Announcements
The Spotify Stars Program: Celebrating Values Week!

Help Wizard

Step 1

NEXT STEP

New Desktop Experience - your feedback wanted!

Solved!

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
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Like.
Note: I'm not a Spotify employee.
Reply
1,317 Replies

OK, it's about time. I've canceled my Premium subscription today and returned to Deezer. Turns out now that their desktop app is not much worse than this new Spotify's one.

 

No feedback from the devs, failing to fix even this ridiculously small number of things that you've promised to fix. More than 50 pages of rightfully angry customers' feedback – it should be a disaster for any self-respecting company. 

 

I'm terribly sorry to leave because you haven't yet managed to kill everything that is good about Spotify, but the new UI, fonts, feature cuts and, most importantly, the attitude that you're showing are ultimate deal-breakers. I'd be happy to come back sometimes when at least the most crucial problems of this horrific update are solved, but with every new day there's less and less hope that you are going to do anything at all about it.

 

And don't you tell me in that automated message that you're sorry I've left: seems like you don't really care after all.

And, as an addition:

- Local files can't be addressed, simply doesn't work except for downloads (show titles from...) at the Options Section

- Spotify does not respect ranking of album order anymore , artists have done this on purpose

- I do not want the cache on my C-drive, had it on an extra SSD. Where is this option?

- Again: the toggle switch Title/Artist does not remember settings

Just for asking, where can I get the previous version? Even the November 30th version does not contain the necessary return for the good

- Return of the separate Artist list is an absolute must

So, Spotify now have more than 50 pages of (mostly negative) feedback. They promised updated version on 30th and then they even failed to fix all of the 6 bugs they promised. No other changes were made and no official response from them. This is getting ridiculous.


@user-removed wrote:

....

  1. Interface only scaled to ~1080p, after that the right side is just empty

NOOOOOOO! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOO!

 

4K screens are very common. I have two side by side. Of course any application that manages and presents large amounts of information such as a music library and music catalog absolutely must allow the user to effectively make use of their existing screen space!

 

There is just no excuse for this. This is pure inanity. Insanity. Giving your customers the finger for absolutely no discernible reason and without any excuse. 

 

I'm red in the face here from disbelief.

Now this update is a complete mess. I have really not found anything positivte yet, but many major elements missing/not working good:

1. The "Artists" under "My Library" is more or less useless now (just links to the regular artist page). And when we are there, why do the "Follow artist" function really exist? I really prefered the old times, as soon as I had liked one song of an artist, I could find that artist on the "Artists" page, and listen to that song. This is becoming worse and worse. Maybe I just like 5 or 6 songs of an artist, and then I just want to listen to those songs, not all of that artist.

2. What's the point of merging song titel and artist in the playlist view? Maybe it looks slightly better, but who cares? I see now that I can sort by artist by clicking several times on "Title", but this is so extremely unneccesary.

3. Why change the artists own page with just "Discography" instead of the albums and singles just by scrolling down? Again, I understand that it looks a bit better, but it's the same here, your completely destroying  functionality for slightly better looks....

Please, it's good that it's easy to find new music, but most of the time we just want to listen to the music we already like! Don't remove this functions all the time. And a suggestion I have tried to push out to you a couple of times: on an artist page, can't you just add the button "Liked songs" and a playlists with that artists liked songs by me appear. This function was available before through the My library -> Artists, so it can't be that hard to implement?

I've been trying out the competitors and I have one word for every-one considering switching. Tidal. 

 

It is by far the most polished desktop app of the competitors and makes full use of my 4k screen if I want it to. If the state of the desktop app's usability & efficiency is important to you, then this is the one.

 

Also with my high end headphones and external soundcard their high definition audio sounds absolutely fantastic. This is only in the more expensive subscription though, the one that costs like spotify has audio quality like spotify. It might be a placebo effect, in my head, but I actually don't think so. It's subtle but there. Enhancing those shivers and making your hair stand on end a bit more in the beautiful passages. See edit 4

 

Spotify currently has 3 tiny threads that might, just might, keep me from switching and never looking back. They are just about to break from this frustration.

 

  1. Local files support with support for syncing them to my phone so I can have a music listening experience that includes all my music everywhere. Catalogs ,however, are now so huge and complete that so little is missing that I will most likely still let go of this obsessive demand. I only have a couple hundred such songs and around 10 000 songs in the catalog. I can learn to live with listening to that music through another app.
  2. Playlist folders. I sent a feature request to Tidal about this. If they either make their sidebar resizable so that long playlist names fit(I'll just add a "folder" name to the playlist in that case), or add folders, this advantage is gone for spotify. Heck I can use postfix abbreviations for the "folders" and make do with what is there. This thread just snapped. 
  3.  A handful of, very non-mainstream, artists are on spotify but not Tidal. At the moment, of course this changes with additions and removals all the time so this is not a very valid point. Heck I have these as local files. If I can accept listening to these in a different app this thread is gone to. Edit 3 below removes this advantage.

