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.

[Melissaaakilic]

When I start the applıcatıon on my Wındows computer when I clıck a song ,the button 'go to the song radıo' replaced wıth 'play the song radıo' but Thıs ıs not the thıng ı want. When I delete the app totally and download the old versıons before update,ıt goes perfectly agaın but after a few tımes ı guess ıt updates the applıcatıon back and then the button that I want dısappears agaın. How Can I fıx Thıs ''Play the radıo'' problem??? Please help asap ://

[Melissaaakilic]

PLEASE LET ME GO BACK TO OLD VERSION THIS ONE HAS LOTS OF PROBLEMS AND TECHICAL PROBLEMS OTHERWISE YOU ARE GONNA LOSE A LOT OF CUSTOMERS :((

[Melissaaakilic]

THE MOST POPULER BOTTON WHICH ''GO TO SONG RADIO'' FOR FIND SIMILAR SONGS IS CANNOT BE USED NOW,THERE IS ONLY ''START'' THE RADIO OPTION WHICH CUTS THE CURRENT SONG WHICH PLAYS THAT MOMENT AND THERE ARE ANOTHER PROBLEMS ON THE LISTS TOO !!!

[ObstImHaus]

Hello,

perhaps not that many users use it, but since the new update its not possible anymore to navigate through previously visited artists/playlists/... by the alt and arrow left and right keys.

I used that a lot because its easier than to click on the arrows by mouse. I didnt find any replacement shortcuts and alt+arrows are not used otherwise now, so please bring it back haha :D.

Regards

[wildergirls]

,,,,,

[conftw822]

I got selected for this update and I have a strong hate for it. I closed my app yesterday and now I'm stuck with this interface and I wish I could go back. Some issues I have are
- I can't access my Local Files anymore

- When album art is maximized on my smaller monitor, I can't scroll down on my playlists visibly since the window is so small

- When I sort the playlist by date added (It's a large playlist so I don't wanna scroll down all the way) it sorts just fine. But when I exit the page and come back, it's unsorted. This is really annoying as I need to sort it again or just scroll down all the way

- The volume slider is a lot less smooth

- All in all, the interface is a lot less compact. Sure, this would work on a TV or browser if you wanted, but the desktop doesn't fit. I don't like it

Please give me the option to revert it back. It makes me not want to use Spotify anymore.

[lolo341]

Hello Spotify Developers and Community,



This rollout makes it feel like there’s very little understanding of what makes Spotify (esp. the desktop app) an important part of people’s lives. If I wanted or needed people deciding for me what I should listen to and how, I'd listen to the radio. I use Spotify every single day because I can curate my own musical experience, and everyone's will be different. This rollout is a one-size fits all approach. Why are we being shoved into a box? Some people only listen to albums; other people only listen to singles; some people make dump playlists; others make ordered lists; some people really care about only the most popular tracks; some people never listen to the most popular tracks; some people use the artist radio function; I never ever ever have. And how I want to listen today might change tomorrow. With Spotify desktop, it’s supposed to be all good, a personalized experience, and the desktop app SHOULD be the most robust of the service's platform, i.e. the one with the most functionality. I don’t have the same expectations of the mobile and web versions. They should be more streamlined. But this new desktop version has been stripped of all the things that differentiate it, and frankly mirrors the things that most annoy me about the other versions, which is why I'm a desktop user. Form has been promoted over function.



 I am trying to be open-minded to it, and I have been grateful for Spotify because I could find and listen to music how and when I like to. The new UI feels like trying to wrestle an alligator. Why are there so many nested menus? It’s just basic that a user should be able to decide which columns to see and to be able to sort on any of them: artist, album, song title, track length, date added to list. We should be able to move seamlessly in and out of playlists, without having to re-sort or find where you were. We should be able to delete more than one track at a time.
I have some multi-genre playlists organized alphabetically by ARTIST. These are my master lists. Now, all of the sudden, they're default sorted by Song Title. In Wizard of Oz fashion, if you click on Title 3x you can sort of sort by Artist but a) it defaults back to song title order whenever you exit the playlist and b) it seems to sort by artist but in a spazzy, dodgy sort of fashion--like it's mostly by artist but there's random things going on. I can't tell when I actually added any of the tracks to the list, which was one way I was keeping track of and winnowing some lists (Side note: some of my playlists are actually bigger than in the old interface—bigger by nearly 1,000 songs. I’m not joking. I don’t know how the list got bigger, but when I scroll through there are a ton of songs greyed out. I don’t know what’s going on there). 
The Artist info has been given short shrift. It isn’t mission critical, but oftentimes, I enjoy learning more about the artist and seeing where they're most popular, their pictures and artist-created playlists etc. Spotify has all this rich data but doesn't do anything cool or interesting with it in the service of music. Again, I don't expect that in the mobile version or on the web version, but it was a distinguishing feature of the desktop app.
Tons of wasted space—everything’s too big and you can’t customize the size of sections. I'd love to have some of that real estate back so I didn't have to choose between artist and song title as a column choice. I can't say how much that bugs me. It'd be liking going into a library and you can't search by author name, only by chapter names. 
List view was so much more user friendly and conducive to finding music. Everything is nested, hidden or buried now. When you search an artist you shouldn’t have to click on “see all” to see more than three albums.
There are so many other things I don’t like, but those are the biggest ones.  I do like a few things. One thing I really love is the "search in playlist," but it needs improving. Example, if an artist name is more than one word, you have to search the name without spaces--say GentleGiant rather than Gentle Giant or MeganTheeStallion instead of as three words. I also like seeing the number of plays a track has racked up, but that doesn't make up for major the inconveniences listed above.  Sometimes rearranging the furniture can shake things up in a good way, but it has to make sense. You don’t put the bed in the kitchen, and the coffee table in the bathroom. So heavily and inexplicably favoring aesthetics over functionality has made this user's experience a maddening one.

