Close Button Closes Spotify [Windows]

[jeff]

Or at least minimize it to a tray Icon. But I would say close it. Maybe this is more of an opinion, but I've only used 2 programs that are this bad. Skype and Spotify. And Skype is a really bad program.  So I don't know why in Spotify, the Close and Minimize button do the same exact thing. I would like a quick way to close the program and stop the musik.  This is mainly a problem for me on Windows 7 and I believe linux is very similar.

[bergerle]

so, dear spotify team, you say your user experience philosophy is to confuse users by providing a button with a defined functionality and doing something totaly different? If so, your philosophy is really messed up and everything but user friendly. If not so, what else are you trying to tell us? What is the sense in doing this? I've heard of no one who is happy about that "feature" but everyone seems to be pissed of by it. I simply don't expect a programm just to get minimized when i click close. If i want that, I click the minimize button like in every other programm.

I'm learning about usability engineering in university and then I see software like Spotify and just wonder "what the heck did they think there???" This is even worse then showing a popup asking me if I really want to close (what in this case could actually be acceptable because some people might not be aware of the change)

[rikast]

I completely agree! It's extremly annoying. Close should close the program. Minimize, minimize it. How hard could it be?

[jacksenechal]

The close button means quit. The minimize button means minimize. If you mess with the convention, you ultimately add frustration and confusion. The user has to pause momentarily and think, has to make an exception for the excentricacies of your program. That's not good UI.

[kristianw]

Ha ha: "(...) since it does not fit out our user experience philosophy"

Read these 10 usability heuristics from NN/g and change your philosophy. I quote: 

"Consistency and standards

Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions."

[FalconFour]

Oh my god, can we be for real about this??! "Case Closed"?! This is the first idea/suggestion I've seen YET on this page that's been marked "screw you, we have our reasons for designing it like this". After years of people telling Spotify that the program needs to close when I hit "X", this is the point where that response means Spotify has some hidden agenda for forcing it to stay running and hiding the "quit" option from the users.

Completely ridiculous. This should never have made it out of beta like this, let alone to this day, AND being told "nope, we're doing that for our own reasons".

[Peter__]

I think this must be a p2p thing, Skype has the same behaviour. 

Peter

[ntc]

At least I'd like to know what are the real reasons for forcing the program to stay running in the background.

[ntc]

I've just switched from rdio and just because of this I think I might be switching back as soon as the trial is over.

[Peter__]

"At least I'd like to know what are the real reasons for forcing the program to stay running in the background."

I dont work for Spotify, but I would be willing to give a wild guess since Skype has the same behaviour.

Spotify on the desktop (not on mobile) uses a unique and highly sophisticated p2p (peer-to-peer) system for sharing content across the Spotify network. When you are using Spotify, your Spotify client becomes part of that network, downloading but also uploading content for others on the network. This is one of the main reasons why Spotify is able to support gapless playback and such low buffering times. Skype uses a similar system. 

Therefore it would stand to reason, Spotify would like you to leave the client running when you are not using it since it will still be part of that network sharing its content even if you are not using it. Really, it is that technology which makes Spotify amazing 😄 

Peter

[FrankyBoy]

+1, at least give us an option like "x closes spotify" or something!

Also: closing all other threads as duplicate and pointing them to a closed thread? That really sucks 😛