[Mobile] Please bring back the old group session. "Play from same device"

[tgerhardt1]

The old group session, "play from same device option" has been removed and it has saddened many people. It seems the only group session option is now remote group sessions, where the music is played on each individual device.

This group session, "play from same device" feature was personally one of my favorite features of Spotify. When it was first introduced, I quite literally showed all of my friends to use it. I understand it was in beta, but this feature was used by many people, quite literally all the time. We know this feature did not work perfectly, but we would use it regardless of the tiny flaws, it was honestly my favorite thing about Spotify.

Whenever I, or any group, would have friends over, I would always offer to start a group session so that everyone could contribute to the music being played. Having this option, friends could seamlessly contribute to the music being played so that one person would not selfishly play music the entire time. It was so fun having everyone able to contribute, without having to hand over the one single phone to everyone that was connected to the device, just to add a few songs to the queue. Having someone scan a code and then instantly able to add songs to the queue was a perfect idea for hanging out with friends, in person.

It appears with the new update, there is only an option for remote group sessions where the music is played on each individual device, I'm asking to consider bringing back the "play from same device."

To recap, this feature allowed people to share music during in-person hang sessions, and from the people I had introduced to it, all found it to be one of the most fun features of Spotify.

So, dear Spotify, please bring back this feature!

Thanks,

Troy and many others!!

[ShadowIncubus]

I saw someone commenting here, talking about how he got Cancer because of Spotify and the removing of this feature. I just wanted to say this is really inappropriate. I don't believe it. But me as an individual, had drastic Pain in my chest in the moment I saw that Spotify removed this feature.. Turns out I've had a heart attack with following lung infection, I nearly died on the same day straight away. Thank you

[dababababb]

For anyone interested in getting this feature back, they didnt actually change something in the background but rather just removed the option in the app so sideloading an older apk does the trick. It's just sad to see that spotify hasnt changed anything after all these comments. Instead they urge customers into actions like sideloading their app potentially risking device integrity. Would you at least tell us why its absolutely not possible to bring this feature back ?

I guess time is not the problem since you had plenty of time figuring out how to F this up when it was actually working fine...

[PlatinumMillz]

Personally, I like the way it is now but I get why some people why might it reverted. I suggest that there could be a button somewhere to switch between playing on one host device or playing it on everyone's devices separately.

[prediscover]

They should just add the option back!!

[Ogc-]

I wanted to be able to share sessions with people when not using WiFi, this was working well for over a year and now appears to be removed. I need it specifically for aux cables and Bluetooth speakers, particularly in the car.

[LBarg]

Dear Spotify,

with the simple and genious feature of a group session in combination with the scannable code made your app unrivalled and your users very happy and pleased. I was glad to pay for spotify premium, because I new what I payed for and it was definitly wearth it. But unfortunately, the "new" update wasn't an improvement at all. Eventhough there still is the group session feature, it is more complecated, less functuning and therefore less used than before. And with this change, even more bugs emerged. But to make Spotify unrivalled again, you simply could bring back this old session feature, which was one of the main arguments to buy the app. And I hope that not only the main post I'm commenting gets recognised by the internatl team of Spotify, but also the huge consent of the majority of Spotify users.

Please make Spotify wearth to pay for again!

Your's sincerely,

A not so happy spotify user

[groupsessionuser]

The Spotify team needs to think about this from a user perspective. What are the use cases? What is easiest to use? What is most flexible? The main concerns people have seem to be two different issues:

1. Requirement of a spotify recognized speaker in order to start a local session
   1. This limits the potential sound output options, as people used to be able to listen from phone speaker, aux speaker, bluetooth speaker, any non wifi connected speaker, etc
2. Removal of scannable code
   1. Sending a link is outdated and annoying, and people don't always want to allow others on their wifi. What if there is no wifi network present either?

I understand that Spotify is trying to innovate and integrate with the latest tech, but that can be done by enhancing the previous feature, not removing it. My thoughts:

1. Keep the remote group session as is. No issue with it
2. Revert the local group session to the previous behavior.
   1. By default, allow scan to join. Links available if needed. No requirement/restriction on audio output devices, all output can be played from same phone
   2. If speaker is wifi enabled, and second device is connected to same wifi, give them the option of joining directly on their phone without needing to scan code.

For the local group session, by implementing the steps as 1 -> 2, you are improving the experience for a subset of people while not restricting the behavior for the rest of the nonapplicable users. Currently it seems like implementation was done as 2 -> 1.

[Dickmannd5]

Why the **bleep** would they remove it? Are CS majors this inept or is this just incompetence

[Maleis]

Please bring back this feature. We always used this feature at partys. It was so convenient because everybody could play music over one bluetooth speaker. This possibility is completely gone now. 

[lil-_-esquire]

Yeah taking this away is so stupid.