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.

[1990eam]

I just accidentally removed the album cover from the bottom left corner. This has happened before but the option to get it back is not there anymore, nor is there any option related to it in Account Preferences.

Is it just me or is the option really gone?

[mlidbo]

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@kiboy6 wrote:

..

I have never used an Steve Jobs product in my life, but much to my surprise when forced to look for alternatives , I found that there is only one good solution out there that mixes the best of both worlds effectively : huge streaming catalogue intergrated into a feeling of one's own music collection, and the ability to supply one's own files to fill in the gaps where necessary. 

Much to my surprise I am finding (via 3 month free trial) that Steve Jobs Music plus Itunes Desktop on PC is the one solution that genuinely provides this. I strongly encourage anybody who cares about curating their own music library with full control to give it a go. 

One is able to browse by genre , edit genre, artist tags etc, seamlessly integrate one's own mp3s to the cloud etc etc... Basically they seem to be actively maintaining all the advanced features Spotify seems in a hurry to remove. It actually feels like I can interact with my music like an adult again!

---

Thanks a lot for that tip. I've evaluated all competitors that I considered real possibilities but assumed the fruit would not be a good choice unless you were fully immersed in the fruit lifestyle 🙂  None of the other competitors impressed me sufficiently to switch. For just the type of reasons that you mention the fruit being good for. I guess I'm off to try me some fruit for the first time ever 🙂

If I can leave Spotify I will. I've had it with this abusive treatment of customers. 

[kiboy6]

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@mlidbo wrote:

---

Thanks a lot for that tip. I've evaluated all competitors that I considered real possibilities but assumed the fruit would not be a good choice unless you were fully immersed in the fruit lifestyle   None of the other competitors impressed me sufficiently to switch. For just the type of reasons that you mention the fruit being good for. I guess I'm off to try me some fruit for the first time ever

If I can leave Spotify I will. I've had it with this abusive treatment of customers. 

---

So glad I could help. I genuinely think this  solution is the way forward for us. I too tried all the others and found the issues we hate just as prevalent as with Spotify.
But this fruity solution which we had ignored until now I think is the way forward. The Itunes software for windows is not ideal, (though light years better than the new Spotify desktop UI) but we can hope that they will release the music only app that replaced it on MacOS eventually on Windows too. Fundamentally the idea of the user organising and and maintaining their collection genuinely seems an integral part of the whole fruity set up, and it's a company we know will stick around forever, so I think Apple is clearly the horse users like us should back for the future.

It take a little while to get used to the different ecosystem, but overall it is really far superior and fixes 90% of the fundamental issues we had detailed in this thread. Handling of local files is the real area where it leaves Spotify way in its dust. My main annoyance with it so far is that i can't add songs to my library without adding an entry for album too (it used to be like this in Spotify but they fixed it!) , but that can be got around by treating playlists of songs as separate from library (which I am therefore forced to use only for albums). Oh, and no dark mode on windows Itunes is very frustrating. But overall, I am very happy and confident I will cancel my premium Spotify  subscription and move over there wholesale soon. Keeping both going for now just in case.

I am also going to post in the equivalent Apple forums regarding feature requests etc to see if their customer service can beat the extremely low bar set by Spotify...

I must say, it feels very good to have found the way to express my extreme distaste for the way Spotify has handled this whole new UI rollout with my wallet now 🙂

[kellwinr]

It is still not working, you're using mac os though

https://youtu.be/jysIniFGkyo

[_kf-gqad920wf]

The topic seems to be slowing down as people either leave Spotify, revert to and lock-in previous builds, or resign themselves to this unsolicited disappointment.

That doesn't change the fact that this new build still looks like tweeny touchscreen garbage.

[Elias21]

"Create similar playlist" is now gone, it was a loved feature by many, slain by the good looking New Desktop Experience update, please revive my boy.

In case this feature won't be making a return:

R.I.P. "Create Similar Playlist", you will be greatly missed.

[Nilan]

I really like the new design! I hope it will soon be realized for everyone and everyone can enjoy these functions!

[termt800]

Hi, isn't the "Start playlist radio" a good alternative to "Create similar playlist"?

[Noé367]

Hey,

How can I have this new Experience ?

Thanks in advance

[lblackwelluk]

@Nilan -- specifically what new functions are you referring to that you want others to enjoy? I ask because I have not yet found a new function provided by this beta UI which is useful or gives me something new that I wanted. I'm not really thinking of graphic design as a function--I'm thinking of things like "Hey, this playlist already has this song, so do you really want to add it again?" That kind of duplicate warning is a function that was incredibly helpful, but it's been removed. We don't yet have an answer as to when it will come back or why it was removed.

@Nilan--what new functions are you thinking of?

[Katrina313]

How is this still not being addressed!!! It has been months and you still have not fixed (or even responded) to the fact the desktop UI is BROKEN! It us unusable in it's current form. I am appalled that you would release this garbage onto your users with no warning and no way to back out. Didn't you bother to do any QA before releasing a software version? Are you trying to push your users onto a different platform?

