Overall Spotify is terrible

[alcorp]

Okay, it took me forever to get even get to this point which I highly doubt if Spotify will read this. 

For one, there is no easy way to contact or give new advice or ideas. I spent 20 mins trying to figure it out. Make it easier to contact you!

2nd, the radio sucks. They keep play the exact smae songs over and over again just like the real radio. Even when I base the radio on different songs and geners. You have EDM music playing on Alternative. Now how does that make sesne?  Pandora was so much better with their radio. You would always find new music and be able to explore new geners with no problem. 

Spotify should make it easier to find songs, they should suggest songs, improve the freaking cell phone app already. The cell phone app is also terrible. (I'm a computer major, I should know) They haven't changed a thing. You can't put the songs in any kind of order whihc makes it really difficult to find any songs. It is slow and just a waste. Spotify should really make their program more simliar to itunes since they did such a good job and model their radio after Pandora. 

I am so close to canceling my subscription since they haven't done a thing to improve spotify at all. I rather go with aother comany or back to downloading more music. I am a frustrated customer and I would recomend anything else besides Spotify since they don't even make it worth buying the subcription each month. 

[cosmicfetus]

Yeah, agree with you about the radio, its pretty appalling.  JUst keeps playing the same top 10 reggae hits of all time as if we've never heard them before or were frozen in a cave for the last 1,000 years. 

Came on here to find contact us section to email them asking when they will app remote support for desktops instead of having to rely on some crappy 3rd party apps.  

All i find is similarly frustrated user in this echo chamber hell.  

NO, we do'nt want to 'help others with spotify', we don't work for you.  

Setting up a forum is *not* customer service, 

zzzzzzz

[adisib]

Hey alcorp,

You can contact Spotify directly with this link:

https://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/contact/contact-spotify-support/?contact

I know it is hard to find and isn't ideal, but at least there is a way.

I agree the Radio is far from the best. The Discover tab in the desktop player is a little better at recommendations though, despite the fact it keeps giving the same ones. There are a lot more issues that should probably be addressed first before the Radio and the phone app design though.

There isn't a clear idea here. This would be better suited for the feedback in the contact form or another section of the forum.

[Rsam]

Hi adisib,

funny you say to contact Spotify with their contact link, because this is their reponse when you do it:

Hey,

 Thanks for getting in touch with your feedback.

 Thanks for sharing! Please feel free to share it on our ideas board at http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/idb-p/ideaexchange

 You can get other users to show their support by voting on the idea. We'll keep everyone updated on its status. Maybe your idea could even make it into the app some day!

So yeah, not only spotify app, radio and service have problems, Spotify has its users bouncing uselessly between community boards and an automated worthless contact service. Yep, worse by the day.

People have been posting about this problem for years, at least 2 years (I got tired of searching further back). Enough.

[Rsam · Accepted solution]

By the way, here are two links from this same forum. One dated April 2012, another dating February 2013.

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/More-relevant-radio/idi-p/52507

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Fix-your-radio-streaming-algorithm/idi-p/262524

How can it take, more than 2 years to fix the problem with one of the major features of the app?

[Andrews32]

This thread brings together all the problems about Spotify in one convenient place! 

They value the company in the tens of billions, yet they have next to nothing for customer service. I love that you pointed out the contact form ping pong they try to play. Whenever ANYONE posts a relevant idea, their "customer service team" (aka people they bribe with free months of service to do work they should pay professionals for) says that this isn't the right place for the idea, we should contact Spotify directly. And the form always bounces back with suggesting to post it here. I'm convinced the Spotify CEO thought this up after being stuck with a piece of paper that said "How do you keep an idiot busy for a day? Flip this paper over." as a child and never letting the memory go, promising he would get back at the world someday. It's the only explanation for how rational people would institute such a stupid system.

However, is it also genius? As you've pointed out, they've gone two years without fixing this, because THEY DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER TO YOU! They're not accountable for anything! See: http://community.spotify.com/t5/ideas/v2/ideapage/blog-id/ideaexchange/article-id/30095/page/126#com...

So vote with your dollars! Try all the other great streaming services out there. 

