How is the Spotify App for Roku so bad?

[Rattlemebones]

Let's check off the train wreck here.

You can't just see a list of all of your songs and play them. They have to be in a Playlist to play them.

But when you click on a Playlist, it just says loading but never loads forcing you to restart Roku.

Then when you restart and Spotify decides it wants to load, the songs keep freezing and skipping like an old 90s CD.

Oh, and if you downloaded new songs and saved them to your playlist during that session, the next time you log on and go through the above **bleep** show. they will ALL be gone.

Honestly they should just pull this god awful app until they can get a halfway working product. But I wouldn't hold my breath as a quick Google search shows these same issues going back 4 years.

[scottypie123]

Playlists were disabled from the Roku channel about a week ago.

[the_unhipster]

No. Not anymore. They used to work, but I guess they were discontinued within the past couple of weeks.

[quinette]

i just came here to ask what happened to playlists... i've paid for spotify for years and this terrible app is making me reconsider. so disappointed in Spotify's lack of support for Roku or lack of explanation to paying customers. planning to contact them every way possible.

[djeboe]

Adding my disgust at the horrible state of affairs with the Roku app. You went from pitiful to pathetic. Apps made by single, unpaid people are better than what you have thrown up there. And I mean, puked up there.

[SBLocalGal]

I cut cable TV a few months ago and now rely heavily on my Roku 3, which has been great in filling the gap. Just last night, I discovered the it no longer support Spotify in any way that is meaningful to those of us that want to listen through our stereo system. I had TiVo before and listened to Spotify through that interface, but had to ditch TiVo along with my cable TV. I'm stunned that software developers for both Roku and Spotify haven't figured out how to make this work better for their customers. I have no complaints about either service when they are not being used together, but this is unacceptable. Time to step up, guys! Or risk losing a lot of customers (mainly Spotify, since Roku customers have already purchased the product).

[doro_t_glenn]

I upgraded from a roku 2 to a roku 4 "ultra" thinking it would be better. Well it is in every way except the Spotify App. The interface works faster, but no "playlists" makes it practically useless. And the sound quality is horrifying. I bought a DAC to convert the TOSLINK to dual RCA, and I thought the little $14 DAC was the problem so I bought another and it sounded just as horrible. Then on a lark I decided to install the youtube app and play some music videos and it sounds FANTASTIC. So the problem is not the Roku and not the DAC. The only thing left is the spotify app. It sounds like headphones dropped in a toilet. I'm SHOCKED they would even offer this app when it is obviously garbage! 

SPOTIFY! Please write a good app for the Roku 4! Otherwise you are losing a customer when my annual sub comes up again in a couple of months. Amazon music sounds great through the Roku and DAC as well. I'll be switching to them unless you get your **bleep** together.

[dazedn]

Fix your **bleep**ty app, how hard can this be! I don't want to run an HDMI cable from my PC just so I can listen to spotify. If you idiots can't fix this garbage pull the app all together!

[furblies]

They removed the only functional aspect of the app, the playlist feature. I could justify using the app because I mostly listen to short playlists that I make, so I had few issues. It's now utterly useless. I can't even mirror my phone to the roku to make it work because I live in a dorm, and the dorm wifi doesn't support casting because of how many people are on it at once. It's the entire reason I even HAVE a Roku, because I can't use my chromecast here. So I am deligated to listening to spotify on my **bleep**ty laptop speakers, or my **bleep**tier phone speakers if I want to listen to music out loud. Why the **bleep** am I paying them money again?

[randcoop]

Here's what's odd about all this: we're just talking among ourselves. It's clear that Spotify has reached the point where they only have the community forum so that the children can play with each other and not bother the adult millioinaires who have no time to be creating decent apps when their subscribers request them.

The complaints about the Roku app for Spotify have been going on for years now, falling on deaf ears of uncaring and unconcerned people at Spotify. We'll all keep paying for the service, though.

[KJinthe417]

I'd recommend you all hit them up on Twitter, @SpotifyCares. They referred
me to this other thread, but they'd also have record of all of the
complaints as I'm sure they aren't reading our comments...
https://t.co/nYLCgPyWIF

[bri_lindley]

I switched to Spotify and Rdio sold to Pandora (RIP) - I miss Rdio every day, largely due to this useless app on Roku. I am strongly considering cancelling my family plan and switching to about anything else.

[Camille5]

SPOTIFY HAS TO FIX ITS ROKU APP. Even if I'm logged in, my library and playlists never appear. The only thing I can do to play music is search for each song individually. Please do something about this!!!

[Noelle27]

This may actually be the last straw for me. I thought it was my device. I deleted and reinstalled and it's still the same nothing.

[dreame6094]

Spotify has not worked on my Roku 3 since last June. Spotify updated their Roku app and it has never been right since. I try Spotify every few months hoping the software is fixed but now they disabled playlists causing the software to be useless to me. I had over 4000 songs on my playlists. It's stupid! I have been using Youtube to listen to albums but its not the same. Thanks Spotify! I really hope one day you will fix your software for Roku users!

[1235744061]

No doubt! This was the only reason I went premium. Really ticks me off! Fix the app or pull it! I am going to just cancel and put my music on my phone and screen share it to my tv. At least I control what music is playing that way!

[saxon987]

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@prophet32j wrote:
From a company so dedicated to their users and apps, you'd think this would have been solved by now

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Grow up. The answer to the answer is right HERE: http://fortune.com/2017/06/02/spotify-ipo-nyse-2/

The key phrase is, "they are prepping for an IPO." Translation? They couldn't care less about their loyal customers at this point. It's "take the money and run" time...laughing (at you) all the way to the bank.

[eloqui]

Guess it depends which model Roku and method of wiring, try this, if your Roku has the RCA red/white outputs, do hook them direct to amp/receiver, we here are impressed with the sound quality thru a pretty hi-end stereo, bypassing the TV output for audio can be a benefit, no guarantee given, but definitely worth a try, be sure to use stereo mode on receiver and bypass theater surround processing when playing music. Again, we have streamed Amazon, its OK, but drops out at times and is sluggish loading, also Tidal, which does not impress as much as you would expect, sorry! Spotify is faster than both of those, and no drop outs, at least for our set up, our Router is new and checks out, the speed is pretty constant at 22 plus, well all things are not created equal, well aware of the many pitfalls of streaming, and yeah, we all need to **bleep** on bout that funky Roku app for Spotify, what a dinosaur!

[TheDWeinstein]

Spotify for ROKU is not even as good as PANDORA.  They got rid of PLAYLISTS and just have SEARCH - even YOUTUBE provides playlists.  So shameful.  It used to be very good - now it's a waste of money.  Terrible.

[TheDWeinstein]

What's even worse is THEY DONT SEEM TO CARE ONE BIT that people who enjoyed SPOTIFY on TV are now screwed.  They don't care.

[saxon987]

Somebody will fill the vacuum. Soon…I hope. And then doing a simple input via the ROKU app won’t feel like a computer Space Invaders game anymore!