The problems have been clearly stated by others, but I'll reiterate a few of the most egregious: 

1. Duplicate song warning (**bleep**, how could you remove such a FUNDAMENTAL and NECESSARY feature?!?)
2. Search bar - searching for music or artists is a huge pain now, why would you move it?!?
3. Browse - where did it go? 
4. Inability to move songs within a playlists...it's absolutely insane that I can't move songs up and down within the playlist...every other platform has this, why would you remove it?!?
5. Inability to resize the menu bar

These are just a few of the problems with this garbage UI. The VERY LEAST you can do is bring back the previous (working) version while you fix this mess. 

[spookydrums]

- While playing a song from a playlist, if we leave the current page (to check an artist for example), then return to it, the whole thing resets to top instead of where we were, and not even clicking on the song currently playing locates it in the playlist...
Of course, now I just don't leave the playlist unless I really really really really have to.
Man, a music app shouldn't give you this much stress, I'm done with it! I'm an extremely lazy person, but this is so miserable it motivates me enough to "pack my stuff" and move to another platform - even if that means re-creating what I have...manually. 

[kiboy6]

 For anyone looking to change platforms after this mess and utter disrespect from Spotify (and I strongly recommend Apple Music for those who care about maintaining their own music library) one most certainly does not have to do the whole process of recreating all playlists etc manually. Check out services like tunemymusic and soundiiz - they make the process fairly painless 🙂

[RyanCu]

I miss the hover-over showing me when clicking my mouse on the play icon on a song in a list is close enough and will begin playing it instead of just selecting it. 

"Removing tracks from a playlist using the delete key on Windows is fixed"

That's nice, but can you also please fix the delete key when viewing the Queue?

[aowrya]

I completely agree with you! I have never cared about Facebook updates and changes and whatever for example. Change is not the issue....good changes are fantastic. Terrible decisions and **bleep** up user-experience, however, is an issue.

I HATE this new UI, **bleep**. It SUCKS. I keep being shocked and angry when I open Spotify now and I'm like, "OH YEAH, they completely **bleep** it up. UUUUUUGH!"

Why on earth would you add extra clicks for things that used to be readily available and intuitive?! Search bar needs to be at the top of every page, I don't want to have to click something and THEN click in the search bar every time, how stupid!

And why the **bleep** would you move all songs to albums? I can't just play directly down the entire list of an artist's songs or jump around to whatever songs I want? Who the frick knows every album every song is on anymore? And how annoying to have to go into and back out of albums over and over to see the songs... WHYYYY?! Just list them like they were! I want to see allllllll of an artist's songs, listed by album and release date. SO SIMPLE. It was perfect, why did you completely screw this up?!

I have LOVED Spotify for several years, but the stupidity of this update is making me angry every time I go into the dang desktop app now, and I don't need any more things to be angry about lately, hah. ARG. Really really really hoping the designers/programmers/whoever makes a good decision to fix this back to how it was -- if it ain't broke, don't "fix" it! -- otherwise I'll be looking for a new platform. And I don't want to do that! Dang it. This sucks.

[aowrya]

Re: intellix ,  Music Fan, ‎2020-11-17 09:06 PM

EXACTLY! YES YES YES

[Ro101]

Once again coming to post about things I've already listed that weren't addressed and are huge and supremely inconvenient changes in the UI that many other have also addressed. Fundamental negative updates that should be reverted or addressed:

1) Have a view per artist where we can scroll through the entire song library, not just the discography. This insane layer of Artist > Album > songs only on that album is infuriating and making it hard to browse through entire canons to discover new songs, and hard to locate single songs because with the streaming and online shift to music listening we often don't know the albums of songs we've heard and are looking for. 

2) From a playlist, align the creation of a playlist radio to mimic the same behavior as radios from artists or songs so that the user is brought to the radio playlist view. "Start playlist radio" does not have the list view, and only plays the songs and displays them in the bottom left media corner. This makes it infuriating to go between songs or go back to a song you liked to see what it was because you have to navigate via the player and actually change the song you're currently listening to in order to navigate back. WHY not have this be the same as the playlist radio view that you can get from the option from the artist or individual songs? 

3) Having to click search and THEN access the search bar is annoying and detrimental and adding clicks. And once you click on the result, the search bar goes away again, often leading to me needing to click back several times to continue my search process because I need to get back to the view with the search bar. It's small real-estate wise -- why not just leave it viewable at all times in the top bar of the player window?

4) Honestly I have no idea why you would remove the artist column in the desktop playlist view. You have plenty of real estate to work with - this isn't constricted like mobile. And makes ordering and scrolling to skim much harder. This is a clunky and inefficient move that is unbelievably frustrating.

[9qll-gg_8go6a]

How can I opt out from this crappy update?

[mjs10]

I've been quite frustrated at the fact that the background image on the Artist's Pick is not displaying on artist's profiles via desktop.

FOR EXAMPLE:

• CURRENT NEW DESKTOP EXPERIENCE: https://imgur.com/UDUIMx0
• CURRENT MOBILE EXPERIENCE: https://imgur.com/cGhhPrC

You need to fix this feature in the new desktop experience. If you're implementing a background image via Spotify for Artists and want to make sure it's optimized/looks good, you can't see it in the new desktop experience. You can only view it in the mobile app. It makes no sense.

[unknowny]

And why would you take so needed features away every single big update, so we, as paying customers, have to fight them back (sometimes in vain) by posting in the Ideas like it's a new idea? Stop throwing babies out with the bathwater!