Hmm. Working through those I think my decision all all but made. I'll try using tidal exclusively and see how I feel about it by the time my trial ends.

 

EDIT 1: Sounded good while writing it. Then I started using the app and find more inconveniences. Vital navigation features missing. Spotify is working very hard to remove it's advantage here though.

Tidal

  1. Can't filter in Artist, Album and Liked Songs (Tracks) This is a big big inconvenience. I've sent a feature request. 

    Please tell me these feature are still there in this New Horror Experience in Spotify?
  2. No way to see all my liked songs from a specific Artist. 

    Oh, no, did I see someone write that that had been removed in the New Horror Experience?

Edit 2: Filtering in playlists is available in Tidal and works much more snappily than in Spotify. So I added all my liked songs to a playlist and now I have the filtering functionality that I need.

 

(Tidal does have a bug related to adding many songs to a playlist though. If you add very many at the same time you get an error and nothing happens. I'm guessing the limit is close to a thousand songs. So I had to add the songs in batches. A bit of a hassle but no biggie since I only need to to that once. Later I can keep the list up to date by sorting Tracks [Liked songs in Tidal] by added date and adding the new ones to my playlist)

 

Edit 3: Since last edit I found that most of the music that I use local files for in Spotify is in the Tidal Catalog. So the catalogs are now a tie with maybe a slight advantage to tidal.

 

Edit4: Since I know how susceptible the human mind is to suggestion I did some digging on the MQA format that Tidal uses for it's high definition audio. Every serious dissection of it says the same thing. It's BS. There is no real difference in audio quality. One good write-up that set out to test it scientifically is here: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7c4708_a6ad10f865f74369903c44599a91b04b.pdf 

Also Tidal apparently boosts the volume on their "master" tracks. This is easily enough to make most listeners hear a difference and consider it better. It has been well established many times that people comparing audio quality will consider louder to be better.  So in short. MQA is marketing BS and thus so is Tidals master tracks. You have been warned.

Oh, and https://www.tunemymusic.com/ managed to, for free, transfer the great majority of my music library in a few minutes so I have almost everything, liked songs, artists, albums and playlists, in place and can just start listening.

So many users are angry about the Artists column missing. Almost none of them would find out that clicking Title several times will sort by Artists.

 

Consider this a crucial feature hidden away. How many users will clickspam various columns and other things? How many will have the idea to come here to seek for the answer?

 

I really hope you will return and improve the (missing) features.

(Delete key seems to work for me, worked before the update as well, but I guess it's Ubuntu magic.)

SebastySpotify Star
Help others find this answer and click "Accept as Solution".
If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Like.
Note: I'm not a Spotify employee.

Did Spotify listen at all to the many complaints in this thread? Today's update to 1.1.47.684.g136419d9-a does not show any of the most desired improvements. Is there anybody out there?

Panels on either side cant be adjusted, Everything just looks clunky with sharp edges, wasted space, outlines in places where they are not needed (like on the home page around playlists and albums). Please give me back the old layout

If I add one song to a playlist that already contains that song, I get a question saying its a duplicate - do you still want to add it.

That same function used to work also when adding multiple songs, but now its gone.
Please add it again!

Regards  /Mats

Hi.

Please make it possible to sort playlists on artist, like it was before. I can not understand why you put song and artist in the same column.

Regards  /Mats

I love Spotify. It's the one app I've consistently paid subscription for since college and this is by far the worst update. I can pack a lot of time into perusing different artists, fine tuning a playlist, or browsing forever in different genres. But, for the first time ever, I'm thinking of switching platforms. I no longer get notified if I add a duplicate song to a playlist, and I can't sort by artist. If you have a large playlist, it's a total nightmare to work with and even worse if you're trying to make a new playlist. I'm stuck with sorting by album title, song title, date added, OR song length... but not artist? I can sort by how long songs are, but not by who performed them... Wow. Whose idea was that? Please fix this soon guys. I've been digging everywhere for a safe downgrade. This sucks. 


Edit: So, I figured out if you click the title dropdown a couple of times, it can sort by artist. Here's my thought, if there's not enough room for both artist and song name to have their own column, why not merge the time length/date added instead of the most important details, song title/artist. Having it sandwiched together is neither aesthetic nor functional. 

