps of features that you've removed. 

[jsannn]

We are your customers Spotify, not your beta testers. If I want to be part of the beta let me choose to do so if I want. Do not force the people to test your client when so much of it is broken or missing. That is not user friendly at all!

[RR179]

Is it possible to add a new song to a playlist and it goes to the bottom of the playlist instead of the top - as it was before?

[tompos82]

Notification of already added songs on a playlist is missing - SKIP or ADD ANYWAY

WHY????

It was such a useful feature that Spotify notified you that this song already existed on the playlist and you had the option to skip or add anyway. 

While discovering the missing of this key feature I had a fight with the fact that now the playlist has a default sorting, and the desktop app does not remember the last setting. I can't wait for you guys to implement the same on Android... (feel the irony) I will go nuts and leave Spotify for sure...

A desktop app has more resources in the background available. This is why it is a desktop app. So one can expect that it has more features than a webplayer or phone app... 

The deeper I get the more complaints I have to write up here. This update is making the desktop app useless.

I hope the development team can accept defeat, count its losses now and return the old version. Updates should be step forward, new features, maybe skin and looks update, but I have never seen an app getting this many features removed as an "update".

Or again: give us an option to change or not. Take notes from Winamp. Even in its last days you had the option to go back, and use classic theme if you wanted.

The fact that this is my third update on the matter I think shows my love to Spotify (which is fading) and the need for a change. Not many user take the time to search for this thread and write a full complaint, and still the negative comments keep piling here. I think it is a good indication that this update is a massive fail.

btw: artist column is missing so now you cannot sort for that... I thought this is a music player app...

But hey I like the play count column on an open album's every song

[diegochiva95]

Hello friends.

I have several problems.
First, I can't change the offline music download directory.
second, spotify doesn't add my local songs from my library.
third, the program feels a bit "unstable", some slow animations and lag.
fourth, the mouse scrolling doesn't work to increase or decrease the volume, something that existed previously and that I used a lot, that change bothers me a bit.

for the moment only that I consider that could be implemented in the next updates.

thanks.

[user-removed]

Oh boy, it's going to be a long one. Before I delve into this, know that I'm typically an album-listener; I prefer to use albums over playlists. That said, here is my experience:

Why must I click trough two tabs of stuff before reaching albums? Why has it been hidden this much? It used to be a shortcut on the left, so why was this removed? To make room for more playlists? Why can't it just be an option to enable and disable which shortcuts you want to see? We had tabs for different stuff because people LISTEN TO DIFFERENT STUFF!

Saw that sort-persistence will be addressed. Please make sure this also applies for albums and other pages, not just playlists. Having to manually change sort every time I look at an album is pretty anoying.

Those card-looking tiles are terrible. Album/playlist art is part of the fun. Why must they be reduced to microscopic tiles? At the very least allow people to change between terrible card-like icons and what it looked like before.

An "attempt" at finally allowing people to download albums have been made. I applaud you for this. It is only ruined by the fact that one still can't listen to albums offline on pc. I guess it is meant for slow internet or something, but I can still listen to playlists offline. I can even listen to downloaded albums on my phone offline, so why is this still not a feature on PC?
Once again, I like album art. I like having the icon in the bottom-left displaying the art. So why is it locked into a little tile that can't be adjusted in size? You could do that in the previous version.

The fullscreen is gone. Why?

Overall, this update has been a big pack of "don't care/meh" and "WHY DID THEY DO THIS?". I think it is important to understand that people are different, and they usually customize these applications to better suit their style and usage. Removing and hiding everything that isn't "front-page playlists" is just straight up annoying. If this is here to stay, I might have to find some other music service, cause this is probably the worst I've seen.

[Natariu]

I support this comment, this new update really mess up my daily listening to Spotify. Might switch to something better.

[tripwired]

Not being able to see the playlist created from Radio is the thing I'm struggling with the most. 

I used to be able to click the album artwork of the currently playing Radio track to see the generated playlist, that's not working in this updated version. Please restore this functionality.

[Sebasty]

Re: unable to search your playlist for artists containing spaces in their name - I found that this can be bypassed by using dashes in place of the spaces, such as "john-coltrane".

I do have to say that finding an album to listen to from artist page is too much work on the new UI and I'll do my album discoveries on the old UI. I can entirely see where tiled view is perfect - when an artist has 172 live albums and I am perhaps looking for something released in 1972 buried in the list, but generally when I am looking for an album, I want to see the tracklist right away as well. Best solution would be making this a choice for users == do you want to see tiles or lists? Here is a switch so choose what you like.

[moluv4nyc]

Agree 100% about Local Files! When I search for a song or an artist, I want to see the Spotify and Local Files results merged. OR, as it was previously, Local Files at top followed by Spotify results. 

