Spotify’s UI Needs a Redesign – It’s Cluttered, Messy, and Unintuitive

[JanRiverolaCastellà]

In my opinion, Spotify’s UI has become overly cluttered and complicated. Simple tasks have become more difficult and the app is filled with unnecessary features that distract from the core experience of listening to music.

One of the most frustrating issues is autoplay on podcasts, which often starts without my consent and messes with my recommendations. Even if I never intended to listen to a podcast, it gets logged in my history and fills my home screen with suggestions that don’t reflect my actual preferences.

Navigation has also become more complicated. The sidebar keeps changing, and features are moved around so frequently that it’s hard to find what I need quickly. The app seems to be designed to push engagement rather than convenience. Too many layers of menus are required to do things that should be simple, like switching playlists or managing my music library.

Additionally, the homepage is overloaded with recommendations, but there’s no way to easily customize or prioritize what I see first. Spotify keeps throwing more and more content at us—podcasts, audiobooks, playlists, and ads—but it feels like the app is too busy to focus on what I actually care about: music.

There are also performance issues, like lag when switching between screens or loading new content, which makes the whole experience feel sluggish and unpolished. And don’t even get me started on how the “Recently Played” sectiongets flooded with podcasts or old songs that I don’t listen to anymore, making it harder to find the music I actually enjoy.

I think Spotify needs to focus on simplifying the experience. A cleaner layout, fewer unnecessary features, and better customization options would go a long way. Let users prioritize their music over everything else, and give them more control over the interface.

[leora404]

Yeah, this UI isn't good and like you said the recently played, don't even display the recents, I could listen to that music/playlist one time and will still for days here and the design isn't bad but can improve in UI as in UX and get some personalization to what to listen (e.g. I don't listen podcast so I hide in a menu that I can access with I want) and a more modern initial interface.

[vaajy]

I dislike their way of showing home page content. There are square, some other sized content and then one big tile the rest.

This is NOT how you do the app. 3-4 different size content makes it messy. Please either all squares or all tiles.

[handy7390]

I have found the app to complicated and hard to navigate. Why is the back or forward arrow at the top left and not right next to the search bar where I can quickly go back from a search dig? Playlists are organized differently by default depending on which device I am using. When actively adding songs to a playlist but then changing devices and continuing, why is the currently edited playlist not at the top on the device I changed to? I get recommendation popups when all I want to do is play music. The recommendations are not even in my preference for music. I see trendy modern pop music in my "For You" section yet I have never listened to modern pop. Why is the history list in a different location on a computer than on a mobile device?

I also have never liked having to babysit my listening sessions. Pandora has this figured out and music discovery is killer on Pandora. I rarely ever discover music using Spotify's curated lists.