[Jordi]

@Rsam  @Andrews32 We are not working for Spotify, we are just users who love spotify and participate in the community by spreading our knownledge :-).

The "More relvant radio" idea has only 83 kudos. Some ideas (top kudoed ideas) have lots of kudos and they will likely be discussed by the Spotify team. I would suggest to add your kudoes their and share this idea to make sure it will have get as much as kudoes as possible.

[Rsam]

Hi @jordi12100

I do understand users in the forum not necessarily work for Spotify. I was stating the fact that I believe Spotify's customer service is useless, to save @alcorp the time and frustration of contacting them.

Spotify Radio problems are not an idea to kudo it: the fact that thumbed-down songs are played again, that new songs are picked from your playlists instead of the station selection, and that it always plays the same limited group of artists and songs, are not ideas, are incredible bugs or the result of an incomplete feature.

According to Spotify. https://support.spotify.com/us/learn-more/guides/#!/article/Spotify-Radio

+ "The more you personalize the stations to match your tastes the better they get."

+ "Just click thumbs up or thumbs down when a track is playing and the station improves to match your tastes."

These features are not working. It is not an idea to fix them. It is a lie from Spotify claiming it works, when it clearly does not.
 

So, I do not think it requires a thousand kudos for the Spotify team to consider the idea of Spotify Radio working as it should. It does not work, and the email response that I got about it was a joke.

But, even so, here is a compilation of "ideas" to fix the radio and their kudos:

1108 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/quot-Ban-quot-artist-from-radio/idi-p/292576

196 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Better-Radio-Algorithms/idi-p/107485

152 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Base-an-artist-radio-station-on-more-than-one-artist/i...

126 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Better-variety-in-radio-same-artist-should-only-be-pla...

6 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Overall-Spotify-is-terrible/idi-p/870531

3 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/A-way-to-import-and-or-sync-thumbed-up-tracks-from-Pan...

1 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Fix-your-radio-streaming-algorithm/idi-p/262524 

0 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/radio-sucks/idi-p/708779

0 http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/I-hate-my-radio-stations-so-much/idi-p/554262

etc

...

I have compiled this list from only the first 3 pages of the search results for "radio sucks".

This closed idea because it can't be marked as implemented is just hilarious:

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Better-Radio-Algorithms/idi-p/107485

[Andrews32]

Yes, I'm also quite aware you're not Spotify employees. That's my point. Their official channel sends you to this forum, filled with amateurs they bribe with free months of service, who then tell us to use the official channels. It's ludicrous for a company that considers itself a billion dollar empire. 

I had no idea radio sucked this badly, I've used it a few times and noticed it played the same songs, assumed it was my fault, and didn't use it again. But I'm not surprised that it does, and that Spotify refuses to acknowledge/fix it. That's typical Spotify. 

[Fred]

Hi @alcorp and welcome to the ideas section of the community. Sorry to hear that it was hard to find the information you wanted. 

This is the place for posting new ideas, but it is strongly adviced to only post one idea in each new thread here. 

However, I will make an attempt to answer your different ideas.

When it comes to finding the easiest way of contacting Spotify directly, the link that adisib provided ought to work. If you get an automatic answer just hit reply to that message and it will get through to the correct staff. 

When it comes to the radio playing a to small variation of music, part of it is depending on how the radio is constructed to work. Base it off of a single track and it will play other tracks depending on how other users who listen to that same track listen to music. If you play a genre station however, it will play the tracks tagged with this genre. Problems arise when the track is tagged with the wrong genre. It is in general not Spotify who tag songs with genre, it is the record companies. Spotify can change this, but it is a manual thing. 

There are ideas in this board on how to improve on the radio, you might be interested in this idea:

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Opt-in-to-Discovery-Mode-for-Spotify-Radio/idi-p/16378...

Regarding Spotify suggesting more music, there are already a few options, 'discover' being the main one among them. If discover is malfunctioning for you, you'd get far better help if you post in the help sections of the community. 

In mobile, you have filtering in both android and iphone models. For android a sort feature is already implemented and for iphone this is expected to be implemented shortly, as can be read here:

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Sort-and-filter-tracks-inside-a-playlist-on-iPhone/idi...

