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.

[Hubo]

Hi Everyone,

Dan here from the Desktop team again.  Desktop 1.1.55 is starting to roll out now and I wanted to let you know what to expect.

Fullscreen mode
We’ve brought back a new and improved fullscreen mode for Desktop, making better use hi-res artist imagery where available.

Playlisting

• The “create similar” playlist context menu item has been added to the main playlist list in the app
• We’ve improved playlist loading performance when navigating throughout the client
• Show the downloaded badge in the liked songs button when it’s available offline
• Improvements to the use-case of filtering to find a track within a long playlist
  

General

• Episode sorting on podcast show pages, back with improved performance
• Podcast play order improvements, better selecting which episode to play when playing from cards/search etc
• Added the ability to see subtitles on videos where they are available.
• Improved refreshing of content on Home to ensure fresh content
• Show the top 5 cities where people listen to an artist on the artist about page
• Where there are multiple versions of a release, show a dropdown on the album page allowing the user to switch between them

As always, please do ensure you’re fully updated and are running the latest version. We again thank you for the feedback provided. 

Thanks,
Dan

[matt817l]

Just like many others in this thread, I am an avid user of Spotify and am usually a huge fan of the numerous great features that it has. Unfortunately, I agree with just about every repeated issue that has been brought up by everyone else.

The biggest issues for me are:

1. the discography change on the Artist page (can't just listen to an entire discography from one page. Also, if I know a song but not the album I have to click every album to search for it instead of having everything listed on one page where I can scroll and find it)

2. not having the Artist column in a playlist for sorting (triple-clicking on the Title column is just excessive and the way which songs get sorted is just confusing... the way in which songs were ordered before when sorting by Artist made much more sense)

I name these two issues because, as others have mentioned, these are issues where desktop functionality has not been changed, it has been lost. Most other problems I could probably get used to. Not those ones, though.

As others have said, I understand wanting a more appealing and organized layout, but when it doubles the amount of clicks we have to make it's just annoying (i.e. no longer having a tab on the left for Recently Played). Also, many new features are fine for mobile but just make no sense for desktop. For example, when I click on an Artist I am hardly ever simply intending to look at the artist name, monthly listeners, and top 5 songs. That is a painfully small amount of content for an entire screen, especially when the previous version allowed me to immediately see helpful things such as similar artists, the About tab, etc. It was by no means cluttered or complicated before; this new version is just too watered down and results in unnecessary scrolling and clicking. Again, perfectly fine for mobile. Not so much desktop.

Many people have said that they want the social tab on the right gone. I do not, I actually use it a lot. The fact that I have to squint just to read the words on it now makes no sense to me. Song names and Artist names are often too long for those displays, so there's just ellipses everywhere and I don't really know what my friend is listening to (if a song is long enough, the artist name isn't even visible...). Yes, more people fit on the tab now, but it's not worth it when a) the words are TINY and b) it's way harder to actually tell what they are listening to. That feature change kinda shot itself in the foot.

I like the aesthetic. When the mobile app was updated, I was happy. It looks nice. But, like many others, I much prefer the previous desktop version. I believe that many problems (such as showing album art for each song in a playlist) could be fixed by giving toggling options. For example, if I can have the option to not see album art for each song in a playlist, or if I can have the option to see 25 songs on one screen instead of 15, I would be satisfied. Or in a different example, if I could toggle between the "new" discography format on an Artist page and the "old" format I would be satisfied. I've already been involuntarily opted into a beta, the least that I can be given is the opportunity to have some options.

I would hate to see some of the great functionality of this application go down the drain for the sake of aesthetics and streamlining navigation.

[1crimson1]

As it currently stands, I'm over one week into this forced beta and I still have 5 days to go until this "new and refreshing, feature-rich update" gets rolled out to the masses. Bottom line, I did not ask for this update and I did not apply for beta testing. This is absolutely absurd and I simply can't take it anymore. Look, I'm paying for software I can't fully utilize, I'm paying for software features that have unwillingly and unknowingly been taken away from me, AND will likely have to go through this THE NEXT TIME someone at Spotify HQ has an itch to change up the UI (Since apparently this is not the first time that Spotify has done this). No, enough, I'm done.

