Help us improve Chromecast

[pompa]

Hi all,

I’m the Product Manager for the Big Screen Experience here at Spotify.

As you may have noticed, we have made a change recently in how the Chromecast app looks and performs.

Our main goal with this change was to rebuild the underlying infrastructure and logic to make it more performant and permit us to develop faster on the platform.

This also required us to overhaul the whole user interface. As you can see, it doesn’t look much today and our intent is to quickly learn and improve the experience.

We've already received a lot of feedback from you - the community. We would like to understand the feedback better which is why we’re opening up this thread to discuss with you directly on what could be improved and understand the why’s.

One of the things that we came across was that many people were missing previous and next song which was shown in the old design but isn’t anymore. Please let us know more how this was used and why it’s important for you.

Thanks.

[bnijenhuis]

The last version used the whole screen and looked like it was optimized for the TV. Now it looks like a mirror of the app, but the app is vertical and the TV is not. Also, as you mentioned, the previous and next are missing. I really like to see this, especially in random playlists. It also gives an indication whether you're at the start or end of the playlist.

Kind regards,

Bernard

[pompa]

Thanks for your input.

For you it wasn't about knowing "what's queued up next" but rather understanding what position you are in a playlist?

[Maanwel]

Hi.

Thanks for creating this topic. My biggest concern is that the new Chromecast interface, unfortunately, is very slow. I am used of Spotify loading the queue on beforehand, but now it has to load the next song after the current one finishes. This makes the process of loading unfortunately way slower. 

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@pompa wrote:

One of the things that we came across was that many people were missing previous and next song which was shown in the old design but isn’t anymore. Please let us know more how this was used and why it’s important for you.

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I always liked this feature. For example, when there is a Spotify playlist on and there are a group of people in the same room, it is entertaining to guess the next song, based on the album art.

Talking about improvements for the Chromecast interface. One feature I really want to see is a party mode, like YouTube for example has. This has been proposed several times before (example). I would love to see this feature on Spotify Chromecast!

Thanks in advance!

[SicarioNox]

Honestly, it's just as Bernard said - it looks like it has been mirrored from the phone and that's what's bothering me mostly. Now I'm all for minimalistic style but what Spotify is now is just... missing something, and it most likely is the filling of the screen. Sadly I can't personally state exact reasons why I don't like the current style... it's just a feeling, more like and what I said before is the only thing I can think of.

[minifreddusch]

What I realised in the new version is that songs now take about 7 seconds to play from the moment I start them on my Android Phone (or when the next song in a playlist starts). The old version managed to play the song instantly when I pressed "play" on my phone. I have noticed that if I leave the song paused at the beginning and then press "play" after a few seconds it seems to work instantly, probably the caching proccess is done by then.

Also, as Bernard said I like the old design much more. Showing the next played song is helpful while playing shuffled playlists and is just a design plus compared to the version rn.

[SicarioNox]

Oh and I forgot to mention a few other things that probably were discussed before, but I think they're still worth mentioning. First is Spotify on phone losing track of the cast after a while - while the music on TV keeps playing, the notification doesn't change and shows an old song, until I open Spotify again. Another issue is not being able to start casting from PC. Though I can control the music when it's casting already, I can only start casting from my phone or tablet.

[michmike]

Previous & next song(s) is indeed what I miss. Not just to see what song is next, but also to see if a song added to the queue is picked up by the Chromecast.

[bnijenhuis]

Both actually, but it was also the whole experience. It was nice to have it on your TV, now it might as well be hidden. Just a boring player.

[Swanny]

Yeah I miss seeing the previous and next artwork. It gave you a good idea of what was coming up and what played previously. It looks a bit more alive compared to now where the interface just looks drab and depressing.

TV interfaces need to look good visually. Emphasise the album art as much as you can.

[MattSuda]

The new Chromecast UI is very poor. I can't make out the icons and read the text from the couch. My couch is center to the TV, not too far away, but usually in a living room setup the couch is way back. The greyish text on a white background is just too hard to see from the couch. If you put your face to the TV, you can read it, but not from the couch. With the old UI, it was easier to see the icons and text and I felt the album art size was better in the old UI. It would be nice if the text like the artist and song title were bigger. With the new UI I also miss the Spotify green. It's just completely black and white. The desktop and iOS apps are nice with the dark theme, but for the TV it just looks out of place because most things you display on your TV are colorful to liven up the room. I think a black/white theme here is out of place. You should take design inspiration from the now playing screen in the mobile app. Make the background colorful and use the main color from the album art so that the background color changes depending on the album art of the song playing. The old UI never changed color with the album art, and it was always a weird design choice. You can add this to the new UI and it would bring the Chromecast design to consistency with the now playing UI in the mobile app. Right now the UI just looks out of place. 