If your mobile app is feeling slow, there might be something wrong there, you may get help with this in the help board for your phone model (android or iphone) 

I hope this have been of some help for you. 

[Neiko]

I reccomend using Last.fm for discovery.

Spotify has no clue in this section. The Discovery page is totally silly.

"You listened to something you liked, here's something completely different that you definitely won't like"

[xtcite]

I applaud the idea of a Playstation app and have been waiting anxiously for it, but.... it bears no resemblance to anything Spotify and actually makes Pandora look like an upgrade. The whole idea behind Spotify is albums and ease of use if I read the PC version I love so much correctly. I struggle to fathom any use for the junk I have found on Playstation and question the reason I give money to support anything so completely pointless and useless. Step it up if you want to keep your subscribers, because we can find no pros to this heartless attempt at replication of the reason we use what is so close to greatness on the PC...

[mrbadhabits]

What is the deal with Spotify?  This problem of invisible useless scrollbars has been mentioned many times, and even has duplicate submissions.  The pages are too dark, and there is wasted space on the right side. 

FIX THIS ISSUE!!!

Double or triple the width of the bar.  I'm starting to lose interest in your service.  Can you maybe hire some of the former MOG developers, as that site was the best of any of the music services.  Spotify OTOH is about the worst.

[mrbadhabits]

What is the deal with Spotify?  This problem of invisible useless scrollbars has been mentioned many times, and even has duplicate submissions.  The pages are too dark, and there is wasted space on the right side. 

FIX THIS ISSUE!!!

Double or triple the width of the bar.  I'm starting to lose interest in your service.  Can you maybe hire some of the former MOG developers, as that site was the best of any of the music services.  Spotify OTOH is about the worst.

[Weidick]

I have some criticism for Spotify as well. 

But i have mailed directly to them and got an answer. Not what i wanted, but a nice answer, that explained their point of view.

I cant ask for more. Maybe it swings my way one day.

Until then, i have decided to work WITH Spotify and in that way try to change things by being positive about it.

Best regards

Poul Erik

[vinz2112ruzz]

Hi I'm vinz2112ruzz, I HAVE TO SAY, spotify the desktop software gets worse and worse, now with the latest 'forced installation' (with no improvement that I can see as usual) ... the track times are gone !!! Come on spotify get ur act together. You used to be able to move the individual 'artist' 'title' etc tabs to see all the information, now u have to endlessly wait as the slow scroll out crawls by. Also, WTF'S WITH THE OVERALL COLOUR SCHEME : BLACK = HARD TO SEE ANYTHING AT ALL. The only improvement as far as I can tell is now the album picture can be made bigger than it used to be able to be made. Sort it out spotify software developers, I suspect u need to stop doing nothing/playing and bring out a completely overhauled new version, ur software is **bleep**e !!!

[Sdclewell]

I have just spent my entire morning trying to sign up for premium on my windows phone. No go, and no reasonable way to get help. I'm deleting the app, and I'm outta here, folks. The app is pitiful, the website is pitiful, and customer service is non-existent.

[jillliv]

I still don´t know how to contact them. I have a problem ( and have had it for months now) which can´t be answered in the community - I´m so close to canceling my account - because there is absolutely no meaning in paying for a product, that dosn´t work. !!!!!! I´m sooooo pissed!!!

[Olds777]

I've been trying to get help.with an issue since April 22. There's no way to get a hold of you people. One would assume that clicking on "contact Spotify" would provide me with means to contact Spotify but all I get is redirected to the Community!!
Finally got to email support and their "help" only exacerbated my issue.
Then you want feedback on the support I received, and "the Advisor" when i had 4 different people email me and 2 from general customer service.

[EternalScreamin]

For me, the worst thing is I have to PAY to turn off shuffle. That is the dumbest thing I have ever seen in a phone app. It makes sense to pay to be able to download music, but to turn off shuffle? That's very petty Spotify.

[shirleytrew]

Trying to contact someone from Spotify for at least 10 days.  Signed up for premium, and sent an invite to family member.  Get an invite but can not get past invite pending.  They have charged me the premium rate with nothing happening.  I'll give them another day and I guess I will go back to Google Play Music.