this talk of android being much harder to develop for than ios is no excuse. sure there are some problems with device-specific features and differences, but spotify doesn't use any of those (or *shouldn't*), and the vast majority of the types of bugs in spotify are *NOT* caused by device-specific differences -- they are caused by horribly amateurish code. it is not that difficult to write well-designed, well-behaved code against the android APIs that works flawlessly across devices -- there are many many high-quality android apps "out there" that do just that, many of them far more complex than spotify (ever played angry birds? or any other games that work flawlessly on any device? or how about any of the 3rd party music/media players on the market that work very very well compared to spotify?) the spotify app isn't even complex in its functionality -- it's a pretty basic music player. forget about all the UI bells and whistles, and realize that they can't even get the basic functions of a media player right. i see so many people on here defending spotify and it drives me **bleep**ing nuts. it isn't that difficult. and this isn't a free app/service. this is a professional application. you can argue that we don't pay for the app, but i personally would not pay for the premium service if it weren't for being able to listen with my phone -- that is the only reason i pay $10/month. i suspect the vast majority of mobile listeners would say the same. spotify is constantly dumping money into promotions and marketing and hype, but they can't even get a basic app on one of their most major platforms right (and their desktop app isn't without its problems either).
people who say they are doing everything they can to help their customers and improve their app -- that is straight up bull**bleep**! they invest a lot of resources in pandering to us in this forum, but at the end of the day, they give us nothing -- *NOTHING*. they've never once released a patch update to fix even the simplest of bugs or missing features (even previously existing features that were unfathomably removed) that people have complained about for MONTHS and MONTHS. they give us no real communication on updates (well, because they aren't working on any), and they don't even give us **bleep**ing changelogs when they do release a new version. they set up these formal bug report posts where they painstakingly collect information from hundreds of users (who actually believe their problem may one day be addressed), and then they do *NOTHING* with this information. it's been MONTHS -- even YEARS now, and basic bugs still exist in this app. this app could have been COMPLETELY rewritten many times over by now by any halfway competent small team of devs.
i just saw a post the other day from a rep that the rogue data usage issue *MAY* be a bug -- what? *may* be? are you kidding me? it's been SIX MONTHS, and you don't even know if it's a bug yet? let me help you -- IT'S A **bleep**ING BUG! and it's an inexcusable one. and it should be insanely high priority. you are chewing up people's bandwith and data limits and you don't even care -- not to mention what the hell is this data? that app could be sending ANYTHING to ANYWHERE and no one has any **bleep**ing idea what it's doing. this is unbelievable. is this the future of commercial software development? because i'm about ready to move into a **bleep**ing cave.
and yeah, i've tried the competitors, and their android apps ALL SUCK, and i'm sure spotify knows this. spotify obviously has the best service and infrastructure, so it's hard to walk away, but after a year of mostly frustration with the occasional being able to successfully stream music on my phone, i'm one inch away from going back to buying CDs and pirating music.
Staff / Moderator/ 3 years ago in Social & Random