I really do genuinely feel ripped off here, mainly due to the fact that I wasn't even asked to participate. YOU JUST DON'T DO THAT TO PAYING CUSTOMERS! That's like if I walk into a donut shop and pay for a Boston cream only to have the clerk hand me a jelly filled donut without telling me. Then to turn around after I bite into it and tell me "It's a new flavor, what do you think? It's tasty isn't it? Everyone likes it! We'd love to hear your feedback, just hop on over to the next building and submit your feedback." Then going over to said building to submit your COMPLAINT only to be told that MaYbE they'll give you something that's LiKe a Boston cream, "you'll just have to sit tight for 2 weeks to find out" until our bakers finish re-inventing the Boston cream, this time with JELLY! In any normal situation any sane person would say "@$&* YOU! Either give me my money back, give me the #$%&ing donut I paid for, or I'm going to a different donut shop and NEVER coming back." Right? Am I wrong here?

At this point I don't care what happens to the desktop client, roll it back, fix it, leave it, whatever. I'm not going to pay a company to be a software beta tester for a service as invaluable and important to me as music is. I mean, it's not like music is just a one time stop at a donut shop, in all seriousness, music is daily, music is personal, music is ROUTINE. When one of those things gets messed up, ROUTINE in this case, it's no longer a jelly filled crisis, it's ruining my whole day and then some. There are PLENTY of other music streaming service providers out there that have far better business practices, and treat their customers with at least a little more respect than Spotify has the last week and a half.

In retrospect, though, I'm happy that you guys are proud and energetic about changing your desktop UI. However,(and most importantly), throwing me and others into beta software without a care, as if you thought "Hey, check out our cool and hip new interface", needlessly, like a toddler, desperately wanting you to check out their new toy, has really irked me the wrong way. All's not bad, though. It's actually done me quite the solid and forced me to check out what other providers have to offer, so thanks, really. We almost made it 5 years, almost, but I've gotta say I'm quite pleased with what YouTube Music brings to the table. I sincerely hope that itch to update your desktop client works out for you. Don't worry too much about losing me, I'm just one customer. Plus people tend to forget pretty quick when you throw shiny new toys their way, so in 5 more days I'm sure everything will be just fine. Cheers!

[Burton1224]

Just not working at all...

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Desktop-Playback-issues-on-devices-with-Xonar-sound-...

This one is closed i tried it even I have a different sound card. If i try to play it its jumping just through all sounds not starting a single one. Windows is already competly new installed

[NicolasGuzman]

I know yall don't care but why tf would someone socially follow an artist that they don't have any music saved from? The whole idea is stupid and just give us back the tab of my artists that I have music saved from... you know like the name of the tab SUGGESTS! 

[Mexhigh]

Please bring Recently Played songs to both the mobile and desktop versions of Spotify.

There are several threads on the community forum about this missing feature and nobody seems to do anything about it.

Personally, I do not care about Recently Played Albums because if I listen to a whole album then chances are I remember which one it was. Recently Played Songs, on the other hand, is very useful when listening to playlists of other people.

[NRondelis]

The new look its AWFUL . Many "new" functions make the hole experience a LOT slower and annoying.
1) search bar is not constantly shown. I have to go to "search tab" first. thats annoying
2) I cant Like-heart an album from thumbnail. I have to open it in order to do this. Thats Annoying
3) There is no "right-arrow" to go to more albums in the same page. You have to go to "SEE MORE" if you want to see more albums of a category. Thats annoying.
4) I cant make an easy Radio-Playlist from a song. The "radio" songs go to the Cue -list and i have to choose them and put them in a playlist. THATS annoying.

I want to go back in the previous version . And please delete my name from the list of the "lucky" guinea pigs that go through these tests

Nikolaos Rondelis

[Jean_Louis]

Hi everybody!
I'd like to understand why we cannot filter playlists by artists anymore. I used that functionnality every day and it is really upsetting. The searchbar is no use for it since it only works with alphanumeric sequences with no space nor diacritics and so "Queen" is melted with any kind of other queens.

[stjejo01]

When I sort the playlists by date the sort state is not kept in between changing tabs. It doesn't help to log out or close the app and open it again. I even deleted Spotify and downloaded the app again. I still have the same problem. I have to click on the date every time I go back to a playlist and I want the recently added songs to be at the bottom. If I want songs to not be at the top permanently I have to drag them to the right place manually and that's super annoying.