The new UI is horrible. It scrapped so many features from the previous version and now looks bad. Did the team that developed this new UI use the old one at all?
1) Add duplicate option is gone when adding duplicates to a playlist.
2) Cannot size the playlist window to the left. Why?
3) Artist column is gone. This is so dumb. No one organizes music like this.
4) Delete key doesn't delete songs or playlists anymore. I didn't ask for this dumb beta.
5) Cut and paste doesn't work. Has anyone on the development team used a desktop before?
6) Artist pages are dumb. Show it all as a list again. Add a page for just albums if you want it that way.
7) You have to hit a button to get to the search bar!?!?!?! Put it back at the top of every page. This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in an UI.


I'm sure there are more stupid features I haven't found yet.

+ when u want to move a song from bottom to the top for example, and u keep it selected the playlist dont automatically scroll so you have to move the track like 10 times to put it on the top. (100 songs in playlist)

It's possible to roll back the updates and block any future updates. Just google "reddit Script to roll back latest update on Windows PC."

 

I can't post the URL since Spotify is considering posts that contain the link spam...

 

 

Amongst all the other, almost exclusively, negative aspects of the new Spotify desktop app one truly head scratching feature removal hasn't been mentioned much:

Why on Earth has the "Full Screen Display" button been removed???

 

Most of the so called "improvements" have seemingly (mistakenly) been made emphasising aesthetics and simplicity over features. Having an attractive album art display full screen while listening to music seems like such a no brainer even if (as Spotify wishes we all were) you are on a touch screen, mobile device etc.

 

PLEASE BRING FULL SCREEN ALBUM ARTWORK DISPLAY BACK!!

 

(and also address all the other retrograde steps while you are at it) 

 

It really shouldn't be that hard to satisfy both "radio" type listeners and "music collector" types. I love the idea of transferring my entire music "collection" into the Spotify ecosystem but why do you insist on making it so hard? Just one small example: why have you crippled the local files functionality by removing all  local files from search results !? If you allow the song into your app, let me please find it by searching!

Here's the thing, I just discovered something that I don't think anyone else has mentioned...not that I have the time to read through 50+ pages of complaints. I have a good couple of friends on Spotify, and I like listening to a few of their playlists, the thing is, I added them to my library, but there is no longer an option to make those public on my profile...I like doing that to increase traffic on the playlists and "Show allegiance" if you will. Additionally, the ones I have already made public cannot be toggled between public and secret without disliking and re-liking the song, then it is forced secret. See here:
This is my friend's LoFi playlist that I saved to my public profile before the nightmare update:

Scarox93_0-1606837012330.png

I can no longer toggle its viewability there.
I also cannot make public a nice altrock playlist the same user released last week

Another issue: I cant move playlists or folders on the right sidebar anymore

In reply to the nov 30th update. Nothing has changed for the better for me. Songs still go to the tops of the playlists, the search bar is still gone, and a plethora of other issues. The one difference I noticed is not one for the better. All songs in my playlists, under the date added heading, show now an exact date. This was not so before, it used to list exactly how many days it was since it was added up to a certain point (14 or 15) (I. e. 3 days ago) then would switch to numerics like 11-27-20 after that point. Now it goes straight to alphanumerics: Nov 27, 2020. This is very annoying because I have a "new music" playlist that I leave songs in for a fortnight, so I liked having the oldest songs at the top (Which I can't do now because of the dumb song addition to the top thing and the non-saved sorting preferences) and to be able to immediately tell when I needed to remove songs...now I have to do math...sure it's simple math but it's just another unnecessary thing to do...and I think I get why yall did it, to streamline everything...to make it all on the same standard. Thing is, there is nothing good about this update, I understand you probably want to hesitate to scrap all of your great plans for the update and stuff, but your users have created habits and systems based off of the way things used to be...even the old version's problems (Limited) were acclimated to easily...if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I am in pain whenever I try to sort a playlist. The only reason I came over here from Amazon Music was that there were more artists, and I could sort playlists then link to my Echo and have it play them in that order in my bedroom. This update basically negates both of those: It's hard to find new artists and the amount of steps in a playlist's organization is ludicrous. 

Scarox93_0-1606837698180.png

 

This screenshot is from my new music playlist, where I add songs both on mobile and on desktop. for that reason, the oldest songs are in the centre. That is stupid. I'm sorry, but the dumbest thing to do is have the oldest songs be in the centre, there's no logical advantage to that. None at all. Please don't ignore us. If I need to do something more to be heard, please let me know. Do I need to email you? Call you? Drive up to your headquarters and have a picket line?

 

Edit: I just got the update...songs now add to the bottom of the playlist, but I noticed no other differences. Thanks for that btw, it was annoying without it.

Suggested posts