[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. 

[Forwhatitsworth]

Can you guys fix this already, please? This idea has had more than 500 votes for months now and you still haven't done anything about it.

[AsianMochhi]

This is literally so stupid. I recently returned to the free version because my student discount ran out. And it was so irritating to not be able to click on the album and have a bunch of songs I could add to my playlist. Now I have to individually look up songs in order to add them to my playlist. So inconvenient. And I also agree with another users response. It makes it far harder for artists to be discovered. I was trying to look at this artists' songs and because I couldn't open their most popular ones, I just gave up and left. I didn't want to listen to them right then, I wanted to add their songs to my playlist so I could listen to them later, but now I didn't. They are losing the potential for thousands of fans. So who exactly does this dumb ass change benefit exactly? One of my favorite things about Spotify is how easy it is to find songs and organize my music but you have just taken that away. So way to go?  You lost the best thing about you. 

[lizziebella]

this has been idea has been up for almost 10 months, there are almost 800 votes, and nothing has happened. What else do you want, Spotify?😑

[Jacob]

Updated on 2021-05-20

Your suggestion has at least 180 votes in 6 months! Keep gathering votes. If this idea gets enough votes, Spotify will check it out and post a status update. You can read more about the idea process here.

[Mihail]

Updated on 2021-06-15

Hey everyone,

Thanks for bringing us your feedback in the Spotify Idea Exchange.

Your suggestion has gathered the votes necessary and your feedback is now reaching the internal teams at Spotify. They're aware of the vote count and popularity of this idea. We'll continue to monitor and check out the comments here, too.

As soon as we have any updates on its status, we'll let you know.

More info on how your feedback reaches Spotify via the Idea Exchange can be found here.

[Elena]

Updated on 2021-06-24

Hey everyone,

Thanks for coming to the Spotify Idea Exchange.

We've discussed this idea and since this request inherently changes what our Free and Premium subscriptions offer and as such, we cannot influence this. Some features are only available on our paid subscription tiers as benefits for our subscribers.

If we do have any new information to share, rest assured we'll check back in here with a new status.

Thank you for your understanding.

[Eclipse_31]

So when you go to any album on Mobile, you do not have the option to preview the tracks, even though there is clearly an and more button at the end of the list of tracks. Now, I get that on mobile you can only shuffle through albums, but it would still be a good idea to preview the tracks thar are ACTUALLY on the album!

Playlists are just like albums in that the songs are randomlu shuffled, but at least THAT gives you the option to preview the available tracks.

Please, Spotify, this would be an amazing feature, especially for people who wish to explore wide collections of songs and tracks through albums as opposed to playlists.

[txbee0670]

And it was a feature available to all. How do you justify removing a feature that was free and helped attract your customers to begin with??

[Steven43]

Okay so it supposedly “changes what our Free and Premium subscriptions offer and as such, we cannot influence this.” First off I would like to state that you used to allow us to do it, you even allowed us to hear a preview of a song. So why change it? Why make free people (who have to listen to your ads which make you money) want to leave by removing such a feature. Not only does it make it harder to creat any kind of playlist. You do realize we could just search the album up on YouTube?       (which at this point is entirely better than Spotify just because you don’t let free users see a playlists song). So in essence you made your app worse trying to get more money but instead your probably losing it cuz free users no longer wanna use it and therefore no longer see your ads. Not a good business choice there Spotify. Maybe you should get smarter not dumber. Now to make a request. Bring old Spotify back. A music app that was actually good. I once preferred you over pandora but that may change. And I’m sure there are many others that think that. 

[ishimbob_]

this is stupid and down right bad, i don’t think that u realise that this is making u lose more money than ur getting as free users aren’t willing to pay and r going to alternative, free, and much more easily accessible apps. as a long time spotify user i’m highly disappointed and think that this change has not only ruined our music experience but also ruined ur programme.