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New UI is terrible and confusing. Spotify is going downhill.

New UI is terrible and confusing. Spotify is going downhill.

I’ve had Spotify for a couple of years and have never had any major issues I felt needed to be addressed until January of this year. Since then each update has brought nothing but frustration, and this latest update takes the cake. My first guess is they’re under new management and they’re trying to justify their paycheck and make their mark. What the heck was wrong with the old layout? Nothing! This update that was shoved down my throat today is absolutely terrible.

                First off, there’s the obvious and unnecessary aesthetic changes. I hate how large the buttons on the Your Library page have become. It is needless and annoying. The last list size was perfect, not too big that it took forever to scroll through and not too small that you couldn’t see it from a distance. I liked having the list of Your Daily Mix, Playlist, Stations, Songs, Albums, Artists, and Podcasts on the Your Library page with Recently Played underneath.

                Secondly, Recently Played is awful. I used to live off of that on my home page. I tend to cycle through a chunk of my music, but now Recently Played is gone from the Your Library page and they have just two sections for Artists and “Albums. Recently Played is no longer a convenient tap away. Instead, it is on the Home page and you have to scroll through large pictures to see what you have, which you can only see about two or two and a half of at a time. No longer a quick tap, which is way more dangerous if you’re driving.

My third complaint is the Artist/Albums pages that are set up in Your Library. Instead, the first few artists under “Recommended Artists ” are my recently played artists, but after that it just suggests artists that I have in my library that I’m seriously not interested in listening to. If I was wanting something different, I would have gone through and actually looked for them on my own.

My biggest complaint is how Spotify is now forcing you to download everything from every album you’ve saved even a single song from. I very rarely find an artist that has a large selection of music I enjoy; thus, I only save between 1 and 10 songs per artist, with a handful of exceptions. For a month or so now I couldn’t listen to an album (online) because it would make me listen to the whole album and not just the 3 songs I downloaded. That was frustrating enough, but I found a doable loophole. Just listen to the artist; that only listed the songs I saved. If I was in the mood to listen to just the songs from one album then I was **bleep**, but at least I wasn’t getting the 20 other trash songs on an album I wasn’t a big fan of. This “update” fixed that loophole. And by “fixed”, I mean they fixed it so that it doesn’t work anymore. I opened Spotify to find that that I had a few hundred songs downloading and all my sorting work was ruined.

Seriously. If I liked the songs I would have downloaded them in the first place. I don’t want that much space on my phone taken up by songs that I do not enjoy. It defeats the purpose of saving things to your library. There are no options to remove or block the excess songs from your library. But one of my fears is now that these songs are downloaded into my library that means if they do ever “fix” this problem then I have to go back through all my artists and albums and remove everything I have already sorted.

The fifth complaint I have is that I can no longer scroll through artists and albums alphabetically. I can’t sort by recently added for the artist or the album, either. I really liked that option to sort by recently added albums. But the quick scroll was great and now it’s gone. I often don’t remember the artist/album name or how to spell it correctly. An example of this would be as follows: (there’s also a bit of glitch I noticed recently that took place before this update that I want to complain about) I went to search through my artist library list for “Cécile Corbel”, but she did not appear in my artist library. Only when I physically typed in her name in the artist library search bar (thank goodness for YouTube recommendations that helped me remember her name and spelling) that she showed up in my library. Even with this newest update she doesn’t show up in my artist library list unless I’ve recently played her. It makes me concerned about how many other small artists I’ve saved that I cannot see when scrolling through the library.

After that, you now have to “add” artist to your library… again. The list under “recommended” consists of artists that you’ve saved, but the FOLLOW button is right there beside the artists. Again, I don’t like most music by most of the artists in my library, so I don’t want to follow them. But back to the “Add artists” button… once you add an artist it really seems like you can’t remove them, and it’s so easy to accidentally hit the wrong artist in that little drop down menu they have. Also, what’s with the “Liked Songs” playlist that was shoved into my library? I had to quickly cancel that ridiculous download. How do you just like a song without downloading/saving it to your library and vice versa? I already can’t remove songs I dislike (which I now have a lot of).

Now for my other complaints about Spotify that are not related to the latest “update” (I quote update because it’s terrible and it didn’t actually show an update in the App store. It just sort of happened). First off, they seem to have cancelled my student premium subscription (I get it. It needs updating, it’s been a year) but I cannot change my email. It reverted back to an old email I no longer use, but when I hit “Edit Profile” it will not let me change my email, so I can’t enter my student email in and it’s not recognizing me as a student. Secondly, turning in complaints or even searching through complaints is convoluted. They make you go through a bunch of steps, links and pages to post a complaint. I don’t fancy deleting everything and reinstalling the app every time I have a problem which is what they seem to think will solve every problem.

