[Mobile] Preview albums for free users

[ollylee03]

Recently, Spotify took away the ability for free users to see what songs are in an album or by a particular artist.

Before, free users were able to select an album, press “preview” or “and more”, and see a list of all the songs in the album, each with a short audio demo. This made it much easier to discover new artists, and created a much more convenient user experience.

The only way to hear samples of songs now is to listen through Spotify-made playlists. Unfortunately lots of smaller artists don't feature on many of these playlists making it very difficult to sample/discover their music. 

Obviously, I understand that as a free user there are compromises that need to be made by users like listening to ads, only being able to shuffle and not being able to listen to specific songs, but removing the ability to see what songs I'm shuffling is silly; so silly in fact that many users thought it was a glitch in the app at first. 

It's clear that this is an attempt to force more free users into going premium but some users simply can't afford it, so this is an unnecessary punishment. Many users, including myself, will be looking for alternative music services if this change isn't reversed. 

[Meta-noia]

this is so disappointing, i think im switching to soundcloud

[ksharma377]

Lately, I've been facing lots of issues in the app.

Whenever I go to a playlist or any album, the app doesn't show the list of songs in the album at all. I just see a random list of songs which are supposedly "similar" to the songs in the album I opened. Also, I only see a "Shuffle" button next to them.

This is happening on both Android and iOS apps.

Attaching the screenshot of my app here.

How do I see the good old UI where there exists a list of songs in the album?

[GraceyMae]

This thread has been going on for 2 years. And off and on this feature has been accessible to free accounts, honestly, changing everyday in my experience. At first, the ability to view songs on albums was taken away in 2020, however access to the list of songs on other individuals playlists or Spotify’s official playlists was still accessible. Dealing with the album restriction was annoying, but better than a complete lack of access to a list of songs within any playlist. The removal of this feature not only defeats the purpose of the app, but restricts the users so much that it’s not longer an enjoyable app. Like others have mentioned, being able to access the list of songs within a playlist makes the app enjoyable to use and easy customize. Yes, using a free version of Spotify I assume would come with restrictions, such as ads, and not being able to play songs without shuffle. But taking away one of the key features for the app away, restricts an entire category of listeners. Users are not asking for more pick and play playlists, we’re asking for easy access to discover songs through playlists or just searching for them in general. Spotify has become so hard to use within the past two years, because just adding one song to my playlist has become a detrimental search and compare task. Also to mention, no where in the premium tiers listed on the app is “access to playlists” mentioned. Therefore us users would assume it’s included with any account, yet we seem to be increasingly restricted. I normally enjoy the updates for spotify because it normally improves the look or added features for the app. But I think this inconsistency, is something that makes the app lack so much of what the users loved about it. Thus why many of us are asking you to bring it back. 

[Yordan]

Updated on 2023-03-30

Hey everyone,

It seems that this idea ended up in the wrong board accidentally, so we're bringing it back.

We're keeping the previous Not Right Now status, as we don't have any immediate plans to implement this. As soon as we have any new information to share, rest assured we'll check back in here.

Take care.