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

[xoenergy]

I more or less like the changes, but please re enable the full screen option 

When I am listening on my desktop and chilling I like to have the album art of the current song displayed like it used to when in full screen. It is also my understanding that premium  members should have access to this. 

Is there anyway to opt out of being a test subject? 

[MattSuda]

People who need the Spotify URI are not going to know about holding down the modifier key (alt/command)

Why not just have an extra "More..." option in the popup share menu? Once you hover over "more", then a list of options comes up for Spotify URI, Spotify Code, etc. That way the options are still there, but average users won't accidentally use them.

[poedameron]

Thankfully, I was able to roll back and permenantly disable updates to Spotify on my home PC as I am sick of being a forced beta tester as well as Spotify's bizarre insistence on removing features and making the desktop app as dumb and basic as possible. Presumably because they think we're all a bunch of idiots.

ANYWAY. Unfortunately, I am not able to do so on my work PC. And guess what? I encountered ANOTHER infuriating and stupid bug. There was an album I wanted to listen too. I navigated to the search page (search bar is gone, nice one Spotify) and searched for the album. I found it, I highlighted all the songs in the album and dragged them into my playlist of "Albums to listen too".

Guess what order the they appeared in! The order they play in the album? No. The order of the album but backwards? No. Alphabetical? No. Seemingly completely ****ing randomly with no sense or order at all? Yep! Obviously. My playlist is sorted by "Recently added", but even sorting by "Album" doesn't put them in the correct play order!!!!

So now, if I want to listen to the album in the order the artist intended too, I have to either search for the album every time or go into my playlist, click the album title to go to the album and then play it from there. Because for whatever reason, Spotify has decided to put songs in a playlist in a random fashion.

Anyway, great work, Spotify. Keep it up!

[Ro101]

Once again posting negative feedback on this new release because no responses have been provided to many of the comments that have been posted here.

Specifically I have posted twice now about requesting the view of a radio playlist to be brought back so we can SEE the list on the screen, and not be forced to navigate a radio playlist ONLY through the player and ONLY via viewing the song that is currently playing (meaning to try to remember a song that I heard that I liked or wanted to know more about, I have to click the left arrow to stop the song I'm listening to now to go back to previously played songs until I find the one I wanted to look up, disrupting my listening). 

I now see that when you create a radio playlist on an artist or song, you DO automatically get routed to the radio playlist screen (great!) but for specifically a radio playlist from a PLAYLIST, you do not. Why the inconsistency? If you can do it for songs and artists, surely you can display the radio playlist from a playlist as well. The discrepancy doesn't make sense and I know we USED to get the fully radio playlist from a playlist option (vs. artist or song) in previous version because I utilized that feature heavily.

I took screenshots of the discrepancy in options from the artist and song (right click > select "Go To artist/song radio" vs. playlist (right click > "Start playlist radio"). 

My strongly desired request: bring back the radio playlist view playing from the playlist option to make it the same as radio playlists from artists or songs (IE they all should offer the "Go to" option, and none should offer "Start" without also showing the radio playlist). 

[zuazen]

I just rolled back to previous version, I am so happy to have it. 

I was waiting for fix for 3 weeks and still new version is unusable, I even don't know if you consider to fix issue described here:

 https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/New-Desktop-Experience-your-feedback-wanted/m-p/508...

I don't know how many people have big number of playlists, but for me moving into "mobile app experience" on desktop is the worst what you can do, as I use those versions in very different way, and actually desktop is more important than what I have on mobile. 

If I don't fit in your perfect user profile just let me know and we can say goodbye to each other in peace.

[user-removed]

Thank you for the work so far- but there are still two big issues:
1) you can't move tracks upward easily in manual order on a playlist... it doesn't recognize you trying to do that and automatically scroll upward, so you have to grab, drag, then scroll, then grab and drag, then scroll... etc. Very cumbersome. The downward direction is functioning though.

