Android

[licenced]

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@pullasuti wrote:

Ok. This may be a dumb question, but where has the music library gone to? I've been going over the menus, and all I can find is "Playlists", which forces me to play each album separately. So, how can I randomize between all my playlists? 

Also, the left top corner menu seems very unintuitive to use. Don't know if it's better on tablets, but when holding the phone with my right hand, reaching for the button with my thumb is just clumsy. 

Call it resistance to change or misunderstanding the app, but I liked the old one better 🙂 

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Library is missing (as is local MP3 support) - I'll add it to http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-Android/quot-Official-quot-new-application-beta-release-missi...

Top corner menu follows Android's new look n feel guidelines - blame Google 🙂

[overfloater]

Just installed this and only had a few minutes to play around with it... but have to admit I'm impressed with what I've seen so far. Very impressed.

It's very clean and very fast -- certainly compared to the previous version. The interface also seems far more intuitive and better laid out than before. (The whole idea of having popup windows within an app to view an album was appalling.) It feels far more like a fully- (or mostly-) featured companion to the desktop app. Social integration is nice, search is incredibly fast, and of course Extreme Quality is appreciated -- I need to redownload my offline playlists to check that out properly.

Couple of features immediately apparent as missing... Local Files (not that I ever touched that anyway) and, importantly, lockscreen play controls. But this is a really great start for a pre-release version. Let's just hope it's significantly more stable when I actually get time to listen to it later today.

This may almost make up for the endless radio silence from the Android team. Almost.

[pullasuti]

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licenced wrote: 

Library is missing (as is local MP3 support) - I'll add it to http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-Android/quot-Official-quot-new-application-beta-release-missi...

Top corner menu follows Android's new look n feel guidelines - blame Google 🙂

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Ah. Well that makes sense. No need to look anymore. 

And... **bleep** you google! 🙂

edit: wow... that censorship function really makes quite tame words seem rude. 

[maxh2003]

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@hnilsen wrote:

As the problem was with the tablet version, it still goes into offline mode whenever I have downloaded a playlist. This tells me nothing has really changed except for the design.

This happens on my Transformer Prime running 4.0.3, but not on my Galaxy Nexus running 4.0.2.

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Bug occurs because wifi-only tablets have no IMEI.  Add an IMEI to your tablet using a USB 3G dongle, and you'll find this bug goes away.  Remove the USB 3G dongle and reboot, and LO! the bug is back.  Seems absolutely binary on my tablet; IMEI = no bug; no IMEI = bug. 

Sounds like it ought to be really easy for Spotify to fix, then.

Credit for diagnosing this goes to Kyriog here => http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-Android/quot-You-are-offline-quot-like-forever-and-ever/m-p/4...

[licenced]

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@overfloater wrote:

Couple of features immediately apparent as missing... Local Files (not that I ever touched that anyway) and, importantly, lockscreen play controls. But this is a really great start for a pre-release version. Let's just hope it's significantly more stable when I actually get time to listen to it later today.

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Both items are on the 'missing features' thread: http://community.spotify.com/t5/Mobile-Android/quot-Official-quot-new-application-beta-release-missi...

Regarding the lock screen controls - see the information in that thread - if you're on ICS you can probably get them working

[Afront]

So playlists seem to be ordered like this:

Downloaded
-----------------------
PLAYLIST1_DOWNLOADED
PLAYLIST2_DOWNLOADED
PLAYLIST3_DOWNLOADED

All
-----------------------
PLAYLIST5_NOTDOWNLOADED (NEW PLAYLIST)
PLAYLIST1_DOWNLOADED
PLAYLIST2_DOWNLOADED
PLAYLIST3_DOWNLOADED
PLAYLIST4_NOTDOWNLOADED

In other words, downloaded ("offline synced") playlists are all listed twice, and if you create a new playlist it appears at the top of the All section rather than at the bottom like it did before. This kinda matches the desktop, but with the Downloaded/All split this means that new playlists are harder to find at they can be slap-bang in the middle of the list.

I can see the sense of shunting Downloaded playlists to the top when using the app in Offline mode, but when online it doesn't seem logical. The green "down arrow triangle" icon is a way to see which playlists are downloaded so again, not sure why the split and duplication is needed?