To put all this simply, Spotify is now terrible, forces you to download everything whether or not you have space on your phone, you can’t easily scroll or sort through your library, and they’re hiding some of my artists. They really need to stop trying to fix what’s not broken. I get wanting/needing to polish up the designs and layouts a bit to keep the new and shiny look, but this is ridiculous. They need to bring back the original look. If Spotify really wants to make convenient changes then make the home page more customizable. For example, the ability to remove or rearrange the options in Your Library. It would have also been nice to be able to sort saved songs by alphabetical order or by artist instead of just what was recently added. They can still have a recommended songs/artists/playlists section (which I believe they had before under Browse?), just don’t shove it down my throat. It seems like Spotify is trying to make everything more complicated but reduce the number of sections and buttons.

My long-time affinity for Spotify is jaded and I’m seriously considering other music streaming service options for the first time ever. I never liked Apple because I don’t like iCloud and it forces everyone in your family to have all the same music, but at this point it seems better than what Spotify is offering. Thank you for the good times, Spotify, but I’m sick of this **bleep**. Whoever has been directing your updates this past year needs to be sacked. Spotify ought to hire on some people to test any of these major changes they’re wanting to make before they go publishing it. Maybe like a beta tester for a video game? They wouldn’t need to be paid much, maybe just offered premium for free for X amount of time in exchange for honest reviews of the product and updates. But I don’t have much hope, because Spotify rarely seems to listen to customer reviews.

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

(iPhone 6s)

Operating System

iOS 12.2

My Question or Issue

Spotify needs new management.

Reply
Top Answer
Katerina
Spotify Legend

Hey there folks!

 

We'd like to thank everyone for sharing their thoughts so far. We’re always looking for ways to improve the experience for our users based on your feedback.

 

We realize this thread has gone a bit off topic at the moment though, so we'll be locking this thread.

 

We’re also currently testing potential changes to Your Library, which might be confusing to users just coming across this older thread. If that's the case, we invite you to do so here instead.

 

If you're having troubles with the app, the best way to find help is by starting a new thread on the relevant Help board. We and the Community will be happy to take a look and help out further.

 

Thanks again! 

50 Replies

I agree! Checking on these boards, this is a very common problem. I’m fact, it is clear that nobody likes the change from the previous library tab where one could choose playlists, songs, albums, etc. As said, there is no history as well.

 

I am fully considering switching to Apple using now after years of using Spotify.

How do I activate it?

 

I'm very curious to try it out! 

They should just add an option in settings where you can go back to what the UI was before, and not force this new terrible one on us. It's basically a UI within a UI, and that's bad.

This new version is inexplicably stupid.  I can't wrap my head around it.  You're probably right about new idiotic management or something like that.  I'm also seriously considering dumping Spotify Premium now.  It does nothing but frustrate me.

For Android users:

 

1) Turn on the setting in your phone to allow app installs from different sources.

2) Uninstall Spotify.  This will delete or corrupt your locally saved songs and may reset your settings.

3) Download one of the old APKs online. I can't link or they delete my post. I think, but am not sure, that 8.5x is when they introduced the forced stupidity.  I went with 8.4.89.515

4) Open the older, non-idiotic version of Spotify, reset your settings if necessary (SD card & download quality most importantly), and re-download your songs.

5) Make sure your Google Play settings don't let Spotify auto update.  You'll probably need to disallow auto updates globally and manually choose which ones to update.  I think this is a good practice anyway, and it's what I do.

6) Enjoy less Spotify-induced stress.

 

I'm not familiar with iOS so can't offer advice there, but knowing what I know about Apple, they probably don't allow this.

I have been a happy user of Spotify for several years. This update is unacceptable. I seriously didn't think there was anything they could do to screw up the app enough to make me leave the service. I will give them to the next pay period to fix this. In the mean time I will be doing the free trial of Apple Music. I do not want to have to leave, but they are not giving much of a choice. This is just so bad.

All the changes are worse. I used to browse by "albums" and now these changes make everything clunkier and less useful:

  1. losing the alphabet on the right side for fast scrolling
  2. larger album art, so there's less useful information onscreen, literally the definition of worse UI
  3. more scrolling because there's so much more wasted space
  4. the microexpression that drops down "the music/podcasts" and "playlists/artists/albums" is too sensitive, and now that I have to scroll more it constatnly intrudes when I don't need it
  5. why is "music/podcasts" so large? it's unnecessarily huge, podcasts could be listed after "albums"
  6. again, huge amounts of wasted space in the playlist section, when you add up the upper navigation, "create playlist" and "liked songs," there's only room to see two playlists onscreen before scrolling... beyond bad

Give us the option for legacy view! I don't want to use this service in its' current version.