2) The new artist landing page is still demonstrably worse than the old one. Having to click into every album rather than simply scrolling is a worse experience.

[veRGe88]

Why is it that every time Spotify updates their software, they remove good features and make it worse than it was before? Replacing the desktop client with a buggy and woefully incomplete wrapped version of the web app is a terrible idea. How about just improving and adding to the desktop client making it as good as the mobile app, adding features and improving stability instead of removing things and completely changing it for the worse? Why would I want my desktop software of Spotify to be a wrapper around the web app? I don't, nor do the vast majority of desktop users.

[have_a_nice_day]

(First of all, english is my second language, sorry for mistakes)

I really don't like this new look, i agree with most negative comments here, but i want to add something that really pisses me off. I can't save (or "give a heart" to) albums without having to click and enter to them. I used to check my recommendations and save a few for later, but now i think it's less easier because i have to click the album, save, go back, click the album, save, go back, click the album, save, go back, close spotify, go to youtube. Please, let us go back (maybe as an option) to the old version, I started using Spotify since last month i i think it was great until everything changed.

[BobbyNL]

As a long time user and big fan of the desktop version i'm very confused by the new update that i've seeing right now. Having experience as a UX designer i've always appreciated the way Spotify worked. This is the first time i'm commenting on anything like this and seeing the amounts of feedback that are given in this thread, the design team should have a good conversation about how they got here.

With this new update my first experience was one of disorientation... Even though the UI looks fine, the actual handeling of the tools themselves feels outdated and very counter intuitive.

1. I immediately saw that the artistpage was a copy of the mobile version. And though it works fine there, (less space so you hide specific content and make buttons bigger so navigation will become easier, people don't mind as long as it's clear where we're going) doing the same on desktop gives us unnecessarily hidden content.     The visual hierarchy of content is non existent, the whole thing feels like one big blur without clear focus points... 
2. The search bar became a button that leads to a page instead of a instant accessible feature...  The search tool is combined with the exploring of genre's which in theory makes sense but they're actually two very different user goals. (see it as asking a shop assistant where you can find something and just browsing through the store yourself) Making it harder for me to search, even with just one extra click, feels very unnecessary.
3. People who use large playlists now need to scroll further because the songlisting has been made wider. Now normally more space between different content gives more rest to the user. But here it feels counter intuititive to the speed of searching and accessing different songs. The second thing that is very frustrating in a playlist is that the artist name is now placed under the song title, while the album title is a separate field... these used to be the same value, why did this change? You create more space, and then it feels like you push a couple of things into a corner... why?

Couple of smaller things:

• Adding duplicate songs in a playlist doesn't give you a warning anymore
• Searching in a playlist is also hidden under an icon: again why?
• Creating a new playlist gives you an instant new playlist. naming it requires you to click the title first.

Overall i'm very interested in hearing more about the design process and the reasoning behind some of the choices that have been made here. As a user from the very start I would prefer to go back to the older interface not just because of familiarity but simply because mobile and desktop are two very different things and have very different user goals/needs... 

[eboddington]

Overall I like the new design.

One issue which has been quite annoying, though, is that when switching between playlists the scroll position is now lost. This is especially annoying when organising long playlists, moving tracks around etc.

It used to be that if I was viewing playlist A and had scrolled to a certain position, clicked on playlist B, then playlist A again, it would return me to the same scroll position as before. Now, it takes me to the top of the playlist and I have to scroll back down and find where I was.

This seems to happen consistently (maybe it's a "feature" not a bug...) and appears to be the same on macOS.

edit: also if I'm dragging a song to reorder it in a playlist, the playlist scrolls when I move the cursor to the bottom of the screen, but not when I move it to the top! It also doesn't scroll with the mouse wheel whilst I'm holding down the click button (dragging a song). How do I therefore move something from position 100 in a playlist to position 3?

[JohnnyD4]

Please revert the removal of "really want to add duplicate tracks to playlist"-warning immediately - it totally breaks my way of getting to know new music which is extraordinary nasty during the holidays. (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Warning-before-adding-duplicate-songs-to-a-playlist...)

