Spotify - The App FROM HELL

[EarlPurple]

I AM GOING TO POST THIS EVERY DAY UNTIL IT IS FIXED.

THIS APP IS HELL.

I COME IN TO WORK AND JUST WANT TO SIT AND LISTEN TO MY PREPARED DOWNLOADED PLAYLISTS ON MY ANDROID DEVICE.

EVERY F88KING DAY.

I START PLAYING AND A FEW SECONDS IN IT STOPS. IT THEN STARTS AGAIN AND STOPS AGAIN AND STARTS AGAIN AND STOPS AGAIN.

IT DOES NOT RESPOND. I PRESS THE STOP BUTTON BUT IT IGNORES ME AND GOES ON PLAYING. YOU ONLY HAVE A STUPID PAUSE BUTTON NOT A STOP. 

YOU NEVER RESPOND TO MY POSTS YOU CONTINUE TO TAKE MY MONEY AND I WANT A F88KING REFUND BECAUSE THIS ISN'T WHAT I AM PAYING FOR. I PAY SO I CAN DOWNLOAD PLAYLISTS AND LISTEN TO THEM OFFLINE IN COMFORT.

YOUR SUPPORT TEAM TOLD ME I NEED TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF PLAYLISTS BUT THERE IS NO SENSIBLE WAY TO EVEN ALLOW ME TO DO THIS.

I ASKED FOR A SYSTEM TO ARCHIVE THEM AND MAKE THEM EASY TO RESTORE AND IT WAS JUST MARKED AS DUPLICATE WHEN IT WASN'T AND YOU HAVEN'T DONE IT ANYWAY.

YOUR DESKTOP APP IS **bleep** TOO. I CREATE A PLAYLIST IN A FOLDER AND IT PULLS IT OUT. I HAD TO DOWNGRADE BECAUSE I COULDN'T EVEN ADD AN ITEM TO A PLAYLIST IN THE STUPID NEW VERSION.

YOUR APP ON MY PHONE IS STILL WHIRLING AROUND AND YOUR DEVELOPMENT TEAM IS OBVIOUSLY A LOAD OF "KIDS WITH NICE PERSONALITIES WHO ARE STRONG TEAM PLAYERS AND HAVE PLAYED WITH ALL THE RIGHT TOYS" INSTEAD OF PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND DEVELOPMENT PROPERLY BECAUSE ONLY SUCH PEOPLE COULD MAKE SUCH A **bleep** APP FROM HELL.

[EarlPurple]

Spotify: 1 process and 1 service, 21MB

Spotify : 1 process and 1 service, 43MB.

WHY ARE YOU RUNNING TWO INSTANCES???

WHY DO YOU NEED TO OCCUPY SO MUCH MEMORY???

Almost certainly YOU DON'T NEED TO HAVE AS ERVICE RUNNING AT ALL. The application should run when I start it and stop when I stop it. There is no need for a service.

The only reason you might have more than one process is if the UI, the player and the network interaction run on their own processes.

By the way, the number of DOWNLOADED playlists I have on this device is something like 4 or 5.

1. They should be in the first screen. I don't care about "recently played" and those aren't all playlists anyway. A DOWNLOADED playlist is what I have set aside for an Android device.

2. They should load instantly as I click them.

[EarlPurple]

NOW WHAT????

Let me tell you something about an application:

1. IT SHOULD NEVER BE NON-RESPONSIVE. USERS ALWAYS COMES FIRST.

2. IT SHOULD NEVER GIVE YOU A BLACK SCREEN AND ACT LIKE IT'S DEAD. ALWAYS TELL THE USER WHAT YOUR APP IS DOING EVEN IN THE BACKGROUND AND ALWAYS GIVE THE USER THE OPTION TO STOP IT.

[EarlPurple]

It did it again.

1 process with 1 service

1 process with 2 services

and non-responsive.

IT ISN'T A HELPER SERVICE IT'S A HINDERER SERVICE. ALL THOSE BLOODY PROCESSORS AND NONE OF THEM DOING WHAT I ASK IT TO DO OR CARING WHAT I ASK IT TO DO WHICH IS SIMPLY PLAY A DOWNLOADED PLAYLIST AND START WHEN I PRESS THE START BUTTON AND STOP WHEN I PRESS THE STOP BUTTON AND MOVE SONG IF I MOVE SONG.

AND WTF NOW? I KILLED THEM ALL AND A FEW SECONDS LATER IT STARTS PLAYING.

YOUR APP STARTS ITSELF?? YOUR APP PLAYS ON AFTER I KILL IT?

WHAT IS IT? A CAT? HAS 9 LIVES??

[Taylor]

Let's just take it back a notch.

Spotify for android is working well for most people and doesn't stop responding, otherwise the community would be a lot busier than it currently is!

For me to help you, the best thing to do is for you to fill out a troubleshooting template for Android (also, let us know how many playlists you have, I know you've said they've already gone down that alley, but I'm just curious and it might be a key factor in the event nothing else is prone to issues), and try completing the troubleshooting steps, so we can get all the information in one place and then move on to rectify the issue.