I am going to cancel my subscription and tell all of my investors to stop buying their stock because the new system absolutely sucks! You guys are going tio see a MASS EXODUS from the recent changes. I am a member going on 2 years and suddenly they took away all thje reasons that I liked them. I will cancel my membership if it doesn't revert back to what it was. It was the best and now is the worst I can find.

 

UNBELIEVABLY BAD changes that constantly frustrate members!

I completely agree Spotify is going to go out of business if they keep the new system  because every single person is confused and frustrated with the worthless new format. I have 5 friends and 4 family members that I have told to get the membership. NOW THEY ALL HATE IT. 

If you invest in their company and they don't revert back to the old format you'd better sell the stock quick because as it is it is the worst out there!

Wow you have nailed down all the problems that me and 8 other members have talked about. I believed this was the best service and now it's the worst. If management does not care I will tell everyone I know about how bad it is and tell them they need to move on to a reliable music service provider.

If they don't change they have lost all all of us and hundreds of thousands of people like us. If they cannot be trusted to care about their customers then I will recommend a new service for them. 

When we all leave we won't come back EVER! 


@ChristianaGrace wrote:

I’ve had Spotify for a couple of years and have never had any major issues I felt needed to be addressed until January of this year. Since then each update has brought nothing but frustration, and this latest update takes the cake. My first guess is they’re under new management and they’re trying to justify their paycheck and make their mark. What the heck was wrong with the old layout? Nothing! This update that was shoved down my throat today is absolutely terrible.

                First off, there’s the obvious and unnecessary aesthetic changes. I hate how large the buttons on the Your Library page have become. It is needless and annoying. The last list size was perfect, not too big that it took forever to scroll through and not too small that you couldn’t see it from a distance. I liked having the list of Your Daily Mix, Playlist, Stations, Songs, Albums, Artists, and Podcasts on the Your Library page with Recently Played underneath.

                Secondly, Recently Played is awful. I used to live off of that on my home page. I tend to cycle through a chunk of my music, but now Recently Played is gone from the Your Library page and they have just two sections for Artists and “Albums. Recently Played is no longer a convenient tap away. Instead, it is on the Home page and you have to scroll through large pictures to see what you have, which you can only see about two or two and a half of at a time. No longer a quick tap, which is way more dangerous if you’re driving.

My third complaint is the Artist/Albums pages that are set up in Your Library. Instead, the first few artists under “Recommended Artists ” are my recently played artists, but after that it just suggests artists that I have in my library that I’m seriously not interested in listening to. If I was wanting something different, I would have gone through and actually looked for them on my own.

My biggest complaint is how Spotify is now forcing you to download everything from every album you’ve saved even a single song from. I very rarely find an artist that has a large selection of music I enjoy; thus, I only save between 1 and 10 songs per artist, with a handful of exceptions. For a month or so now I couldn’t listen to an album (online) because it would make me listen to the whole album and not just the 3 songs I downloaded. That was frustrating enough, but I found a doable loophole. Just listen to the artist; that only listed the songs I saved. If I was in the mood to listen to just the songs from one album then I was **bleep**, but at least I wasn’t getting the 20 other trash songs on an album I wasn’t a big fan of. This “update” fixed that loophole. And by “fixed”, I mean they fixed it so that it doesn’t work anymore. I opened Spotify to find that that I had a few hundred songs downloading and all my sorting work was ruined.

Seriously. If I liked the songs I would have downloaded them in the first place. I don’t want that much space on my phone taken up by songs that I do not enjoy. It defeats the purpose of saving things to your library. There are no options to remove or block the excess songs from your library. But one of my fears is now that these songs are downloaded into my library that means if they do ever “fix” this problem then I have to go back through all my artists and albums and remove everything I have already sorted.

The fifth complaint I have is that I can no longer scroll through artists and albums alphabetically. I can’t sort by recently added for the artist or the album, either. I really liked that option to sort by recently added albums. But the quick scroll was great and now it’s gone. I often don’t remember the artist/album name or how to spell it correctly. An example of this would be as follows: (there’s also a bit of glitch I noticed recently that took place before this update that I want to complain about) I went to search through my artist library list for “Cécile Corbel”, but she did not appear in my artist library. Only when I physically typed in her name in the artist library search bar (thank goodness for YouTube recommendations that helped me remember her name and spelling) that she showed up in my library. Even with this newest update she doesn’t show up in my artist library list unless I’ve recently played her. It makes me concerned about how many other small artists I’ve saved that I cannot see when scrolling through the library.