Overall you better should not test a beta UI with millions of users worldwide ever again! I just recently switched to premium and given this UI ( and no alternatives to chose from) I strongly consider to end premium after not even one month.

edit: Good to see that you do have at least time for the really important problems like missing batches for being registered x years .....

[Tarindel]

Just want to let the Spotify team know that I've now spent hours figuring out how to downgrade my Spotify back to the last version that doesn't try to push a mobile interface on us. I wrote a batch file to un-upgrade it whenever it decides to update again.

That's how atrocious the new interface is. That's how much I don't want to use it. You've not only made me unhappy, you've also made me do work just to continue using the version of the app I find usable.

To anybody reading this -- it's too late to put the cat back in the bag. The company has spent the money. They aren't going to not launch this to everybody, readiness and usability be damned. That would require someone take accountability, which clearly isn't going to happen.

[9qll-gg_8go6a]

How do I opt out?

[Melissaaakilic]

STOP TEST SERVER PLEASE AND BRING OLD ONE BACK'!!!!!

[Melissaaakilic]

ITSSS**bleep** STILL PROBLEMS GO ON AND EVEN THOUGH WE GIVE FEEDBACKS YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY NOTHING!

[Anders_W]

I don´t like the new theme at all, I barely use Spotify on Mobildevices at all, mostly on desktop, I have now rolled back to "before" state and blocked further uppgrades,
To things I hate

1. when connecting a bluetoth device to my phone and the "play" is moved to the phone, let the users chose if they want this feature or not.
2. I want to be able to play several albums in a row w/o adding the to some f.... play queu, so I miss the icons shown in the picture below
    

    

[jepopadak]

You can't.  😞

[lblackwelluk]

I got sucked into this back in November. The best solution I found after contacting tech support (uninstall and reinstall--really?) was to use the reddit steps to roll back to a previous version. I'm really happy with that. The system automatically upgrades me periodically, and I just run the rollback script. Takes about a minute.

I do like that a few things have been addressed, although I'm still wildly curious as to WHY they were removed? Who removes the duplicate warning message? There's no advantage to that at all, only detriment.

So even though I won't be running this new version (just check in on it occasionally), the users here still really, really want:

1. The duplicate warning message--if it was there before, it can be there again!

2. The ability to drag songs in a playlist up beyond the limits of the current screen. It was there before...

3. A separate artist column--it was there before....

4.  Y'know....it's all been said already. No idea if it will be heeded, but we liked what we had before. No one ever said, "Dear God, I hope they remove that feature." I would keep listing, but it's already been said.

Respectfully, it's been 11 days since the last update started rolling out. What's being addressed next? What fix is coming? Can we get it all fixed? Please? I'm on Premium until early next year, but nothing about this experience makes me want to stay.

Respectfully,

lblackwelluk

[OrbOfConfusion]

Is there a way to just "play" an artist anymore?  Used to be that when viewing an artist page, their discography would act as a de-facto playlist.  You could play all their music sequentially by just hitting play on whatever track you wanted to start from, or shuffle play by doing the same thing and ticking the shuffle option.

Now the only option seems to be to play from the popular playlist, or to go to individual albums via discography.  Neither of these give me what I had in previous versions.  This is an enormous loss of functionality for both listening to artists I know I like, and listening to new artists I've just discovered.

It seems like the desktop app's artist page has been updated to be more like the android app - but the desktop app had better/more functionality for me, and I merely tolerated the android app's lack of features.

[Phil12345]

Hi everyone, Hi spotify,

what (the **bleep**) happened to the columns in my playlist? The user experience is horrible. I can not concentrate/search for the artist or song-title. Also the new artist-page is horrible design! What happened?

Please, i want this columns back: Artist / Title / Album... !!!

I must say, your user experience was till now very good, but thats a horrible update. With this update, i really dont like using spotify and have to consider to leave spotify.