[Community][Other] User language: respect browser settings and user preferences

[pseudomonas]

I speak English. I moved from the UK to Belgium. Guess what: I still speak English.

My browser is telling the website with every request that I prefer English (Accept-Language headers). But you're asking me to manage my preferences in French, a language that I'm still a beginner in. This isn't good customer service, is it?

Proposal: The website should use in order of priority

a) the user's selected language (in the case where they've actively told Spotify they prefer a given language)

and only if this is absent (or the user is not logged in)

b) the browser's Accept-Language headers

and only if both of those are absent

c) the language(s) indicated by the country the user has indicated they're in (NB that this is problematic for multilingual countries like Belgium)

and only if all three of those are absent

d) the language(s) indicated by the user's apparent IP address.

Furthermore: the website should have a "language" drop-down in the top-right of every page; this is basically standard user interface design these days. Making someone try and navigate settings in a language they don't speak in order to find the "language" option isn't good customer service.

[MafeG]

Hi @pseudomonas,

Thank you for posting on the Community!

We've moved your post to this help board because we have some questions about your submission.

It's not clear to us if you're having this issue with the Community website, the Spotify website or the Web Player. Could you clarify that with us? 

We'll be on the lookout.

[pseudomonas]

The Spotify website, I think. As a mere user I'm not clear which bits of
the website are Community and which aren't.

[CarlosE]

Hi again @pseudomonas,

Thanks for your reply.

To clarify, this page where you're posting is the Spotify Community (https://community.spotify.com/). The website is https://www.spotify.com/, where you can see your account info, and the web player is https://open.spotify.com/, where you can listen to the Spotify content. Could you let us know which page you're having this issue with? Some screenshots would also come in handy to have a better understanding of what's going on.

Keep us posted.

[pseudomonas]

OK, so here's a screenshot. I went to www.spotify.com in a browser with no cookies.

key to letters on the screenshot:

A: The text is in Dutch. Note also the be-nl added to the URL. I don't speak Dutch, and nor do most people in this region of Belgium

B: There's an option to switch to French, but only to French. Not German (also an official language of Belgium) or any of the other languages that spotify.com has also been translated into.

C: THIS IS WHERE MY BROWSER IS TELLING YOU THAT I PREFER ENGLISH OR FRENCH, IN THAT ORDER.

D : Private browsing = no cookies to complicate things.

[Kiril]

Hey @pseudomonas,

Thanks for your clarifications and sending us this screenshot.

We understand where you're coming from and we thank you for this feedback. We'd like you to know that the Spotify website does allow users to manually change the language it's displayed in (regardless of your location). A clickable link to this selection page is located at the bottom right coroner of the footer of every page of the official website, next to a little globe icon 🌍.

For your convenience we attach a direct link to the language-selection page here as well.

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