[Sebasty]

Hey @ObstImHaus 

You could try if the following shortcuts work for you:

It's from the keyboard shortcut popup that can be called out when pressing ? or Ctrl + /.

These shortcuts in the image don't work for me however,  because I am on Ubuntu and those keybinds are already in use by the system. But perhaps you're in better luck 🙂
(Alt and arrow keys were not in use by system and they don't work in the new client, though they worked in the old one...)

Let me know how you get on!

[Sebasty]

Hey @lolo341 

You mentioned that some of your playlists got a whole lot bigger by nearly a thousand tracks.

Did you happen to have the "show unavailable content" disabled in your preferences previously?

Asking because what seems to have happened is that an amount of tracks have become unavailable and thus hidden in your playlists over time, and since you couldn't see them, they accumulated in your playlist.
The new UI doesn't (currently) have the setting to hide unavailable content and that's why you're seeing them now.

Re: searching for multiple keywords in your playlist - spaces can be replaced by dashes (eg amon-tobin), but again, this doesn't fix the issue.
The above is useful to know when performing advanced searches though, such as label searches (eg label:methlab-ltd).

: )

[o-l-a-v]

As others say, it looks good but is way less useful. I'd much prefer choices with the ability to turn on the clean design you've pushed out now if I wanted to, rather than being forced to use a less flexible & customizable client. Why don't you give the users any choice?

Playlists

• No artist column
  
• Less compact list, can't change "compactness". Please add ability to make it a list without two lines (title and artis) and the album art, like the old days.
  
• Please add resizable column width, and enable/ disable columns. Maybe somebody would like a artist column? And would like not to have a counter "#" column?

Search -> Songs

In general, the search functionality is just getting more and more limited by the years, while the music collection on Spotify continues to grow. This makes no sense to me what so ever.

• Can't sort after popularity or artist. How are we supposed to filter through one of the largest collections of music in the world with less options for sort and filter?
  

One more thing that would be awesome if you could implement properly: When I "Follow" an artist I want receive notifications when new albums or singles are released.

[b411313]

I'm not paying for this downgrade, where can i get the old version?

[1214255164]

PLEASE bring back sorting playlists by artist.......only being able to sort by album sucks!

[moluv4nyc]

First off, an enormous thanks to everyone here who took the time to eloquently express their disappointment with this update.

Your posts have been enormously helpful in identifying and articulating the issues that concern me as well.  

I haven't commented here before but believe it necessary if there's any chance at all of making needed changes.   

FIRST OFF - Spotify has been a source of comfort, dependability, and discovery since I started subscribing in February 2013. Especially this year.

And as someone who works from home - along with the many millions more who WFH these days - the desktop version of Spotify is THEE version that matters.

ALSO, I use Spotify as both my PRIMARY PLAYER and as a constant source of DISCOVERY.

I listen to music non-stop throughout the day - from countless genres, eras,  nooks and crannies. I love Release Radar and Weekly Discovery and started posting public playlists this year.

I have also been a vocal supporter of Spotify with friends and associates for many years - some of whom have been resistant to Spotify for ethical reasons and some of whom are reluctant to getting with streaming in general.

So, as a longtime dedicated fan, I'm sorry to report that this new version has absolutely put me in "the bummer tent."

Didn't think I'd ever consider bailing for the competition but am seriously exploring that option.

Like many here, I feel like this new version was foisted on us with no warning and without soliciting any input.

