Alphabetical sorting in album view broken in 3.4.0

[user-removed]

Upon updating to Spotify 3.4.0, I noticed that alphabetical sorting of albums, by artist or title, no longer works correctly. Neither killing/restarting the app nor deleting/reinstalling it has any effect. This is on iOS 8.3.

This is when sorting by artist. Boris, Brian Eno, Burial, Busta Rhymes, then Beyonce, back to Burial, Beyonce, then Beastie Boys. It's a total mess.

Sorting by album title is in slightly better shape, but articles really screw it up.

It takes everything that starts with "The" and sticks in in between the S's and T's. Well, almost everything:

Here we've got a few stragglers stuck between T and U. None of this makes any sense and it's a real pain. Apple Music comes out tomorrow, and I'm surprised that Spotify thought it was a good idea to roll out an update with a major issue like this right before a big competitor's launch.

[Jjohlie]

I'm having the same problem on my iPhone 6. Updating the iOS 8.4 doesn't seem the help

[Jjohlie]

*to iOS 8.4
*seem to help

[robo]

I noticed this as well and it's driving me totally bonkers. How about a little testing next time you guys make a change to the sorting?

[Aldeng62]

Having the same problem, and this is the only place I've seen anyone talking about it. Hopefully this isn't permanent

[Nanenis]

having the same problem on my iPod

[restored18]

I'm having the same problem on an iPhone 5 with iOS 8.4.

[bilbobobbins]

having the same problem on iphone 5s. It's a joke and unusable.

[deathandstuff]

I am also having this problem on iPhone 6 with iOS 8.4

Incidentally, this only started happening after I recently deleted and then reinstalled the Spotify app. I wanted to try Apple Music, but it sucked, so I went back to Spotify only to suddenly have this annoying issue. Now I am like, totally crying.

[bilbobobbins]

still nothing from Spotify, are they always this crap with noting problems and fixing them?

[deathandstuff]

Honestly don't know. This is the first problem I've had with the service.
Although honestly right now it's a tight race for me between Spotify and
Apple Music, so for their sake I hope they fix it soon! Makes my library
look like a joke.... Band names starting with "The" all grouped together
under T... This is seriously basic stuff...

[Aldeng62]

This is the first problem I've encountered with the service as well, up until this point it has been awesome. I'll be honest though, this problem has shown me how truly awful their customer service is. I tried reaching out through email and Twitter and not only does it take a very long time to hear back, but the responses were literally no help at all. I hope they fix this soon as it is kind of a deal breaker for me. I'm just glad that Apple music is here to offer another option if I do end up canceling spotify.

[bilbobobbins]

so yesterday I tried twitter. The general response after about 6 replies was that they were unaware of a problem. I asked them to check the forums and the final response was this.

"Thanks for letting us know. Our best tech folks are on the case as we speak. Hopefully we'll have a fix soon! /NS

[bilbobobbins]

Ok so after contacting them on Twitter, with no success. I decided to send them an email about this. Here is there response. 

qte

Thanks for your email.

It sounds like you're seeing one of a few changes we've made to Spotify recently, which may or may not be permanent.

Your feedback - which I'll pass on to the relevant people here - is important because, overall, we try out these changes as part of our ongoing dedication to make Spotify even better.

Enjoy the music!

Andrea

“Where words leave off, music begins.” -Heinrich Heine

Spotify Customer Support

unqte

This obviously shows that it was intentional, god knows why because it's a massive step backwards in my opinion. I've actually sent them an email back explaining why, and advised them that Apple Music actually do it the way Spotify used to, and it works. It's great. 

Lets hope they seriously look at this and bring it back in. I mean why change something so good to something that now makes the Album menu, redundant??

I suggest you all send an email to Spotify asking why it has changed. The more people that get in touch the more they will listen and put the Album menu back as it was. 

Email to support@spotify.com

[user-removed]

That is absolutely absurd. My first assumption is that the reply you received is simply a standardized response that they use anytime someone reports a problem over email, because as you said there is no conceivable reason for them to do what they did on purpose. Either they don't care about being honest with their customers who report problems, or they're breaking basic functionality for no reason at all. Either way, it's a sorry showing from Spotify.

Can you reply to the email you received from them and ask them what their rationale for making the change was? Maybe if you keep hounding them you'll get a real answer. 

[deathandstuff]

I can't for the life of me understand why this would be an intentional
change. What Spotify user wants their library randomly mixed up in ways
that make the music harder to find? What's wrong with good old-fashioned
alphabetical order? I can't see any logic behind the way my albums are now
organized. Frankly, I don't know what they're talking about.

[JMiner]

I am seeing this problem too. iPhone 5, OS: 8.4

[Edelbeb]

I've also notified Spotify of this bug. I'm pretty sure it's NOT a feature.  Spotify seems to have added the ability to sort albums by title or by artist.  (Or maybe it was there earlier and I missed it.)  When sorting albums by title, Spotify properly considers the word "The."  When sorting by album, instead of ignoring the word "The," as they probably meant to have it do, Spotify now ignores everything that follows the letter "T."  Incredibly sloppy coding that makes me wonder whether Spotify bothers to even alpha test their iOS app.  They need to read, not skim, their bug reports and suggestions and quickly fix this problem.

[bilbobobbins]

This was my reply. It was done quickly but I think it gets the point across.

Qte
thank you Andrea for your reply,

That's a big shame if this change was intended. To have your Albums listed in a casual order and not Alphabetically seems a huge step back for the iOS version and all of its users. It makes that menu redundant in all honesty, especially if you have over 100 albums. Why change or take away a very important part of the experience that a lot of users want?

For instance, this morning I regrettably started my 3 month trial with Apple Music to see how this experience is. As much as I didn't want to, I felt like I should give it a try, since the main part of my experience with Spotify has changed/gone.

They list the Albums exactly like Spotify used to (before the last update). So in Artist Alphabetical order, with the Albums underneath in alphabetical order too. This means I can scroll through all of "My Music" in alphabetical order without realising some artists are at the top or bottom and mixed in with others.

For me, it makes no sense at all for Spotify to change this. It now looks a mess and the "Album" section to me, and others, is now useless. I now have to filter "Artists" and select that, to then select an album I want. This is not intuitive at all. As I said, it's a step backwards.

I hope the team look at this seriously, because it could possibly put users off the experience. I for one have defended the Spotify team on forums such as Reddit, who mostly put the team down for the huge problems on the desktop version recently, saying its a step backwards for most features. I now seem a bit bewildered why the team are also doing this for the iOS version.

I think you get my point anyway. To change something so important without explanation is madness. Your team need a lot more communication with it's users, or you could be losing quite a few of them to an alternative streaming service.

I hope this feedback helps. If you require any more information please let me know.
Unqte

[JMiner]

I second this. This is a huge step back in the user experience. Spotify ought to follow the lead of most modern web pages, which are simple with lots of scrolling - precisely because it's best for readers on mobile devices. As libraries grow in size with device capacity, search may well replace other sorting options, and in this case options to limit search to library and device are good. But scrolling is the primary method of findin things on mobile devices and now I have to hunt through small text to find the album I want or go way out of my way to search manually.

I hope someone pulls rank on whoever made this UX decision.