Changing the heart button to a plus

[Dian]

Hey there,

We wanted to let you know that our design team is currently testing a new layout for the button responsible for adding items to Your Library and your playlists on iOS. The team is exploring revamping the look and some of the functions of the Now Playing view and this includes a possible change of the heart symbol for a plus sign thus streamlining the process to encompass "one button to rule them all" design.

In some versions of the app you might see a plus instead of the heart or you may see some differences in the way the Now Playing view looks, so if you want to share your feedback with the team it's best that you also include a screenshot of what you see so that we'd be able to properly sort and forward your thoughts.

When designing this new experience our teams tried to incorporate as much as possible of your valuable feedback from our older tests about this. As before, we would really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on the test in this thread. Your feedback will this way reach the right team directly.

Let's continue to together improve our experience using the Spotify app!

[BabyEcho0_YT]

@kaworu_bloodpaw

the + sign is a test design

[disc_count]

Maybe fix disappearing songs from our "liked" libraries first and having an actual random shuffl. This is so much less important.

[BabyEcho0_YT]

@disc_count

there is one, If you're on the free service, shuffle mode is always on, except on certain Spotify playlists such as those made for you. Upgrade to Premium to have full control over listening.

If this post is helpful, hit the "Accept as Solution". If you appreciate my answer, maybe give me a Like. follow my spotify? and community account here and if you want a different kind of spotify offline head here and it will post the idea submissions when they look through the ideas. Keep up the good work!

Note: I'm not a Spotify employee.

[jhazle]

Absolutely hate it. Please don’t do this, Spotify. you took the SIMPLEST function and made it an hassle. Why can you just let me enjoy MY music that I PAY FOR the way I WANT and just let me heart a song? Spotify wants me to take time to dedicate a song to a playlist in that SECOND with the “+”, even manually add it to my Liked Song Playlist. 

Why cant we enjoy ease? The heart is straight to the point. It does its job. I heart songs, and use the 3 dots to put it where i want, when I feel like it. I am so angry at Spotify they waste time a resources to “fix” something that’s not broken and no one asked for. 

I will be so disappointed, angry, and livid at Spotify interface and controls change. Change the appearance and aesthetic all you want, but leave functionality for us, please. I hate this decision and despise that Spotify put me in a testing platform. 

[jhazle]

I’m commenting again. i understand the functionality of adding a song to multiple playlist, and i don’t do that often so i don’t even care for that, but why the heart Spotify? It visually shows us what’s song we like, it’s all in one collective place in one tap. 

I just hate “liking” a song with the + and it makes me take extras steps to just put it in Liked Songs. i don’t have to put every song i “like” on a playlist. 

Im so disappointed and i cannot wait for my app to update to get me out of this UI. The user experience with the “+” miserable if you just like songs and use only one good playlist. 

[milkmaidmafia]

How about that:

• keep the old functionality to add the song to your favourites either by swiping the song left or by tapping the 3 dots and select the option "add to favourites" next to a heart icon -> both actions will put the song to favourites and add a heart to the track (as usual), AND
• add the opportunity to add a song to multiple playlists by tapping the three dots, where option "add to playlist(s)" appears in the list with a plus sign as icon. There a list of playlists is shown, and multiple playlists can be selected (or show a checkmark when the track is already added). This would be an expansion to the functionality of the original addition of tracks. And if the track is added to favourites via this way, the track also gets a heart.

This way all get what they want:

• Hearts next to a favourite track while also being in the favourites playlist, and
• the option of addition of a track to multiple playlists,

without losing any old functionality. 🙂

[milkmaidmafia]

…what the heck, you could even kick the "add to favourites" as an option from the 3-dots-menu, as you can add the song to your favourites with the "add to playlists" 3-dots-menu option anyway. Sure in adding to favourites via 3 dots that would be one click more compared to the old approach, but most of us used the left swipe anyway, I guess? So:

• keep left swipe to add to favourites
• add opportunity to add to multiple playlists via 3-dots-menu and checking the destinations (which is also an opportunity to see all playlists where the track is already added to, because these playlists will already be checked)
• keep visible heart next to track anywhere where track is displayed to show that track is in favourites list

sounds simple enough, does it not? 🙂

[milkmaidmafia]