Aside from admin posts indicating a couple of changes in November 30 update, WHAT is being done about the many other issues that have been addressed here? What can we expect moving forward?

Have to ask, WHAT exactly was the objective with this update anyway? Are desktop users now of lesser value to Spotify? I would really appreciate some clarity as to the thinking behind all this.

OK, here are the changes that concern me most. Have borrowed phrasing from some earlier posts as I'm not conversant in tech lingo.

Am on PC, Windows 10.

1. LOCAL FILES!!! This is HUGE for me as I use Spotify as an all-in-one player for both Spotify and Local Files. Prior to this update, I could do a song or artist search and results from my (extensive) Local Files would merge with Spotify results (Local Files at top followed by Spotify results). Now Local Files are totally segregated and can only be accessed via Your Library. Not only are Local Files slow to load but they don't remain open and then can only be searched using a single word or by using a hyphen between words. Infuriating. PLEASE, bring back LOCAL FILES accessibility as it was before. Honestly, this issue is a deal breaker for me as to whether I remain with Spotify or not.

1. ABOUT THE ARTIST. Pushing this vital info to the bottom of the page is beyond disrespectful to the artists and labels "what brought you to the dance." And it's useful to users who want to explore artists with whom they're not yet familiar. The labels, especially indies, have always gotten short shrift on Spotify (would love to be able to search by label). Someone else mentioned that overall it feels like the artists are being left behind. Agree.

1. SORT PREFERENCES on playlists don't stay put. I gather this is being addressed.  

1. ARTIST COLUMN. Bring back the stand-alone Artist column!  Extremely difficult to scan playlists with this vital info minimized under song titles. Clicking my heels 3 times on Title NOT a viable solution.

1. SEARCH BAR should appear on all pages. Speaking of search, advanced search options, including by name, song title, album, AND label, would be useful. ALSO, is their a way to search COMMUNITY PLAYLISTS? The Spotify generated playlists seem to be the only options that appear under the genre cards.

1. DISCOVERED ON should prominently feature community curated playlists along with Spotify curated playlists. Seriously, user playlists are often way more interesting and varied and lead me to wonderful discoveries.

1. ADJUSTABLE COLUMN WIDTHS. Bring it back.

1. TAKE ME BACK TO WHERE I WAS. Jumping back and forth from an artist to a playlist should bring you back to where you left off.

1. TOP CITIES LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST. Bring it back. It was wonder insight as to where artists, especially new artists, are jumping off.

Thanks for your time.

[dulapeep2005]

Haven't seen anyone mention this, but you got rid of the auto-scrolling when moving a song in a playlist individually and it needs to be back! For us with public playlists who move songs individually a lot, restraining movement to whatever is on your screen is a huge hassle and makes editing playlists seem not even worth it anymore.

If I want to move one song to a certain placement on a playlist, the playlist should auto scroll again while I drag and drop the song.

[_kf-gqad920wf]

I might just pick up a portable HDD, buy my favorite albums and go back to Foobar. The convenience of Spotify on my phone is nice but it's really not worth paying to be your UI team's guinea pigs.

With no official response to this litany of protest other than, "guys pls stop being mean :(" and no accedence to your paying customers' wishes or even an acknowledgement that sweeping changes might have been made prematurely, you have a lot of gall to posture yourselves as holding a position of moral superiority. It's no wonder that you are receiving condescending feedback; we can fairly assume you do not notice civil feedback because post-deletion is the only employee interaction you have provided.

[tripwired]

Please give us the option to switch back to the old version

[user-removed]

Hi guys,

Sorry - me again.  I have to agree with pretty much everyone else on here.  The more I have been using the new version, the more I discover frustrating things that can largely be summarised as loss of functionality, increasing the number of steps required to do things compared to previous versions and layout issues that make it harder to see things and harder to navigate.

Other than the history log, I haven't found anything I prefer or anything that makes the user experience better.  Sorry.  Please consider reverting and starting over.  Not sure what drove the UI changes but I'd be very surprised if it was User Feedback or Requests.

Cheers,

Nim

[Bwahh]

Just give me back my full screen mode please. I can't understand why it has been removed for this update. It was just a quality of life feature that meant I can just see the album cover on my second monitor without also having to see every other feature of the Spotify UI.

