Hello pompa,
I am very happy that you guys are now allowing us to leave feedback on your chromecast experience. I am a long time user of Spotify, in fact I have been using your service for over 7 years.
I started using Spotify on my first generation chromecast about two years ago. Half a year ago I brought home a fairly serious hi-fi system in my living room, hooked up in my TV, so Spotify on chromecast has been everyday driver for music to my speakers. I honestly like the new design of the big screen. As many others I miss the next/previous album art, because without it the big screen feels bland and less interactive. But to me, the overall experience with a chromecast application is NOT in design. I frankly do not care about the looks. To me, what makes the experience great or not so great is how it feels to use the application and also, of course, how it sounds.
This is where Spotify on chromecast miserably fail to deliver. There are two major flaws with Spotify on chromecast that needs to be addressed. First of, the delay of any interraction is too high. From my Honor 8 cell phone, it takes about 1.5 seconds to play/pause any song. Moreover it takes about 2 seconds to change any song (pressing next track for example) and whats worse is that it takes another 6-10 seconds of silence before the track loads. So if I want to change a song (which I do freqently when I am the only listener), it takes around 8-12 seconds from the button press to the next song. This is horrible!! I would suggest a solution within the frames of maybe playing the current song until the next one is ready. This way, the delay (unless shortened) will be there but at least it wont be in silence. Maybe this is in the hands of how chromecast works? Similar problems exists within the youtube on chromecast, but there the delay is much much smaller (and we are talking video stream).
My sister uses Deezer, one of your direct competitor. While I have not tested the delay issue with Deezer on chromecast, I have noticed one other major flaw that Spotify has but Deezer does not. This one is pretty tricky to explain without listening, so I attatched a recording from my speaker while I played one of the songs from Spotify on chromecast with my hifi system. Please have a listen as I do think this is the single most big flaw with the Spotify on chromecast right now.
I started the recording right after I changed to the song "Feels So Real" by Rusko so you get a true example of the delay aswell. The first seconds of silence is what I experience every time I swap song. Anyways, the real problem is all the "popping" sounds that occours. They happen at the same time in the song every time you play the song, so the occurrences are NOT random. Something is flawed behind the gears of how Spotify plays music over chromecast. This type of error does ONLY happen when I use Spotify on chromecast. It does not happen with Deezer on chromecast, it does not happen with Spotify over AUX to the same hifi system. It does not happen with Spotify on the same TV over HDMI. Of course, this happens on several songs, I just picked one I know pops a lot in the intro.
That one last flaw is preventing me from proudly using Spotify at home parties and it does bring shame to whichever song suffers from this error. As a seven year old loyal customer I wish nothing more than having the quality and ease of use that Spotify on all other platforms have given me in the past. The concept of having Spotify as a wireless solution to your TV is amazing, but sadly in practice it is nothing more than a bad mediaplayer in shiny looks.
I apologize for the long post, but seeing as this issues has been haunting me for some time now, I really want you kind guys over at Spotify to know of it. Thank you a thousands if you guys will take the time to read it all!
Cheers!
Staff / Moderator/ 2 years ago in Social & Random