After that, you now have to “add” artist to your library… again. The list under “recommended” consists of artists that you’ve saved, but the FOLLOW button is right there beside the artists. Again, I don’t like most music by most of the artists in my library, so I don’t want to follow them. But back to the “Add artists” button… once you add an artist it really seems like you can’t remove them, and it’s so easy to accidentally hit the wrong artist in that little drop down menu they have. Also, what’s with the “Liked Songs” playlist that was shoved into my library? I had to quickly cancel that ridiculous download. How do you just like a song without downloading/saving it to your library and vice versa? I already can’t remove songs I dislike (which I now have a lot of).

Now for my other complaints about Spotify that are not related to the latest “update” (I quote update because it’s terrible and it didn’t actually show an update in the App store. It just sort of happened). First off, they seem to have cancelled my student premium subscription (I get it. It needs updating, it’s been a year) but I cannot change my email. It reverted back to an old email I no longer use, but when I hit “Edit Profile” it will not let me change my email, so I can’t enter my student email in and it’s not recognizing me as a student. Secondly, turning in complaints or even searching through complaints is convoluted. They make you go through a bunch of steps, links and pages to post a complaint. I don’t fancy deleting everything and reinstalling the app every time I have a problem which is what they seem to think will solve every problem.

To put all this simply, Spotify is now terrible, forces you to download everything whether or not you have space on your phone, you can’t easily scroll or sort through your library, and they’re hiding some of my artists. They really need to stop trying to fix what’s not broken. I get wanting/needing to polish up the designs and layouts a bit to keep the new and shiny look, but this is ridiculous. They need to bring back the original look. If Spotify really wants to make convenient changes then make the home page more customizable. For example, the ability to remove or rearrange the options in Your Library. It would have also been nice to be able to sort saved songs by alphabetical order or by artist instead of just what was recently added. They can still have a recommended songs/artists/playlists section (which I believe they had before under Browse?), just don’t shove it down my throat. It seems like Spotify is trying to make everything more complicated but reduce the number of sections and buttons.

My long-time affinity for Spotify is jaded and I’m seriously considering other music streaming service options for the first time ever. I never liked Apple because I don’t like iCloud and it forces everyone in your family to have all the same music, but at this point it seems better than what Spotify is offering. Thank you for the good times, Spotify, but I’m sick of this **bleep**. Whoever has been directing your updates this past year needs to be sacked. Spotify ought to hire on some people to test any of these major changes they’re wanting to make before they go publishing it. Maybe like a beta tester for a video game? They wouldn’t need to be paid much, maybe just offered premium for free for X amount of time in exchange for honest reviews of the product and updates. But I don’t have much hope, because Spotify rarely seems to listen to customer reviews.

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

(iPhone 6s)

Operating System

iOS 12.2

My Question or Issue

Spotify needs new management.


 

If you liked the old UI for spotify, then you will most certainly enjoy Apple Music.   

Can confirm this method works nicely. I tried the same version you recommended; it installed easily and worked instantly. Much better than the current update. Thank you for the suggestion!

This is a great write up of all the issues with the “New User Experience.”  You hit a lot of the major issues that have been driving me and my family crazy.

 

I used to tell people all the time about Spotify, and I even bought stock at the pseudo IPO.  Now I’m seriously researching Apple Music vs. TIDAL, and figuring out if/how I can move playlists and my saved song (hint: looks like there are several apps that do this).

 

I just can’t believe two things:

 

1. Spotify is making me do this, and 

 

2. If the company is planning on doing something, then how about a little communication.

 

Otherwise, bye bye Spotify.

It really does go without saying that listing our selected saved songs alphabetically, by artist makes ABSOLUTE SENSE.

I have spent way too much time now having to create a playlist by the artist. Before I just added to the artist, time wise....fast and efficient!

Agree. UI so bad, I now want to move to a new platform, even if selection of music is worse.

I wish I could switch to Apple, but like I said in my review I have several other family members in my household and it would require me to turn on iCloud, which is a pain in the behind to deal with. 

Same here.

 

I have paid for Spotify premium for years and have never regretted it.

 

That being said, tomorrow I am going to cancel it. This layout is intolerable and not worth $10/month.


My wife and I were marveling at this last night - we had a 2 hour drive, spent a few hours in LA at a musical, then 1.5 hours home.  We were trying to find an artist on Spotify to play THE SONGS WE’VE ALREADY SAVED.  Amazing how hard they made it.

 

Furthermore, the artists are no longer alphabetized, even though that’s the sort I’ve chosen.  It’s like Spotify had a bunch of really good app developers, lost them all, then gave it to some high school students as a class project.

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