Thanks

[user-removed]

Hi there - I am a constant Spotify user and consider Spotify to be the most powerful musical discovery tool in human history. I use the app almost daily and I am coming here today to PLEAD with you to please roll back this poor UI change from my account. Here are my specific complaints:

1. The landing page when looking at a specific artist is a huge downgrade. Specifically, I always would want to browse over an artists discography. There is no way in the new UI to do that: you either can see just the top 10 songs, or click into each album individually. What if you aren't sure what album? What if you also aren't positive on the song title, but are just trying to search for a song that you heard by the artist? what if you are quickly trying to explore an artist for the first time and want to poke through multiple albums? All of this functionality is significantly hampered now.
2. You can't sort a playlist by artist. This appears to be a byproduct of how the artist is tucked into the same column as the song, which I found confusing and unhelpful generally. Why have a separate column for album, but not for artist? Why would that be helpful or intuitive? Sorting by artist is one of the most helpful ways to sort, as I will often want to find just a subset of songs by an artist that I saved to a playlist
3. When on a playlist, each row is much too tall and bulky. Seeing the album artwork next to each song does nothing for me -- it is so small that you can't enjoy it anyway and it feels like wasted space. And the bulkier rows mean you can see less songs at once and have effectively a narrower view.
4. If you have a playlist that is sorted by the date added field, but then navigate elsewhere, it doesn't save. So you have to re-sort when arriving back to the playlist. This is a bit confusing and annoying when seeing your own playlists, but I think the bigger concern for me is for people following one another's playlists who are expecting new things to filter in at the bottom or top and now they are somewhere else.
5. This is more minor, but I identified a bug where the new UI doesn't show play count, but the old UI (as seen on my girlfriends' computer) does show play count. This was on the album Supreme Striker by Hardrock Striker. I think this is happening on anything with under 1000 plays -- you just have blank space rather than a value.

[ambre9864]

Good evening,

Let me start off by saying that I absolutely dislike the new UI.

Sure, it looks nicer, but I'm on spotify to LISTEN to music, not OBSERVE it. It removes so many of the features that were so nice before, and just made things so much harder to get to.

-My first complaint lies in the fact that I can't simply listen to every song under the same artist anymore.

Before, when things were in rows, I could simply choose what song I want to listen to, but now I simply can't do that. In the effort to incorporate an "all-new design, streamlined with the Spotify apps on all [my] devices,"  this app has lost one of the main reasons why I mainly used the desktop application- its efficiency. Why do I have to go through 4 different clicks before I can listen to a SINGLE from an artist? And also, now that it's structured the way it is, if I click on a specific song that I'd want to start from, it would only play music from that album or EP or single, which is very annoying especially with singles, because I don't want to listen to the same song over and over again all the time.

- My second complaint connects to my first: I can no longer remove albums and things from my recently played. Now that I have all these albums and things cluttering my recently played, it seems that it is simply not possible to remove them from my recently played, which is very annoying when I listen to a song once and don't want to listen to again and just want to remove it so that I have the things I routinely listen to available to me right there, and things that used to be 2 clicks away, I now have to search for again. I really hope this gets fixed soon, because it's getting on my nerves.

-Third, it's also really annoying that things like Recently Played were removed from the sidebar and now I can't simply click into it, instead having to go through the home screen, which is plain annoying. Just many of these extra clicks waste so much time, especially when my internet gets slow and it takes time for things to load for me.

I don't mind superficial UI changes, as I can get used to some things like the Search bar being moved from the top screen to the side (though very annoying but still serves its purpose,albeit with what seems like an extra click), but this update just made things so much more complicated to get to, even removing so many useful and essential features that made Spotify so much better to use than competitors. There's one thing about removing obsolete features, but in general removing any feature that still has usefulness has a very negative effect on the experience of consumers like me.

These are just the first few that come to mind, but there are many, MANY more as well.

edit: It seems that even from mobile you guys have removed the "Do not play" feature, but that would've been neat to add as well.

edit 2: I wanted to highlight as well that I don't know anyone else personally who has been thrown into this cataclysm of a forced beta test. I just want to jam out to my favorite artists in peace, not rolling my eyes every time I have to bring spotify back up to my screen for anything.

The main issue here is, when people make apps like Spotify, they usually make a computer app or website simplified for mobile, which makes sense because you're in a situation with less functionality as it is.

This UI is the opposite.

This is a mobile app brought to desktop. Sure, its a little bit of an exaggeration, but the entire point of the desktop experience for years has been to take full advantage of all the features Spotify had that didn't work on mobile and such. For example, if you're a free user like me, using Spotify on mobile means that I have to shuffle everything, while on desktop I can choose what to listen to. The way this update has treated me, I feel like it won't be long before that feature in itself will be gone to "streamline the Spotify experience." I would have even considered upgrading to Premium if it meant not having this, but based on what I've read on this thread, it wouldn't make a difference.

I hate to say this, but y'all should've thought this update through before you put it out, especially to non consenting Beta testers.