When using the old UI, I often was annoyed that it showed what was playing next. Now that it's gone, I actually miss it and would like it back. There's just so much empty space, there should be a good use of the space. I mean if you're gonna make a UI for a big TV, at least take advantage of all the space. Instead it's all tiny and squished in the middle. For example look at SoundCloud'ds UI. Most of the UI is the sound wave, but they do a great job at taking advantage of all the space. My suggestion is to put the album art, seek bar, text and buttons on the left side of the screen, and show a play queue (like the desktop and iOS apps) on the right side of the screen. That way the whole TV screen is being used and you satisfy the people who want to see what is coming up next. In the old UI it used most of the space by showing you what previously played and what is coming up next. We really only need to see what's coming up next so that's why now playing album art on the left and play queue list on the right would be better.

[MattSuda]

As a follow up to my previous post I would like to clarify what's hard to see. The time on the left and right side of the progress bar is not readable at all from the couch. I think the progress bar is too small. Also it's hard to see the song artist, the text is too small. The song title size is decent but not the best. I can see the icons but the size and color of them like I said make it hard to make out certain things like if shuffle or repeat is enabled. Everything is just one color, if the repeat and shuffle turned Spotify green when on that would help. I think you could get rid of the next and previous icons that are shown as that's not really helpful for the UI and it would leave more room for other things. We can't touch our TV screen. Next and previous icons are useful in the app but not on the TV.

[clownnl]

Hi Pompa,

I miss the album covers of the previous and the next track. And there's now much empty screen, and much black is ugly on a normal LCD flat screen, because black is not black, only on a OLED TV. Use the whole 16:9 screen. Maybe an option to see what song is next, but also to see if a song added to the queue is picked up by the Chromecast.

Maybe it will be nice to show the header picture from the artist (from the artist page) on the background of the played track, little bit darker and some blur or something.

[Inzani]

Hi there,

The thing is, it's not a Big Screen Experience anymore....it's just a copy of my phone.

For me it's just simple....it looked better in the past. It was also nice to now what song came up next.

It was a better Big Screen Experience. Nothing more, nothing less. 

Still love Spotify 😃

[pompa]

Thanks for all the feedback! We appreciate your input.

We've taken your thoughts and ideas into account for the next evolution of the UI. You'll definitely see great changes going forward.

To summarize:

• It isn't necessarily that prev/next is that important in its previous execution but rather it filled up the screen which made it feel like a real TV UI.
• However, showing next track is valuable to understand what's up next. Especially receiving some kind of visual response to what you've queued up.
• The current UI feels like a scaled up mobile app. Visually it doesn't excite anyone which shouldn't be the case on a big screen. Make it more visually appealing.
• There's a few accessibility issues in terms of actually being able to read some text from a long distance.
• Some of the indicators on the screen are useless like previous and next. Remove them.

[MattSuda]

@pompa Thanks so much for taking the time to read our feedback! 🙂

[MattSuda]

In case this user doesn't add their voice here, here's a thread with feedback on text readability (similar to what I have already posted about)

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Windows-Phone-etc/Chromecast-New-on-TV-display-is-un...

Also, there are some comments on reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/6ll2g9/new_chromecast_screen/

[the_nathanjones]

All of this. 100 times. Thanks for taking the time to listen to everyone.

[Gt63]

I am using spotify free, and with the new chromecast interface the connection between app and chromecast will interrupt, when advertisement starts in the queue. There after i have to start wifi and spotify app new before continuing with playing songs.

[peterjwu]

I agree with much of what's been said. I really liked being able to see the next track coming up, especially when in Shuffle mode.

In addtion, I think the Play/Pause and Next/Prev track buttons just don't belong on a TV UI. No matter which way you do it, it looks wrong - if you show a pause button while music is playing, it's what we're used to seeing but isn't accurate, and showing a play button feels off since we're conditioned to see a pause button when music is playing.

Here's my proposal: instead of showing a play/pause button, you can use animation and color to designate if music is playing. First, we should add a blurred background with colors that match the album art. Then, when music is playing, the album art could be larger and the background would be colored, and when the music is paused, the album art could animate to shrink a bit and the colors could desaturate. If you had a larger progress bar with a moving indicator that was more noticable, the lack of movement there would also be a sign that the music was playing or paused.