I think the new update has some issues. Another issue is that I cannot search for an artist/band among liked songs if they have a name with more than two words with spaces between the names. For example I have to write kinggizzard because king gizzard doesn't give me any results. 

I don't like the way you see the albums on artist's pages either. The feature where you could choose to scroll through all the songs on every album was good.

[super_nova]

Recently Listened songs were a feature that I used a lot. Why the **bleep** did you decided to REMOVE A FEATURE? I want it back. This is no longer just a UI update, you are removing features...

[1d9cje24aeg69k]

This is so frustrating because a 1 year old took my mouse thought it was a phone and started clinking every where while the screen was off. so now I'm suck with this way worse looking design with less functionality.

Give me back my customization and sleek design

[1d9cje24aeg69k]

I don't like that when I add a New song to a playlist it appears at the top of that playlist instead of at the bottom.

[Szinkler]

Could you please put back the "changing volume with mouse scroll" feature (when mouse is above volume bar)? Thank you!

[jrow]

Very urgent: 

I just discovered a major issue regarding playlist-folders: When I take a playlist-folder, hold it with the mouse an move it up to another position, it "swallows" all playlists and folders that were formerly listed under it. 

My whole library on the left is a complete mess now. 

So seriously, please keep in mind that there are people out there working in music agencys like me, a&rs, labels, advertising industry etc. using Spotify as a very importand tool for their working routine with huge music libarys and organisation structures (because it was / is one of the best tools to do so). Therefore this try / error thing in the beta phase has to stop. It feels impractical and really sensitive for errors. I hardly dare to work with it anymore because of the performance failures. Dont wanna ruin the whole thing. 

Would be really nice to give us as major users and customers an forecast how long the beta phase will last. 

Sorry for being a bit outrageous, it is just really annoying by now. 

[ObstImHaus]

Thanks for the suggestion, sadly ctrl alt + left/right does absolutely nothing haha.

[terioncalling]

So...either the update was rolled back on my account or the same account, logged in to two different computers (one at home and one at work), has different versions of Spotify going. Because mine was definitely the new variation at work when I left yesterday but upon launching the desktop app today at home, it is the old version.

Edit: Spoke too soon, I closed it and reopened the desktop version and SIGH there's the new.

[wocalax19]

Just wrote a nice long reply to have it error out when I hit send. I am so mad at Spotify right now. And hearing they are just deleting anything with any negativity(there should be negativity, the UI change was negative) is off-putting. Sigh, I have never considered leaving Spotify(been nearly a decade) until this moment. Unbelievably disrespectful and I can't think of a UI update that was good on their end.

[wocalax19]

A/B testing your major UI changes is SO COMPLETELY RUDE. It's one of the lamest things I've heard of. You A/B test when it's some email where you want to see which of your two subject lines hit better.

You don't A/B test your UI redesign. You have folks opt-in to UI redesigns. You call them betas. 

And you OFFER betas. You don't force betas on folks like they are your own personal guinea pigs. ESPECIALLY WHEN THOSE GUINEA PIGS PAY YOU.

I just read about a person who now has all their folders ruined because of a bug in the new UI that they never asked to test. So that is really cool of y'all. I'm sure they are really enjoying this unwanted build they can't opt-out of that others don't have and clearly has issues.

This is an absolutely disgusting way to treat folks who pay for your service.

[wocalax19]

Does anyone know how I can get back the ability to sort my playlists by artist? I used that. A lot. Now it's gone and when I want to drop to my favorite bands (Modest Mouse, Motion City Soundtrack) it's a pain in the ass now when before I could sort by M and find which classic I wanted to listen to.

[terioncalling]

You have to click several times on TITLE for it to flip to the ARTIST sorting. Specifically three to even start sorting by artist.

[1crimson1]

The only way I know of is very technical and requires Linux knowledge.

In short, you could download a program called Virtualbox by Oracle, then download Fedora Workstation 33. Create a Fedora VM in Virtualbox, then download the Flatpak version of Spotify. As far as I can tell, the Flatpak version isn't allowed to update to the beta due to how Flatpak handles updates. Basically, programs aren't allowed to wildly do as they please, such as update themselves.

Worth noting: My work kiosk runs Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and has the SNAP version of Spotify installed, THAT version was updated to the beta. Both of my personal Fedora computers haven't /can't have the update pushed thanks to Flatpak.