Chromecast now playing screen ruined with tiny cover art, wrong pictures and missing information

[silli]

Edit: Vote for a fix HERE

For some unimaginable reason the now playing screen Spotify shows on TV when streaming to a Chromecast has been changed so that the cover art is tiny, there's sometimes a poorly chosen picture presumably of the artist in the background and progress bar only shows up for a second when you pause or resume playback.

Is there a way to fix this, i.e. revert back to the previous version?

The current now playing screen does not work for the following reasons:

• The whole point is to see what's playing. For that, album cover is much more significant than artist picture, because it's tied to current track more exactly than some artist picture (artists tend to have many albums).
• Artist pictures are often wrong (even showing cover art for an album that's not playing)
• There's no way (that I can think of) to see progress bar without pausing music.
• Playlist is hidden too (again, only pause brings it back)
   

[WheelOfTheLaw]

The previous version was poor, and could have used a lot of improvements.

The new version is just godawful. Like I want a random shot of an artist's giant floating head permanently staring out of my TV anytime I'm listening to music.

[xAceFalls]

Plan

Premium

Country

Finland

Device

Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ / Google Chromecast 3rd generation

Operating System

One UI 2.5

My Question or Issue

• My Google Chromecast's spotify display has reacently changed and i don't like it. It has way more going on in the new display and i don't like it. Is there a way to turn it back? Below are pictures of my TV.  One has way more going on and has the album cover at the side (wich i hate) and the other is more simplistic and has the album cover in the middle of the screen and way bigger (wich i want back) 

 

 

[Mihail]

Hey @silli, @xAceFalls  and @WheelOfTheLaw,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with the Community!

We understand where you're coming from and will make sure all your feedback reaches the right teams. We always aim to improve and you can be sure that your voice will be heard.

In the meantime, we recommend that you post an idea that requests the changes in the now playing view that you desire. You can learn how to do this here. The Idea Exchange is a great way for us to keep track of what changes our users are interested in and how popular a certain idea is. This page explains how exactly your feedback reaches Spotify.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.

[silli]

I posted this there, too. 

» VOTE

EDIT: Spotify closed that idea as a duplicate to another one, go vote that instead HERE 

[cabcallaway]

I am also actually infuriated by this. I love album art, and am often quite attached to the colors and will associate color with the music. One of my favorite things was having albums I love "color" times in my life, because while casting, Spotify would take the dominant colors and gradient them slightly on my tv, and I loved this.
Now, that is ruined. I had plans to add backlighting to my tv to match the way Spotify displayed color.
I think you should be able to choose what gets displayed when you cast. How hard would it be to have a little "Themes" option and choose the cast style? How hard would it be to implement this myself?

[Jeremy]

Hey there @cabcallaway,

Thank you for your post and feedback.

We're constantly aiming to improve our features and always testing things by adding or removing features to make Spotify better overall. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.
 

We suggest that you head over to @silli idea. You can leave a +VOTE and Subscribe to the thread for any updates.

You can read more about how your feedback reach Spotify here.

If you have any questions we're always one reply away.

[silli]

Please don't guide users to try and vote for ideas you have closed as duplicates an cannot be voted for.

The idea you want to vote for is HERE.  

[reks]

This is frustrating in so many ways. 1) Not giving the user any option for how it should look 2) Replacing the old design without any consideration as to whether it's actually better.

seriously, what kind of second rate designer do you have to be to think that artist photos need MORE space and that covert art, titles etc needs LESS?

Christ just look at the amount of wasted real estate on screen, the cover art is TINY and the the artist text isnt readable unless you're right by the TV.

get your sht together spotify, a lot of stuff about providing this kind of service is complex but this kind of basic UI design is not one of them.

[Novy]

Hi @reks, 

Thanks for reaching out about this. 

We understand where you're coming from and appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us, as it helps inform our decisions going forward. 

We'd recommend adding your +VOTE and subscribing to the idea that was previously mentioned. That way you can stay up-to-date with any relevant news about this.

If anything else comes up, we're always a message away, 

Cheers.

[scareneb]

oh man, just seeing screenshots of how it used to be makes me sad. Pros of the previous version were:

• Large album cover of currently playing track
• Can see cover album of last 2 played and next 2 queued tracks
• Adaptive ambient background colour based on album art
• Permanent track progress bar. 

The new version is whack. Cons of the new version are:

• Very small album artwork
• Horrid/disturbing/innaproproate/ugly/irrelevant artist backgrounds which can be a complete mood and atmosphere killer
• Hidden track progress bar 

Honestly, how this new layout was given approval completely baffles me. I was upset about it when it changed and I'm still upset over a year later.

Please Spotify, at least add an option to remove the artist picture / banner from the screen and replace with an adaptive colour background as was used previously. 

[reks]

The idea has been closed because it got “only” 97 votes. Can you guys not see from the feedback here that people don’t like it? For every person who bothers to register and post here, there’s probably thousands who just think”ugh this sucks” and move on with their life. 

At least make this configurable, or at least publish a rationale of how you’re thinking if you’re claiming this design is somehow better. This just makes it look like you don’t **bleep** about the people actually using your product, and that you have such an awesome, innate understanding of good design principles that you don’t even have to explain your decisions to paying customers who dislike them. 

Get**bleep** together. It’s sad. 

[Frank3rd]

Agreed, just installed on 2nd LG TV using Roku. Now Playing screen has very small album art with background picture of artist?  Hard to tell, one has a blowup of just the eyes, kind of creepy.  It sucks.

1st LG TV using Roku has Now Playing screen with large album art and song title, solid color background. 

Spotify, can you please drop the 2nd and return to the 1st, or at least give us a choice?

[Gletscher]

We've been having the exact same complaint! Some of our music has absolutely beautiful album art that ties in with what's being listened to perfectly. Some of the artist images look like selfies that spotify just randomly grabbed off their twitter and can be a pit off putting (as well as just not match the mood of the music AT ALL).

I have a beautiful OLED 4K TV and I want to see the album art of what I'm listening to!!!

[_Evan]

Man you're so right.

[tcugma]

Totally agree to initial poster and additions but wanted to add a sort of small solution: the dark mode. It's not as good as the old design (no large album cover, no matching colour), but at least without that annoying random artist pictures. 

Please bring back the large album cover! It is a piece of art made to match the music and it's mood, so it should be displayed large!

[cabcallaway]

It has been THREE YEARS and we're still stuck with the disgusting failure of a redesign. Does your team even care? Why are you so anti consumer?

[thzjc]

I've just read the whole thread and I also find it disgusting. 

WHY CAN'T YOU JUST GIVE US THE OPTION SPOTIFY (you don't even have to remove your entire ugly ass display by default, but just give us the option to get back the album cover centered with a neutral/according color tone background).

JUST MAKE THE CHANGE, MAKE IT NOW, I CAN'T BEAR LOOKING AT ALL THOSE UGLY ARTISTS WHEN THEIR ALBUM COVERS ARE MASTERPIECE MEANT TO BE LOOKED AT AND NOT SHRINK IN A CORNER YOU **bleep**ERS!!!!!