Announcements
The Spotify Stars Program: Celebrating Values Week!

Help Wizard

Step 1

NEXT STEP

Web Player: How to disable open.spotify.com and revert back to play.spotify.com URL?

Solved!

Web Player: How to disable open.spotify.com and revert back to play.spotify.com URL?

Hi all,

 

I recently cancelld my premium subscription, and since then I've been suffering from a new UI for the spotify web player. This UI sucks to say the least. It also opens URLs through "open.spotify.com" instead of "play.spotify.com" and whenever I try to go to play.spotify - I'm redirected to open.spotify. 

 

The reason I hate open.spotify is because there are an insane amount of limitations here. There is no way for me to access web player settings even. I've attached screenshots of my account page and the brose page respectively. 

 

I've also noticed that this is only a problem on Chrome. I tried on IE and it worked just fine when I went to play.spotify.com. This problem has persisted across several computers, and I've observed the same computers going to play.spotify.com on different accounts. It's literally restricted to my account on Google Chrome. 

 

Any help reverting back to Play.spotify.com is much appreciated.

 

Thank you. Spotify Account.PNGSpotify Browse.PNG

Reply
76 Replies

Yep, I updated the flash player now and it also works fine without redirecting if I do not get a flash player notification, that must've been unrelated, so it seems to be properly fixed here! Hurray!

I believe Spotify plans on rolling out open.spotify.com to everybody eventually.

 

This is the reply I got from Spotify:

 

"Yep! Right now, Chrome and Firefox will redirect to the new web player. Support for Internet Explorer, Safari and Edge is on its way. In the meantime, you can use them to load the old player."

 

So don't worry, in time you too will be treated with the basic web player with zero functionality across all browsers.

I'm still stuck with the open.spotify.com atrocity. 

 

At least alphabetize the #@$#ing artists.

Right, my Firefox is redirecting me to open.spotify again, apparently they only gave me a little break from it... So I'll just spoof that browser again.

 

But yeah, worried about Fixitpls' post, if this is the new webplayer and eventually there won't be any work-around available, I'll have to switch to a different music steam service, so then I'd have to migrate all my playlists from spotify which would be quite a hassle... I really hope spotify will reconsider doing this 😞

Open.spotify.com is, in a word:  awful.

 

It gets rid of everything that is (was?) superior about Spotify vs other competing services.

 

I could understand if this was maybe the MOBILE version they wanted to serve to those accessing on a phone without app installed, but it's just a HUGE step backward for anyone using desktop.

 

Millions of people cannot install apps on the computers they use due to admin issues (work, etc).  You have now guaranteed they can't take advantage of anything that makes Spotify unique.

 

I (like everyone else in this situation) am disappointed that I've already paid for the month for being dumped into this garbage service and would like my money back. 

 

You just broke something that worked much better than the "fix."  It's inexcusable that paid users are being forced to downgrade.

 

Wake up, Spotify.

 

It seems that they are determined to force the 'Open' player on us, which in its current state makes Spotify unusable, and means I'll probably ditch Spotify and look for alternatives. So we need to tell them what they can do to make it acceptable. Really make it exactly like the 'play.spotify' player is the answer, but for one specific thing:

 

- I use the check-marks to conveniently select the songs I like for an Artist across all of their albums, then play them on shuffle from the Artists tab. There is no way to do something similar in the 'Open' player. Fix that and I will be at least partly happy.

 

Also I'm used to running the player full-screen on my laptop. The bar across the bottom wastes a lot of space, and the icons are immense, so the layout is all wrong for landscape displays.

I added an issue specifically for getting Open player up to Play player standards:

 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Open-webplayer-missing-major-features-from-Play-play...

Yeah, its inexplicable to me that they're forcing it on paid users. I don't
even pay for spotify but I still have it set up to get to the old URL so
like, I have a better experience than my friends who pay for the service.
That's silly.

Well in Spotify's defense, this new webplayer is not as bad as it was at first.

 

When I was first being redirected, it didn't seem to have any features or functionality AT ALL. I couldn't access any of my own playlists (unless I remembered the playlist name and typed it in the search bar), there was no 'Discover' section, no new releases or recommended things or the 'genres and moods' playlist stuff. Or maybe there was but nothing would load, because the whole thing was terribly buggy while trying to use it.

 

But I think they've spent quite some time developing and bug fixing in the last few weeks while I was spoofing my browser, because now at least I can access my playlists, have my beloved 'Discover' section back and I'm quite fond of the 'Daily Mix' playlists that I don't have in the normal webplayer. I don't mind a new layout (though the 'checks' for saved songs were quite useful, I miss those), as long as everything just works. And it seems like it does, finally, so I guess I can live with this new weplayer now.