You've made it clear that you have already been in touch with Spotify support, however I or someone else can still attempt to help you as best as we can, if you give us the required details.

Anthony

[EarlPurple]

I raised these issues, they suggested stuff like me creating a new account and then came back with the response that it's because I have too many playlists and it has to load all of them which is nonsense it shouldn't have to load them all.

There is no convenient way to reduce the number of playlists I have. I thought it might be possible via Spotify API but it isn't: See:

https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/remove-tracks-playlist/

There is no way to delete a playlist. I can remove all the songs from it but can't delete it (and I don't want to delete all the songs from it, I want to archive it, although there is no such option on Spotify API to do that either).

[DannyFL]

I'm not sure why you can't delete the playlist... I can by long pressing and then selecting delete playlist. Does that not work?

[EarlPurple]

Yeah, one at a time, developing RSI at the same time.

Can't even select a few and delete.

I should be able to write a script to do it. I can't because the API doesn't support it. The LibSpotifySDK, for which I have a developer's licence,  doesn't either at least I can't see any such method.

[Daniel]

Managing playlists on a mobile device is not the easiest I agree. Best off using the Desktop app or webplayer to do more intensive tasks like this.

[EarlPurple]

I do manage my playlists on my desktop. The old client, of course. The new one doesn't even let me add a song to a playlist.

There is no way to select multiple playlists and delete them.

The "archive" is something I can get a script to do. Create a folder with a file for each playlist I have and all the tracks in it. That will enable to me to restore it easily later.

Ideally the script would then present me a list of all my playlists and I can choose which ones to keep and delete the rest.

The script then needs to delete them. But that is where Spotify API and all the available scripts break down.

I have manually deleted a load of my playlists, primarily the weekly ones from 2012, 2013 and 2014. I also have a bunch of "old charts" playlists and don't want to delete those without archiving them first.

There are a few others I want to keep, particularly NMTop100 which has about 7 subscribers.

Potentially I should have had "latest_weekly" as a playlist or had something rolling every 4 weeks or whatever rather than continually creating new ones.

I piled up a bunch of "to_get" playlists in 2013 too when they took away purchasing  These were lists of songs I intended to buy if they ever brought it back. (I'm not here to say what I actually did do, but it lost the music industry a load of my money).

[EarlPurple]

Acting up again this morning.

Before I came in, I selected the playlist I wanted to listen to (a downloaded one) and clicked the first song on it. About 4 or 5 times before it responded. Then finally hit the "pause" button.

Then commuted to work leaving the app loads of time to do its own **bleep** loading up whatever it wanted to load. It had over an hour to do that when I wasn't playing anything.

But no, it didn't. It waits until I then get to work and start playing the first song before going stop-start-stop-start and not responding to me once again.

I even disabled all data on my phone so it couldn't download anything. But that doesn't stop it. No, Spotify wants to do its own **bleep** particularly when I'm trying to listen to the first song on my playlist. Probably trying hard to "connect" to all my devices to force them to also play it.

This app worked fine BEFORE they introduced Connect.

[Daniel]

Hi - I recall you mentioning you didn't want to do a clean install of the Spotifty app as you'll lose your offline playlists. However I think it's gotten to the stage this is probably going to be the only option for you. Can you try a re-install of the app making sure to check for the redundant folders and also make sure to reboot after cleaning your device out!

[COMPLETE GUIDE] How to fix most Android issues

I think the same applies to your issues with the desktop app. Are you running the beta? I know a few of the issues you've mentioned are fixed in a recent update... with some more fixes to come. A clean install of the latest version should hopefully fix some of these issues also.

I agree clean installs aren't ideal, but as I'm sure you are aware dirty flashes/upgrades always leave some redundant files and after time corruption which only a clean install will fix. I normally perform clean installs on my Phone each time a new Android base is released and on my PC/Laptop every year or so.

[EarlPurple]

Redundant files or folders should be irrelevant. They may take up space on an SD card or whatever but should not unnecessarily cause the app to hang in order to perform its own agenda instead of simply doing what the user has asked.

That is only caused by poor programming and the only fix is to get me to join the development team and arrange for these stupid things it insists on doing to be undone, and I may even possibly have to redesign how it starts / stops / caches etc if it's irretrievably broken in such a way that it particularly wants to do this stuff when I hit the "start" button which it clearly does, because the app was up and online for several hours and could have downloaded all my playlists off the network then but no, it does nothing of the sort and loves going non-responsive when I hit the "start" button.

I know exactly why that is. Starting playing something triggers "spotify connect", something I don't even want. I want it to play on this device, and this device alone. My oher devices play what they play.

And on my desktop I have both the latest and the old client installed. I need the old client so I can make playlists by putting songs in them where I want them, in particular tracks on my lcoal computer that have been removed from Spotify.

(You know, up to the end of 2012 I was buying all my music And I compile a weekly chart. And what was high in my chart in 2010 or whatever year I still want to be able to listen to in 2020. That's why I need them as mp3s).