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.

[lblackwelluk]

I know we’ve asked if a representative from Spotify could please make a post to help explain the benefits and rationale behind these extensive changes. But in the meantime, could the Rock Star users, those who initially posted some enthusiastic remarks about having gotten to demo the UI first, explain more fully what they loved.

From looking at the thread, those users are @EthanS1 @Hubo @dinomight . From their posts, they described the new UI as getting “a little makeover” and that “sorting and filter features are functional” and it’s “pretty cool with lots of changes which are here and will get you to your music, right here, right now which is what Spotify’s all about.”

Could the Rock Star users who posted please give us more extensive answers about was it that you loved about the new update? Did you like the new position of the search bar? Specifically, did you encounter the dozens of problems and missing features that most of us are reporting? What was it you loved so much that it outweighed mentioning those issues? What workarounds did you discover that counteracted an issue?

I don’t have as much experience and information as the Rock Star users do who posted earlier in the thread, and I would very much like their thoughts and input. I'm probably missing valuable changes and things that I would love, but they're overshadowed at the moment by other issues. I don't want to misunderstand the possible improvements if they could please share what those are for them. Thank you.

[chnacat]

i agree. i hate it.  what used to be easy to find is now mysteriously hidden.  what used to take a single click now takes multiple.  i'd say that it is a UI change for the much much worse..

[Gigametheus]

You should have to resort to this yes, but its the only way, Spotify is being really obtuse here, and this workaround works fine as long as you public all your playlists and search up your old account and add all of em to your new account

[CL415]

Absolutely hate it. Absolutely.

- Scrollbars are a literal pain in the ass, my mouse lacks a wheel so I am forced to use them and I simply can't believe that they lack up and down buttons at their ends to go up or down slowly. I have to move the square box every time but in any decent sized playlist that means that the slightest move gets you 6 songs up or down, really frustrating if you want to listen to one specific one and don't want to use the search option. This is even worse in the playlists selector, as it is even choppier, I follow lots of playlists and one really little move means maybe 10 playlists up or down, it's simply ridiculous.

- Album artwork from the current song is shown really small, and if you want to enlarge it overlays over your playlists, only having those two sizes. Before, one could just adjust it to the size desired as arrows appeared on its border letting you resize.

- One used to be able to resize the friends and left side menus so they occupied more or less space with an arrow utility similar to the one in the artwork. Now I can't either.

- In the old version, if I was listening to a song in a playlist or album or whatever, clicking on the artwork made me return to the specific place that song occupied in the album or playlist, while being in other "pages". That was really convenient as one could maybe click on an artist that was listening to from a certain song in a playlist, add maybe some more songs from that one artist to the queue and then click and instantly return to the specific place the song that is being streamed occupies in the playlist, being able to keep the order of that playlist. Now it just gets you to the playlist/artist/album top, and taking into account how much tiring is the scroll function to look for the particular song you're listening among all the rest, it's certainly frustrating.

- Maybe it's just my impression but I get the feeling that now the way songs are displayed means one sees a smaller quantity on the screen now, having to scroll more. No need to tell you again what I think about scrolling.

- Depending on the position of the song, if you rightclick to add it to a playlist, the popup list can sometimes end outside the screen, meaning there's playlists that won't show and can't be selected.

- When scrolling, most of the songs don't load so you have to stop to see in what point in your playlist you are, while the old version "rendered" all of them perfectly.

- Only problem I had with the old version: it lagged and used +900 MB of RAM just for listening to a playlist; well, new one lags even more!

I am seriously considering switching to other services and just end up all this frustration.

Really, really disappointed. Definitely will switch to other services if this is not fixed.

[adambh]

They probably test on people from mental hospital or just folks who don't even bother with actual User Experience, just the, u know "cool new stuff".

Someone should make a petition, the majority of Desktop users are already **bleep** with the new update, the thread itself is a good example of the amount of angry people who have made accounts here just to give feedback and express anger towards having no actual opt-in choice.

The Android app UI/UX isn't that great either tbh, it used to be much better before but with the new huge tiles it has become bulky, no one cared though because we're only listening via phone when we're outside and not focused much on the design much but just to get the music playing.

As noticed earlier, someone even mentioned having their constructive feedback post deleted for no reason.

Spotify, you have changed! Is this what happens when you're not afraid of competition? Do you really not have enough competition in the market?

Now that Spotify has created a new UI, I have planned up an open source self-hosted solution using Go for the backend and VueJS for the frontend, the interface is set to look like the old, comfortable UI/UX of Spotify and probably even better with the help of UI/UX input the community can provide.

Now that I know how to workaround the UI change, here's how both of them look in comparison.

Thanks!

[User9109]

Where is the rating of the songs? This is very necessary.

[xaoobbx]

New spotify is S**T. I would really love to have older version. Everytime I launch spotify I need to sort playlists to the lastest song.. EVERY TIME. LIKE WHAT? Spotify HELLO? Its 2020. Why I can't sort by artist name anymore??? Additionaly why I can't hide right side bar (with the facebook) while I DON'T want to connect and never will? Just get this **bleep** away from my screen. Pathetic.

