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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.

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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.

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I originally downloaded the Desktop app instead of using the Web player for several reasons:

  1. Sorting albums by Artist by default (and Spotify remembered my settings).
  2. The list of songs in each album (chronologically!) on the artist page, giving a great overview, and being able to play consecutive albums/singles by an artist without having to queue them.
  3. The search bar visible at all times.
  4. Easy to reach each part of the library from the left bar (playlists, albums etc)

With this new updates these have all been taken away and the Desktop app is almost identical to the Web player I dislike. I really miss these functions (especially 1 & 2). Now I have to:

  1. Choose "Creator" from the drop-down menu every. single. time I want to look at my 150+ saved albums, even if I click the go back button.
  2. Know exactly which album I want to listen to and queue or start the next album manually.
  3. Go to Search --> search bar which takes time.
  4. Go to Library --> albums (and then sort).

This app just became a lot less user-friendly.

Another issue i just found  you cant see all the songs on the queue list like release radar it shows only 50. Can't just scroll down to see the rest of the songs  so if I want to remove a song I have to wait to appear.

 

Two weeks since this was forced upon us and we've only had one update from the Spotify team addressing these specific items being fixed on a release coming 30th Nov:

 

  • “Adding a new track to a playlist puts it to the top instead of the bottom of a playlist”
  • “The option to remove from this playlist does not work when you do it in the current playback.”
  • “Using the delete key to remove a track from a playlist/liked songs”
  • “Filtering playlists breaks when you enter a space in the filter field”
  • “Sort preferences for playlists are not persisted”

Can we please have a response to everything else raised? Many things have been removed/made worse in this UI update with nothing added, it just makes no sense to release it without giving users the ability to toggle between the old and new (clearly VERY beta) experience. The simplest fix right now is give us the option to toggle between old and new, then you can have people try the new version, collect feedback, then switch back to old so it's actually feature-rich and fully usable and a pleasure to use again, unlike this version.

So yeah here's a minour bug for yall to fix in the new update, with the new UI I can drag songs into a playlist from the little "Currently Playing" bar at the bottom (I think it's called the playback bar?) but I can't do that if it is the first song in a new playlist, where there are no songs in the playlist, I can't drag it in...no reason for it to do that, so no reason not to fix it...thanks (See my other posts for some more serious issues I found)

I REALLY HATE THIS VERSION AND I DIDN'T EVEN WANT TO PART OF THIS TEST. WHY SOME PEOPLE IS PART OF IT AND SOME NOT? THIS IS REALLY UNFAIR.PLEASE FIX THIS ONE THERE ARE LOTS OF PROMLEMS OTHERWISE I WILL STOP USING SPOTIFY

please give the option to hide podcasts, I have never and will never listen to any podcasts. PLEASE!

onlytocomplain_0-1606499484453.png

This "shows to try" category must go. I don't want to learn Russian, I'm not a toddler, there's no knowledge worth expressing in 100 seconds and I don't even konw what the **bleep** the last suggestion is. I have never and will never listen to any podcasts. Get it out of my face.

 

I mean the first sentence of the article I'm commenting is literally: "Spotify is testing a new way for you to connect with your MUSIC on Desktop." But then why is the third gallery podcasts and not music?!?

 

I think it's interesting how the only comments that have gotten responses are those that liked the new rollout, not the 100+ comments about how bad it is and how we want Spotify to change it back.

 

Moderators said this thread it moderated and sent back to Spotify, but with only a few days before this terrible update is rolled out fully and no response to how bad it is, I sincerely doubt that any of our actual feedback is being taken seriously and brought to the right people.

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. 

My computer is not a mobile device. Ripping out things that makes a desktop interface efficient and convenient in order to make it more similar to the mobile interface is a terrible terrible idea. Please don't do this to us. Please just delete this development branch and pretend it never happened and everyone but the UI designers that dreamed it up will be happier. And those designers will have learned a valuable life lesson. Desktop is NOT Mobile and should not be designed like mobile if you want an efficient and user friendly interface.

 

"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

 

If you cannot just throw this away, then please please don't force this on us without a way to opt out until you have restored all the functionality that you have destroyed.

We really need the artist column back, it's really hard to read under the song name.
Also the previous search bar (accessible everywhere), was better.

Thanks !

And the way the discography was shown before was also way better, I don't like to have to click on "SEE ALL" to do that

They need to make it where you can press previous on a song list. And ya I think the color could be a bit brighterYa same I  really dislike it too.

 

It has been 40 pages of bad reviews for this update. Can we get a Spotify update about when you will be rolling this back for us? Cause clearly we don't want it at all. Like, at all. I don't think I've read one piece of positive feedback for this change(which can be brutal, sorry UX team, but also you have all the feedback here to go back and do it right).

I am with you. I liked seeing the discography all together. It feels weird cutting off.

Ya exactly and I sure don’t want it at all I don’t know about you (I’m sure everyone else don’t want it either)

Ya i know everyone is like I liked seeing discography . It feels weird cutting off.

I have nothing great to add to the criticisms made here. The design simply takes up too much space, especially the playlists are much too big because of the cover images. Therefore I have minimized the layout to the minimum, so that the albums, playlists and artist pages are halfway structured again. But the sidebar and the player are much too small this way. The balance is just not right. The imprecise volume control, adding to playlists at its top, the album display, the complicated search and general performance degradation (e.g. when scrolling and arranging long playlists) is unfortunately very annoying...
I understand that Spotify wants to try new things. But I want to make a suggestion: Please leave the main display types, functions etc. to the users' choice. Then the settings get a bit more complicated - but if you like you can make it as "empty" and functionless as Spotify suggests here. Please allow more settings! Then the numerous useful suggestions from this forum could be integrated - who needs them turns them on, who doesn't, doesn't.

P.S. Please insert the donation button automatically for all artists, otherwise it is not a real donation button. Or simply pay them better.

Literally I get that. That’s what I was trying to say.

Please don't do this to us. Please just delete this development branch and pretend it never happened and everyone but the UI designers that dreamed it up will be happier. And those designers will have learned a valuable life lesson. Desktop is NOT Mobile and should not be designed like mobile if you want an efficient and user friendly interface.

 

"Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

 

If you cannot just throw this away, then please please don't force this on us without a way to opt out until you have restored all the functionality that you have destroyed.


This is a beautifully concise description of what should be done. Hear hear.

I cannot believe the UX design of an app I use has gotten so bad, I feel I HAVE to write feedback on it before I explode with frustration.

I used Spotify desktop because it was Desktop. Please remember that computers and mobile phones are not the same thing and therefore should not look identical. What was this thought process, honestly. 

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