Removal of Activity Tab

[Rorey]

Hello everyone. Spotify here.

 
On October 19th, we will be turning off the Activity feature. Please note this is not the Friend/Buddy feed that shows you what your friends are listening to on the right-hand side of the app. It was a feature that showed you what the users or artists you follow were sharing on Spotify.

After some extensive testing, we noticed this feature had very low engagement. Therefore we've made the decision to remove it in full as of today (October 19th). This will allow us to focus our efforts on improving the features we know you're highly engaged with, alongside working on exciting new features that are in the pipeline! 

Please share any feedback you have here in the Community. We're listening, and we will pass it all on to the team.

[krikelin]

Understood, hope you come up with something much better.

I know you purchased a social media startup, so I think you are going to release some quite exciting stuff in the future.

[user-removed]

Great. Now could tell to the desktop team that people on computer also want daily mix, videos and podcast? This is the first time ever an mobile application have more functions than the desktop one. And is getting worse.

[Jazzwhatever]

@Rorey Thanks for notifiying us. I was one of the few people who did look at the activity feed a few times a week to see what my friends or record labels would recommend, or what kind of playlists they made. I found it quite handy. I hope this feature will come back (in another form).

[fastnoid]

That's very disappointing! What is the point of even sharing music if I basically have no way to see updates from friends and people / bands I follow? No desktop notification bell and now this is gone too -- it seems like many features that made this product unique are slowly vanishing. It's harder and harder to see shared music, can't see who's following my playlists (don't even get notified about that anymore), lyrics are still gone, etc., all in the name of "low user engagement". Maybe the activity tab had low engagement because your notifications were inconsistent. 

I can't wait for the day where Spotify is just one big button that plays whatever music their machine learning routines decides to play for us. The button will have incredible user engagement.

ps: I STILL miss starring tracks. It's just not the same as adding to your collection.

[Shake-a-Hoof]

@Rorey Is there anything new in the pipeline to make the experience more social like the ability to message other users share playlists direct with other users, comment etc..

[Rorey]

Hey @Shake-a-Hoof ,

We’re always looking for new ways to improve Spotify including the social products. We’ll post here in the community as soon as we have something to share. You can also keep an eye on the Spotify blog for regular product updates.

[Nikki_Candy]

Hello Spotify there

😞   I really miss that function!! ...Now, I finally hope that you bring back the names of our Playlists-Follower etc....also still missing your messages, when somone new is following me or some of my playlists. Please, Spoty, I love you very much and I do many advertising for you :-)...but don't take away step by step all fine or social things, ok?!? Keep on rocking & thank you ♥

[xDampy]

Seems like you people at Spotify enjoy to screw everything up, removing features such as the notification bell or the activity feed, changing the layout of an already well-working layout for the desktop program. You obviously never listen to the Spotify community so why bother messing with things? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

[windelwetter]

What I still don't undertand is the object of the follow button after removing the notification? Why should you follow an artist or a playlist if you want to get notifications from him. I mean isn't that the basic feature of each social networt? Getting notifications about topics you are interested in? Even the old internet forums 15 years ago had notification features for subscribed topics? I don't get it...

[kdr1226]

I have to say how much this disappoints me because now if I want to share anything that I have listen to I have to do it on other social media platforms. What if not everyone that I follow on social media wants to see what I share on Spotify? I have premium after having Apple Music because Spotify premium had more interactive features. I guess it is back to Apple Music for me. So disappointed that Spotify has done this to all of us and did not send us an email telling us that they were going to take away this feature. Spotify has a wonderful support team. But, I should not have had to contact them for something like this.

[Xentrix]

Thought this was a great feature with a lot of potential, so it's a shame to see it removed. Thought it would be a useful feed to share music without flooding any followers on other social media with recommendations.

In my experience I was slow to engage with this feature because I wasn't even aware it was there until just recently. The Activity tab was very easily missed, and perhaps people would not click on "Activity" because they wouldn't know what it meant/what it was actually for. Perhaps if it had included notifications that there were new posts in the feed then people would have been more inclined to click and interact with it.

[laraxnirvana]

I did not like they got it from, I shared my songs for my friends to see, and now I can not, that's disappointing.

[draculapresley]

darn really guys? As a band profile I shared tracks with our followers daily and as a fan of music I really enjoyed seeing what other people were sharing as well on my feed. 

It was sorta nice to have just that small social aspect of Spotify where it wasnt shared on facebook or twitter. 

Pretty bummed about that.

[gjlafary]

This post says the Buddy feed shouldn't be gone, if I read correctly. However, mine has been gone for quite a while, and I really want it back, I love that feature. My friend still has it on his Apple laptop, but I don't. I have a Windows computer. Is there any way to get it back?

[Bernserker]

This tab was very useful, I discovered a lot of music from friends or artists i follow, don't understand the big issue of having the tab, hope you bring it back, really is a big let down for me.

[derVpool]

Yeah i feel the same way you feel about it. It´s just not okay!

[PJEC]

This is such bull. Another feature removed? Seriously what do you guys do all day Think, "Oh how can we make the experience worse for people?"

You are already driving people away from the platform...

[DGaian]

But as of this morning my "Friends/Buddy Feed" is also gone.

Any idea how to bring that back?

Thanks,

David

[guskiks1]

i`m having this problem too. 😞