[xaoobbx]

Why the order of playlist is NOT saved? Why do I need to sort it every f****ing time when I open spotify? Why I can't sort by artist anymore? Why am I forced to see that right sidebar with facebook login if I DON'T want to use it anyway. Just get this away from my screen. New layout and UX is **bleep**.

@adambh 

Do it. Share it. I might even donate some money for your hard work!

[xaoobbx]

EDIT: can be deleted.

[killustration]

1) The Home

• Massively over-cluttered. I liked having things broken out somewhat as it were previously.  There are 25+ Playlists shown here on album artwork or images that I cannot chose to scale up / down, or change to a listed view.
  • A solution would be to have this as a fly out menu for each category being showed, allowing you to massively clean up the home experience without removing too much content.
• The first category on home is "For fans of X Artist" rather than what I'd be listening to, why is that? I like Spotify's reccomendations for me, not a random artist stuck to the top shoehorning me in to that one genre.
• More discovery on the home (below your own "Made for") but shown differently. Fly-out, something, anything but this.

2) Search

• Put the god damned search bar back on the top and always present. Why in gods name was this changed?
• Search results feel WAY off, I am getting such obscure results that it feels like something is broken.
• The search menu is much much cleaner than home - this is more how the home should look, not the search!!

3) Playlists

• Noticed the now playing animation is gone, why? Was a nice little thing.
• Plays / rating is also gone, why? We like to see information too. .
• I preferred the artist / album having it's own column to sort by. Seems nonsensical to have that changed.
  • Why not have the option to show / hide a few options to give users some choice?
• Why does liked songs have a big-ole heart icon, and every other playlist is nestled away on the tiny ass sidebar. Having tiny thumbs here may look nice, but I just don't like the inconsistency and favouritism to "Liked Songs"

4) Podcasts

• These are still a mess in search / discovery. It is near impossible to find and discover new podcasts and I am constantly bombarded by the same shitty political podcasts that I don't want to listen to.

Overall I feel like Spicefy still took better care of a nice clean UI than an entire internal design team, which is not intended to be rude but if a massively popular skin for your player is released - you should embrace it and not push it away.

Better yet, give users the options to make changes. It is saddening to see Spotify push away the community by blocking and breaking the tools used to accomplish those things that users want.

[Hidster]

-

[user-removed]

Hello generally  i like the new look of spotify well done but i have some suggestions.

1. Re-enable the "hide this song/ don't like song artist cause when we don't like a song or artist we really don't wanna hear it/them again on the playlist or any playlist

2. Enable artist block  through his main page on the desktop app also

3. Re-enable the full screen with larger album art or at least redraw it manually  to make it as large as we want. Its nice to look at the album art

4. Clicking on the album art is not showing where exactly the song is in the playlist. It's always on top!

Thank you continue the great work!

Update: Spotify fixed 1 ,3 and 4 in the version (1.1.48.625.g1c87c7f7-a) Thank You!

[chirox55]

Hi, 

Overall I like the current version more than before, especially the fact that it now shows the single/album arts from each song in a Playlist! ( please keep this, i think it gives a better overview)

But what i really dont like: adding a new song puts it on top of the Playlist ( an option to set this to top or bottom would be cool because personally I like it more at the bottom) 

As mentioned many times before finding a track from maybe an album is very difficult if you dont know in which album it is. 

And the thing that I dislike the most is the fact that you cant displace songs in the playlist when hit the upper corner... it is only possible to move songs to the bottom and this is a very laggy process which doesnt feel good! Please change this !

[serg472]

Haven't been on this forum for over 5 years and now this dreadful new update made me login.

First of all, the update added exactly zero value to me, it only took away the features and dumbed everything down beyond belief. All I see is HUGE ICONS and HUGE TEXT taking the whole screen, were you making your design based on blind people or five year olds that click on flashy images? Why does an artist name have to take literally half the screen, you think I will forget who I am listening to currently? I have to sit and scroll through the wall of useless banners with that HUGE FONT to get to the stuff I want, and everything is hidden behind SEE ALL links which I have to constantly click to get anywhere. What used to be a single click now takes 5 clicks. 

Now the issues:

- Biggest issue: I want to see all songs from all albums on a single page, I don't know what album each song is. 

- After an album finishes playing the next album doesn't automatically start like it used to be. 

- Why did you remove top charts and top songs by country? Did you feel like you were giving too much to your users so you had to tone it down a little?

- Why was popularity indicator removed? It was easy to tell which song is popular if you wanted to get a taste for a new artist beyond those pity 10 most popular songs you offer.

- Why is the friend bar alway visible on the right side even if it's empty? I am not using it nor planning to ever use it, why does it waste the last bits of real estate that is still left after your HUGE FONTS and HUGE ICONS?

I want the old layout back. If you are not capable to understand what needs improving and what doesn't then don't touch it or you will completely destroy very little advantage you still had over other apps. And whoever was designing this new layout deserves to be fired and they are completely clueless and don't understand your product and your user needs.

Time to go back and find another album to queue playing as the current one stopped again.

