Latest client only shows subscribed artists in CarPlay UI, but shows all artists in device UI

[demonfoo]

I just upgraded to the latest version of Spotify on my iPhone 6 today, and when I plugged my phone into my car stereo (a Pioneer AVIC-8200NEX) for CarPlay, I discovered that not all the artists whose music I have in my Library now appear when I select "Your Music" -> "Artists" via the CarPlay UI. They all appear via the iPhone's main display. I initially thought the app was suffering from metadata corruption, so I removed and reinstalled it on my iPhone, but the problem did not correct itself. If I go instead to "Your Music" -> "Albums" in the CarPlay UI, all the albums I have music from in my Library seem to appear. The only artists that appear in the CarPlay UI under "Your Music" -> "Artists" are the ones I've subscribed to, which is different than prior behavior.

[user-removed]

Incredibly sad a user cannot access their artist list in an music app for Carplay. Sadly going to be making the switch to Apple Music where I can access my artist list while driving. 

Get it together, Spotify. Do better.

[user-removed]

The fact that this inability to access the artist list was an intentional and chosen behavior by the Spotify team is another reason it's disturbing and sucks. I wasn't in the room when the decisions were made but can guarantee when you ask users what they want to access with their PAID subscription Spotify Carplay app some would probably say acess to their artist list. Since you know....it's a music app.

[demonfoo]

Not to mention the part where you can only see the first 50-100 of your albums, the "Songs" view is glitchy, the app falls over and kills the CarPlay connection at random, about 1 out of 10 times there'll be no audio or it'll play at double speed.

That they would then try to pull a Pee-Wee Herman and say "uh, we meant to do that, no really" is just making my jaw drop. This is an actual answer. To people who give them money.

[user-removed]

Agreed. I've been experienceing all those issues.

Working in the design space I know the frustrations users have with products. You'd like to think they would have reached out to us, their loyal fan base who WANT TO CONTINUE USING THE APP, in some way to help solve the problem or educate us in why the chosen path was decided. Instead, I feel all my experiece with support has been waiting weeks for lame answers that have no basis in the core product value. I'd rather them be honest and say that Carplay is just a hobby for now, like apple did with apple tv. 

[demonfoo]

I'd rather them be honest and say that Carplay is just a hobby for now, like apple did with apple tv.

So much this. Whether it's "we just don't care", "we don't have the internal development bandwidth to do this up right", "we can't spend the time/money/whatever to have a testing environment to make sure this works", whatever, just admit it. Own it. That'd be a far, far better answer than "we meant to leave this feature less-than-half-implemented and laughably broken".

If we didn't care at all, we wouldn't bother to come here and report the bugs - we're here reporting them because we want it to be better. This just says to us "you, the users, care a lot more than we do". Congrats guys, message received. Loud and clear.

[badgerarc]

Thats my Spotify premium subscription cancelled. Will see how I get on with Apple Music again. I was going to buy a family subscription for Spotify, but I see that you can do that on Apple music as well, so that swung it for me.

[demonfoo]

Soon as I have my tracks transferred over, I'll be doing likewise. It's been real.

[user-removed]

Let me know if there is an easy way to do that and I'll follow suit.

[badgerarc]

I'm just downloading an iOS app called STAMP that claims to be able to transfer artist between the two. Will let you know how I get on.

[user-removed]

Thanks much appreciated!

[demonfoo]

Perfect, just what I was hoping for. Thanks!

[badgerarc]

Hmmm. They want £7.99 just to transfer my playlists and artists over...Is it worth that?

I'll decide later..Only does 10 songs for free.

[demonfoo]

Considering it's one time, and the amount of time I'd be spending replicating tracks over, I decided the US$10 was worth it. It's going now. I'll let you know how I come out, but it's looking good so far.

[user-removed]

Songshift looks to be another option though not sure of the quality of the service. 

[badgerarc]

Also looking at Babel https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/babel-spotify-to-apple-music/id1118140541?mt=8

[Shaze]

Hi Jack,

Thanks for taking the time to look into this for us, I think most of us here just appreciate that our "problems" are being recognized after such a long wait.

But this thread encompasses a number of problems with the Spotify interface on Apple's CarPlay, and so I understand it can be difficult to address everything. Some of the issues may very well be flawed by design, but a good majority of them are quite clearly bugs.

And the resulting experience is bad enough that a large number of people on this thread (and many others), have all registered to your website to offer their feedback and suggestions. We took the time out of our lives to try and help something we all loved. I can honestly say that the way you have treated users on these forums (to me), and your non-response to all of our issues just now, shows to the value you place on us as customers.

I'll be cancelling my family account and signing back up with Google or Apple, and I'll be publishing a summary of this thread on a number of content sharing websites. We will also be targetting your corporate twitter accounts directly, in the hopes that we'll get a more firm commitment to addressing these problems going forward.

Kind Regards,

[demonfoo]

For whatever it's worth, it (STAMP) got about 85% of my (2000+) tracks. The app dumped out a CSV, which I'm going to have to go through and locate the remaining tracks, but that still gets most of them - and I was able to upload the file into my ownCloud filestore and pull up on my computers. So, not perfect, but still saves me a lot of work.

[badgerarc]

I left my MacBook on last night syncing my entire music library to icloud music and for the most part it seems to have done it. Still a few anomalies but shouldn't take too long to sort out.

[benturnberg]

@JackF, when they say "intentional right now", this could mean a number of things: would you be able to let us know whether they intend to address it in future?

Thanks,

Ben

[JackF]

Hey all!

Thanks for sharing your feedback here. We’ll continue to pass all your comments and ideas on to the folks behind the CarPlay integration. They’re always looking to improve the service, and really appreciate your input!

We don’t have any more updates to share with you right now, but we’ll be sure to give you a shout when we have news to announce!

Thanks as always for bringing your reports and ideas to the Community.