[licenced]

Personally I'd definitely prefer to have them separated - I only have five or six of my hundred or so playlists sync'd for offline listsening, and even when I'm online these are the ones I will listen to most often due to general issues with my mobile broadband stability and capacity not being high enough to make listening to streaming playlists worthwhile - I don't want to have to scroll through the entire list to find them.

I agree that having the sync'd playlists all listed twice in this way is annoying though. Perhaps a solution would be to have an option in the settings menu so you can choose whether downloaded playlists should be shown in the All section? Or to have the Downloaded and All lists on two separate 'panes' accessed by left-right swiping? (Plus of course the ability to order playlists as we wish!)

[overfloater]

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licenced wrote: 

Regarding the lock screen controls - see the information in that thread - if you're on ICS you can probably get them working

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Thanks for that -- I'd seen your other thread but hadn't had time to read it, so I didn't spot the lockscreen tip.

Trying it out now on a Galaxy Nexus... though actually it's not looking hopeful. Plus i think I've uncovered a couple of other issues in the process. Will post back here or in your wishlist thread with anything I identify.

[Rankhar]

Yeah, agree with licenced, I'd prefer to keep them separated as well, considering I have something like 300 playlists 

Have been using the app all day today as I was out and about, and so far I am very impressed. Definitely would like to see the things on the wishlist as well, but this is a really good start! Very happy that it is no longer crashing all the time, and I really like the look and feel of the app, it's very fast, the UI is great.

Now I'm just hoping that updates for this version will come much more often than for the previous version... 🙂

[Afront]

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@Rankhar wrote:

Yeah, agree with licenced, I'd prefer to keep them separated as well, considering I have something like 300 

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Fair enough. Note though that "separated" means "duplicated" and that's my point: if I have 300 playlists and I offline sync all of them, then there'll be 600 playlists listed. And any new playlists will be placed at position 301.

[pakerfeldt]

Will the new android app provide any means (like broadcast intents) for third party developers to get information from spotify such as the track currently being played?

[licenced]

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@pakerfeldt wrote:

Will the new android app provide any means (like broadcast intents) for third party developers to get information from spotify such as the track currently being played?

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Well the standard lockscreen control on HTC Sense and stock ICS is able to get and display information so if the third-party app uses the same API then yes I guess

[Rankhar]

@afront Ah, I get your point, I misunderstood; but like licenced I usually have about 10-20 playlist synced, so it wouldn't really bother me.

[pakerfeldt]

@licenced  

Where is that API described? I have tried to find a way to get such information (like a metachanged intent supported by many other media players).

[licenced]

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@pakerfeldt wrote:

@licenced  

Where is that API described? I have tried to find a way to get such information (like a metachanged intent supported by many other media players).

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Cripes! Someone did link to it in another thread earlier this afternoon. I'm no Android developer though so wouldn't know off the top of my head

[goldfire]

So, I can't make this beta actually play any songs. When I select something to play, the notification appears like the phone thinks there's a song playing, but then nothing else ever happens. The song that's supposedly currently "playing" never even gets advanced to the next song in the playlist.

This is a Verizon Galaxy Nexus, by the way. Stock, not rooted or anything.

[pakerfeldt]

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@licenced wrote:

Well the standard lockscreen control on HTC Sense and stock ICS is able to get and display information so if the third-party app uses the same API then yes I guess

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I doubt the stock ICS uses a spotify API to show, on the lock screen, what's being played. It's the other way around. And I'm guessing this is the case with HTC Sense as well. Although I'm not sure. If you could point to the thread you were mentioning that would really help. But as far as the old android version, I don't believe it was possble to get the songs being played. And I was really hoping for such feature to be added to the new android app. Especially since most of the other media players support this.

[Pauline115]

Asus Transformer TF101 with ICS:

Spotify is still offline and looks poor...

no landscape mode

When will the final release be available?

[JaeBoz]

This app is amazing. I always got annoyed dealing with the sluggishness of the old app. Everything about this is a vast improvement I'm so happy they did this. 

[passsy]

dito pauline115