[Mobile] Preview albums for free users

[ollylee03]

Recently, Spotify took away the ability for free users to see what songs are in an album or by a particular artist.

Before, free users were able to select an album, press “preview” or “and more”, and see a list of all the songs in the album, each with a short audio demo. This made it much easier to discover new artists, and created a much more convenient user experience.

The only way to hear samples of songs now is to listen through Spotify-made playlists. Unfortunately lots of smaller artists don't feature on many of these playlists making it very difficult to sample/discover their music. 

Obviously, I understand that as a free user there are compromises that need to be made by users like listening to ads, only being able to shuffle and not being able to listen to specific songs, but removing the ability to see what songs I'm shuffling is silly; so silly in fact that many users thought it was a glitch in the app at first. 

It's clear that this is an attempt to force more free users into going premium but some users simply can't afford it, so this is an unnecessary punishment. Many users, including myself, will be looking for alternative music services if this change isn't reversed. 

[saturn_bunny]

I also thought this was a glitch at first, because this feature is pretty much the only way I'm able to discover artists and curate playlists. In fact, I haven't listened to music other than playlists on youtube for like a month because of this. It feels like we're being forced to pay for premium if we want anything like a pleasant experience on the app. If this doesn't get fixed I'll definitely be looking into other music providers (in fact I've made it a point to research Pandora, Apple Music, etc. today), which is sad because I've discovered so many small artists on Spotify. Basically my entire music taste is all thanks to this app. 

Also, like okashiikessen said, this community feature isn't well known or accessible enough to be a fair measure of what Spotify users want. Plus it was irritating that I had to sign up as a community member just to vote and like posts.

Please change this. I really don't want to have to delete my account and lose all my playlists and music. 

[seminocturnal]

Another vote for this. Apart from the great user feedback here, I wonder how this kind of functionality removal affects everyone across the whole fan to artist pipeline. Such as release campaigns promoting an album when there's no way for fans to search via album name to get to the available singles or playlists within the free plan. Or even see the non-clickable title of the album listed when they're playing an available track? Seems weird. 

[viveldin]

i thought it was a glitch too !! it is absolutely ridiculous that they labeled this as a "new idea", when they already had this feature but decided to get rid of it. and for what ?? you guys suck.

[Kbrady9234]

I agree, this was a very stupid decision and it extremely affects my usage of the app. After and album would come out by an artist, I would always go to spotify to see the music but now I can no longer do that so I use other apps.

ha and I remember back in June I reported this and the responded to me saying “this is a bug we are working on” and here we are now.

[Slimbim]

So stupid of them and it did not make me wanna get premium if that was their  idea to get more people to buy premium for money, it actually made me wanna DELETE Spotify and use another music app. So its actually gonna drive people away. Think before you do things. 

[BleedIntoMyMind]

They have no idea how extremely frustrating this is. I don't even want to use spotify anymore.

[Goldfish2]

How many votes does it need? 

[Youweiparra]

Some people here don’t have Spotify premium, never will want it. Some here use it way more than any premium user can imagine. And you promised that all of Spotify’s library was accessible. Do you really wanna argue it anymore? Just give us this damn feature back, it’s the least you can do.

[oxwt_h-sr2678]

 Spotify how many app updates do we have to go through for the free users to view albums again

[user-removed]

This so stupid, most of these comments are from July and it’s  already September... wth I literally rely on the preview to see what songs i want.. i cant afford premium so this is just a dumb tactic. I feel bad for everyone who is waiting on spotifys response... i dont think theyll take this new thing away for a while.