 

But next time please get everything fully operational first and then force users to use it 🙂

And thanks for these Daily Mixes, they're cool.

They've closed my issue as "Not an issue". So Dilbert-esque. Well, if they sort it out then maybe I'll stay with Spotify, but if they don't then bye-bye. (I am also a Premium subscriber, for the moment.)  I'm busy screenshotting all my artist song-lists right now.

Marked as solution

Time to ditch my premium membership. With the Spotify desktop app having issues opening often and this downgraded webplayer, what is the purpose of paying for a service that I am not receiving? 

Everyone on my family plan has now been forced onto open.spotify.com, and the cherry on top is that it doesn't work at all for any of us on any of 4 computers tried today.  Web player completely down since at least this morning.  No music for any of us at home, school, or work. 

 

... and it was working absolutely fine before the "upgrade."

Dear all,

 
I would also like to file a complaint regarding the new Web Player.
 
I tend to be really constructive, but the new GUI really is a pain in the..
 
I use Spotify mostly at work so I am not allowed to install a local application.
 
The new GUI removes too many helpful things such as column what has been stared in a playlist. (I always listened to the new releases on Friday and my weekly mixes on Monday, then starred what I liked and after verifying I really like the suggested songs by listening to them again, I added them to my central playlist.)
 
Additionally, the application really wastes space and displays far too little songs. My favorite playlist has about 500 songs and user experience is pretty horrible with the new big icons - I do not need my co-works sitting 10 meters behind me to read the interface.
 
This **bleep**ty minimalistic web player really makes me consider alternatives, since that was the way I used Spotify the majority.
 
I hope you revert those frustrating changes ASAP or at least provide the old GUI as an alternative to the new version.
Otherwise I am fairly sure you will lose customers to competitors providing better web players.
 
Best regards
 

I don't think they read here. You have to raise an issue. But even then the issue gets shut as "Not an issue". So I guess the folk they pay to not listen to us will just mean that they hear too late that we're all leaving.

Same here.

 

I tried to reach them out on Twitter regarding this issue. Their support is just as good as their new player.

 

https://twitter.com/giogziro95/status/852149914171789312

Again and again have paying customers shared their feedback and opinions of the obligatory redirect from play.spotify.com to open.spotify.com. As we all know, the functionality of the latter is leg-breaking and as customers, we have no choice of going back to the much preferred play.spotify.com. We're facing issues upon issues, getting starved of simple functions that worked so well previously - we've reached points where we simply cannot even use the service due to playback issues on the webplayer and yet nothing has been communicated back after countless outreaches from the community. "Download the desktop app" and "try this Chrome add-on" are the responses. Shocking.

 

The service, at this point, is beyond a joke and I personally feel that my patience is running low. Continuing to pay for this service simply means we have accepted the continuation of these foreful beta testing experiments. As such, disappointed customers should cancel their auto-renewals until further progress have been made. Good bye for now, Spotify. Shameful. 

The only issue not yet closed is this one, so best pile into this with comments and votes:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Web-Player-Bring-back-the-old-web-player/idi-p/1586701/p...


@takbok wrote:

The only issue not yet closed is this one, so best pile into this with comments and votes:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Web-Player-Bring-back-the-old-web-player/idi-p/1586701/p...


I'm not sure what you mean, there's lots of issues open that complain about the new web player and this thread is super active. I get multiple emails every day about it. I've given up on Spotify changing it back, so I just spoof the UA to IE10 automatically when visiting play.spotifiy.com. If they stop letting that happen, I along with many others, will probably move to their competitors.

I opened an issue, and they shut it soon after as "Not an Issue". It seems they are only willing to leave the issue open in the Ideas section, and this was the only one I found under Web Player. Threads don't count. Standard support operation means that a new issue has to be acted on or closed (they chose to close it). Wish-list items (i.e. Ideas) are low enough priority that it's on the radar but no-one cares enough to close it. It may be the only protest channel they'll listen to ... unless someone knows the Spotify owners at the golf club or something, or could get the media's attention. (I see someone tried Twitter.)

Weird, I saw multiple issues for "web player" (bring back the old interface, we hate the new interface, i'm missing this now, etc) when I searched.

 

Also, I read a bunch of Tweets directed towards @Spotify and @SpotifyCare and most of them seemed to say the generic "we'll let the devs know". Mmm hm.

Suggested posts