@jhazle

To be fair, the left swipe with the plus also puts a song directly to favourites just as it used to with the heart left swipe, so there is no extra step - regarding this step only the symbol is different. Which does not justify the the vanishing of a visible indicator for favourite songs of course, but technically the addition to favourites with left swipe is the same (at least in my UI, maybe I misunderstood, and you got yet another test environment)

[milkmaidmafia]

P.S. I use "liked songs" and "favourites" interchangeably, so I hope we mean the same thing 🙂

[LC99]

the new plus sign feature is cool but I wish there was a way we could still see what songs we’ve added to it our likes next to the song (like how the hearts used to sit next to each song) so that we can see in large playlists that we revisit which songs we’ve specifically saved to go back to. The current feature doesn’t let you see this, even pressing for more info to the song you still can’t see if this is a song you’ve added to your liked songs. 

I like the that the plus new feature lets you add a song to multiple playlists/liked songs at once that’s a really positive improvement but I still really want to be able to see which songs I’ve liked but still having some sort of sign next to them. Perhaps if this is moving to a plus sign/tick feature we could have a tick next to the songs we’ve added to likes. 

[utpharm2012]

I want to be as constructive as possible but this change **bleep**ing sucks

[Cacheelma]

It's unacceptable that you put this kind of tests to mess with paying customers' experience. I paid for the service that I like to use. You NEED to announce such drastic and confusing change and give paying customers the chance to cancel their subscription instead of forcing them to go through several tests until you're satisfied. I didn't pay my hard-earned money to be your guinea pig. Stop this stupid practice at once.

[milkmaidmafia]

This is actually a good point. Getting notice about using a test environment beforehand, even make it an option instead of a given - let the people test if they want and put a link to threads like these for the possibility to give feedback. If people are done Testing and do not like the old environment, let them return to the previous version.

• announce test possibility in app
• let people choose if they want to test
• give direct instructions where feedback is possible (e.g. this thread)
• let people return to previous environment (environment prior to testing environment)

This way testing is transparent to everyone, people don’t get upset, where to put feedback is clear, and by people happily staying in the test environment OR switching back to previous environment you can also see how happy people are with the changes.

In the beginning I did not know this is for testing, I thought the changes are final, I first found a proposal in the Ideas section to bring the hearts back, and I had to actively search for this thread to come to the conclusion. That doesn’t seem like good communication between Spotify and its (paying) customers (I also have Premium).

[milkmaidmafia]

I would have happily tested the whole thing and give feedback anyways if it had been similarly transparent as I proposed it in my previous post. It would have spared me from confusion, frustration and feeling annoyed. 😉

[milkmaidmafia]

You can vote here to try to make it happen:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/All-Platforms-Allow-Pro-Users-to-Opt-Out-of-A-B-Testin...

The idea seems inactive, but not ultimately closed, and as I understand it if enough votes come in, it will get activated again

[anse1505]

THIS IS TERRIBLE

PLEASE STOP DOING THIS

I had it updated a few months ago like this and was literally about to cancel and switch to Apple Music, but luckily the next update got rid of it.

But now its back again, and its so bad. You can't even see what songs you've added to your library when looking at an album.

[anse1505]

and to the people saying "it's just a test design" - that doesn't help me at all since im now stuck with this TERRIBLE UI until they decide the test is over

[raingurl12]

With the new plus sign system, my biggest complaint is not being able to visually see which songs you've already liked on playlists and artist pages. These songs used to have a green heart next to them, but now they don't have a plus sign/heart, so there is no way to quickly see if you are familiar with that song from your Liked Songs playlist. Even if you press the three dots for more information about that song, it doesn't tell you if it's part of your Liked Songs. The only way to confirm is by manually typing the name of the song within the Liked Songs playlist, which makes the process more of a hassle.

[jonestones]

10-year Premium member here. I need to easily be able to see if a song is liked. This is terrible. Why are you breaking things you shouldn’t even be working on?

[jhazle]

there was an extra step for me. we might be in different UIs because i have to literally treat liking songs as a playlist. it was an extra step, for me.