Bizarre Behaviour / Terrible Album Cover Preview Quality

[EDXVΛ]

Current app version: Spotify for Windows 1.1.68.632.g2b11de83

System: PC with a Windows 10, version 21H1, build 19043.1237

Greetings.

Ever since Spotify's update to a new UI, the album cover preview feature has shown images in a absolutely atrocious quality. It did so even when I had Premium plan at the time. Tried cleaning Cache, reinstalling the application, and nothing has fixed the issue. Thought it's an intended change and forgot about it until today. 

I was listening to a new album, and after doing so, listened to the album radio. I've noticed that after few songs, the album covers were looking clean and sharp. I got confused and decided to listen to something different to test and the cover of that song was again terrible quality. Deducted that album covers from songs played directly are low quality, whereas in songs played off of a song/album radio covers are full quality.

I've managed to play a song from same album directly, and in radio.

Here I provide screenshots of quality difference. I've zoomed in the app using ctrl and + to exaggerate the effect.

Would it be possible for Spotify to fix this.. bug?, and make so all album covers are shown in highest possible quality? It is a very big deal for folks like me.

Kind regards.

[Alex]

Hi @EDXVΛ,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the Community!

The = cover compression is an intended optimization feature to reduce disk, cache and data usage and that it should be visible only in very specific scenarios. We will pass his feedback on, but there's currently no plans to change this.

To address the aesthetics of the music listening experience, we've provided the full screen feature, so an alternative would be to try and use that to enhance the visuals of the music playback.

Hope this info helps. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have questions.

[EDXVΛ]

Hi!

Thank you for explaining the reasoning as of why such thing happens. Very disappointing to hear that's intended and will most likely stay that way. Although, you mention that it should only happen in "very specific scenarios". In my experience from using the app, the compression happens all the time. Seems quite contradictory, or the algorithm that decides when to compress is not made correctly and instead just compresses everything. 

I currently do not have a Premium plan(which I cancelled due to the issue we're discussing), so I'm not able to make use of full screen feature. 

I've thought of a suggestion that would be a great middle ground. How about let users choose whether they want to see Album cover artworks in low or high quality? Just like there's a quality toggle for streaming and downloaded music quality. Such addition would solve all problems and future complaints regarding this issue.

Kind regards.

[Elena]

Hey @EDXVΛ,

Thanks for your swift reply!
 

We understand your frustration with this experience as a user, so perhaps you can share your thoughts by suggesting a your idea about this change in our Idea Exchange board. Beforehand, you can familiarize yourself with the guidelines for Idea submissions, so your suggestion gets approved on the fly.

If you need a hand with anything else, the Community is here for you.