[photsauce]

Nice work, Spotify--you're driving people to switch to Apple Music instead. Mission accomplished?

[dlarson426]

Prior to this update, I made regular use of the dislike/hide songs from Discover Weekly, both to improve my listening experience of the current week's playlist (e.g. I don't like song X or I was previously recommended a remix of song Y and so I don't want to listen to another remix this week) and to provide feedback regarding what I dislike (in the hopes of influencing future playlist iterations). Therefore, I would greatly prefer if the new design was revised to re-enable the ability to dislike/hide songs from Discover Weekly. However, I do not particularly care if re-enabling this feature is in the form of an icon next to the "heart" icon (see attached screenshot), a keyboard shortcut or some other UI design.

Recommendation: re-enable the ability to dislike/hide/remove songs from Discover Weekly.

[SmellySocks]

I think as per nearly every UI overhaul every piece of software receives, you get a naturally vocal and possibly large sector of people (myself included), who are so used to the old design. I do legitimately think the visual design of the new UI is pretty alright though, and I can understand that it can lead to some conformity between mobile and desktop clients.

I do have a number of criticisms with how the UI is designed right now though. Some of these are very minor, and are most likely just unimplemented features, but some of these also may require some more technical investigation.

Firstly, I find some of the old use cases to be incredibly hidden or take much longer to achieve than they used to. I'm often an album listener, so I'd often go to the left navigation pane and click Albums, which would show my albums in the last sorted order, in this case, alphabetical, just like mobile. Now, I have to click Your Libary, which now brings some tabs up the top. This always defaults to Playlists, so I click on Albums. Now it's showing my albums in order of most recently added, so I have to click a drop-down, and then click Alphabetical. Every time I return to my library, it's always defaulting to playlists, and always most recently added, so what usually took me one click, now takes me four clicks.

Another use case I have is browsing albums and releases from artists via their artists page. In the past, I'd go to the artist page, and under their popular songs would be all of their releases in reverse chronological order. Now it lists 5 releases, whether they're singles, compilations, or albums, in some bizarre order I'm not too sure what it is. I see a recent release, a popular album, and a partially recent but not their latest release in this list. I know have to click "see all" to then get a list, which isn't as aesthetically pleasing because of these thick grey card borders around the album arts. It's very hard to read text on the album art itself until I actually click on the album name.

There's also a handful of features that just aren't there at all anymore. I'm a frequent user of clicking the total time of a song at the bottom of the screen to view the time remaining, but that seems to be unimplemented. I cannot seem to find where my recently listened music is anymore, in case I had something show up in a radio. I also cannot tell the radio whether I actively dislike a song, all I can do is skip it, which I used to also do when I just didn't want to listen to something at that moment. Lastly, while not necessarily a removed feature, I'm not as big a fan seeing an artist's tour dates at the very bottom of their artist page underneath a massive about image; it's just very inconvenient to find that information.

And then there's just a handful of bugs I've encountered. Sometimes when clicking on an album in my recent searches, the album just suddenly starts playing, overriding my queue. Sometimes clicking an album in the Your Library just results in a blank page, and can be repeatedly triggered, forcing me to access the album via the artist's page instead. Lastly, I've had some songs occasionally just skip and tell me they're unavailable for streaming until I restart the application, although I can't seem to recreate those reliably in any way.

Again, I'm not that against the change in aesthetic, but it's just the inconvenience of some use cases either taking much longer to access than before, or being unable to view the same information as before. I personally would roll back my version if I could; I'm not a big fan of A/B testing new designs, especially when a beta program already exists.

[ClaireString]

Main issues:

1. Artist pages make it really tough to find or browse. I hate that I have to click into each individual album and then click back out. Much preferred the list view.

2. When adding a song to a playlist it adds it to the top? Idk why that would happen? unexpected and puts more work on me when adding to a playlist.

3. I'm no longer able to find the section where it said something like 'top cities listening to this artist'. Overall the about section of an artists feels left behind. 

4. I much preferred the tabbed structure on Artist pages- made it so much easier to find what I was looking for.

Overall, I'd prefer the old functionality with some of the new visual design elements (larger spacing in the tables, hover states, etc.). 

[4k-1v_5mqlyk8]

I've noticed the Weekly Playlist Dislike button is now missing again.

[ItsModern]

I got access to the new Spotify update and I do have some concerns. First off, I would like to mention to you guys that a lot of people are disappointed with the update. If you look on the Spotify Reddit page, hundreds of people are addressing how Spotify doesn't listen to the community. Hopefully, you will listen to our feedback and make this Spotify update one of the best!

- Add the feature back to where you can expand the artist cover more. Right now we are limited to just the tiny box, and the small box, I miss going to the max

- Good job adding the artist covers next to the song name! That I do like a lot and have been wanting it for so long

- Allow us to adjust the friends listening to tab again

- Why does adding a song to a playlist bring it to the top? Makes no sense, please make it so it goes to the bottom. 

- Lastly, please add Spotify themes! Different color themes would be loved by all the community. Trust me, people have been pushing this for 3+ years if you look at your suggestions.