[dandrbruhl]

Still getting used to the changes, but I am disappointed I can no longer "grab" a song from my friend feed and add it to a playlist. I like to see what my friends are listening too but don't necessarily want to stop what I'm listening to and pivot to their songs. With the update, to access a song your friend is listening to, you have to click it. Please bring back the song-grab option from the friend-feed!

[ggemeny]

I really really really hate it, I am literally shocked by the changes, and it keeps me wondering, what had made you guys make this decision?

Don't just copy the design of your web player, that's cheating.

A few thoughts:

 - UI is ugly, so ugly, and the font size is unbelievably big, especially those titles; and the line space is so small, it just makes me really uncomfortable. Don't just copy the design of your web player.

- Why I can't dislike songs in my discover weekly playlist? Also please stop putting musicians that I've already followed on this playlist. Don't just copy the design of your web player, THINK.

- profile page: plz let us choose whether we wanna put 'followers' and 'following' on this page, also I always hate you guys mix musicians and users. For example, I am following 517 people and it's a pain in the ass when I need to find a friend I followed. Also if I want to check the musicians I like, I can just check 'my library',  AM I RIGHT? Don't just copy the design of your web player.

I apologize for my tune, yeah we are really angry.

[Elisahhhh]

I just got the new updated desktop version and I'm not happy about it. It looks nice, don't get me wrong, but at what cost?

I miss the search bar severely. It's very annoying that I have to go to the search tab in order to search. But more importantly, why did you guys think that clumping the title and artist together in playlists was a good idea? I tend to sort my library by artist quite often, so that I can easily listen to all the songs I've saved from a single artist. Sometimes I know the artist but have forgotten the name of the track. Sometimes, I just want to see my library sorted by artist. It's crazy that I can sort my library by song length but not by artist.

Losing the ability to sort it the way I want it is so not worth it. And why, why, does the art have to be in the playlist? I don't care! I'll see it when I play the song, but in my playlist, I just want that: a LIST of things to PLAY. I can now only see 10 songs without scrolling. That's nothing. I have 3.400 songs saved, scrolling is a nightmare now.

I might discontinue my Spotify Premium. I'll find something else. I'll buy music like I used to. At least Windows gives me the option to sort however I want and has an always-present search bar.

[skootch]

The new desktop experience removes the ability to sort playlists by most recently added. This is a huge mistake and kills my experience, I enjoy listening to my playlists by most recently added. Why remove such a simple and essential feature??

[lblackwelluk]

Absolutely -- the removal of the Artist sort column in no way contributes to a better navigational experience. it's taking away functionality, not adding to it. Also, the sort settings for playlists will reset as you enter and exit, although I saw that this was added to a fix list for a release on Nov. 30. But for my personal experience, this UI adjustment improves nothing and takes away things I use. I'm really not happy with it and would like to revert ASAP. It took up valuable time for me to contact, research, and exchange messages with Spotify to confirm these weren't glitches and were, oddly enough, on purpose. What seemed most strange though was that the people I connected with at Spotify kept telling me that I needed to reinstall or refresh when quite obviously this was a test that the company knew about. It's a little disturbing that it took so long for them to reluctantly confirm this was a purposeful change.

[Hubo]

Hey @Romain_Jules, thanks for coming to the Spotify Community to post your feedback!

Rest assured, the right folks are reading all your feedback in this thread. As a workaround for now, you can click on: "Start Radio" then head to the Play Queue 

 and select everything by using Ctrl (CMD) + A and drag it to "Create Playlist". That should work here. Let me know if you have any other questions about this New Desktop Experience!

Have a great day,

Hubo

[Hubo]

Hey @rmrui, thanks for posting in this thread!

Hmm, could you tell me a bit more about the 'duplicate track' feature you're referring to? I'd love to pass your feedback about this on to the right folks.

Keep me in loop!

Have a good one,

Hubo

[jerknuts]

Nothing is improved, much is worse.

Big hates:

• Can't sort a playlist by artist. Seriously? That's pretty basic stuff for a music player.
• Can't view a song countdown timer by right-clicking on the song's end time. Why remove a feature like that? Why waste time removing features?
• Lots of wasted space. Results in more scrolling to find what you want. At least make this spacewasting layout be an option rather than a requirement. Why's the entire top third of the screen just showing me the title of a playlist?

[Hubo]

Hey @elliottstarno, welcome to the Spotify Community!

Thanks for sharing your detailed feedback in this thread! The right folks are reading all your feedback here and are still making improvements to this New Desktop Experience.

For point #5, you can use 'Zoom out' in 'View' in the toolbar (or Ctrl/CMD + -) to zoom out a bit. That might be helpful to make things a bit smaller on your screen.

Thanks again for sharing here,

Hubo