Spotify: My story for change

[user-removed]

Hello!

I have registered a new account just for this forum (I don't want to connect my main account to a forum board). I'm a premium subscriber and have been now for over 2 years. It took me a while to get used to Spotify, I'll be honest with you there... I had been using iTunes and record shops as my main port of call when it came to music. Spotify drew me in with their functionality, reliability and pricing. It all seemed to fit. I loved the idea of integrating my own local music with the online library. I saw Spotify as a full replacement for buying music. It was like a digital hub to pay into monthly and just calculate the premium subscription for my replacement of buying music. It turned out to be a real love affair! I was digging it and wouldn't have missed it for anything else!!

But in recent months the once flawless identity of Spotify has gone and strangely looking back it has been a long, long process.

Let me begin: In December 2012 (!) Daniel Ek (CEO) announced that a sort of collection based service was coming. I was really excited, as this was the only piece in the giant Spotify puzzle that was missing to fulfill the convinced and dedicated Spotify user. I waited and waited... Eventually I gave up hope. 16 months (!!!) later, in April 2014 Spotify announced "Paint it black!" to the world. WOW! I had not been expecting a such radical change to usage and design as it had happened all at once! I updated my Mac, my iPhone and iPad. The experience on the Mac and iPhone had been a bit bumpy to start with, but it was resonably well. In the announcement in April 2014 (in the press release - read it!) it stated, that all other plattforms would be following very soon with an update with the new design and funcionality. Wow. My Music was better than the collection mode that had been presented 16 months before. Still, took the team a long time, didn't it? The iPad was a setback, but I was hopeful that Spotify was now finally moving the ball forward and getting on track unifying their experience (and that's what drew me to Spotify at first: the great user experience). Now, 6 months after "paint it black" was pushed out to the world, the iPhone app is buggy as hell, useful features get removed, bugs aren't fixed (offline issues and album art is still broken), updates are slow. The iPad still hasn't been updated, My Music is still missing and the new design... where is it? The Mac is lacking important management features like duplicate watch, local albums in My Music or a decent search for local library tracks (a list of 30.000 tracks isn't fun to scroll through). Albums and Artists dissapear from My Music, tracks can't be sent to friends from the iOS app.

Spotify is causing me constant headaches. Recently I set out to save an album as a playlist and saw that the automatic naming had been removed in the last update. This is when it hit me: Spotify wasn't fun anymore. I wasn't getting the same good feeling when having a reliable app to listen to music to. It's not like you can playback the library somewhere else. Your tied to the Spotify app. Another headache: iPhone 6 optimization. Example: A podcast app from a small developer was optimised within 3 days of release. It's over a month after I got the iPhone 6 and a large company like Spotify can't deal with such a relatively small and easy task.

Finally: I turned to customer service several times in the last months. The response was slow and not very helpful. On Twitter different questions were being answered (well, not really answered in the traditional sense) by saying this would "come soon" and that would be "looked into". Nothing has happened and looking into this forum it's not hard to oversee, that customer support and contact with the user base is non existent. Looking at the reviews in the German app store, many (not all by far!) are also picking up the same sense as I am, asking why bugs aren't fixed, devices aren't optimized or why features (My Music on iPad) are missing!

It's a tragedy for a loyal user to have to tell a company this, as it's own team should be realising the danger of the current state at Spotify: but, if the current ways don't change VERY SOON (and by that I mean this year!) I and many others will be leaving this service and maybe even streaming music for good. It's starting to seem very appealing again to buying your own music, managing it as you like and choosing whichever player one wants without having to rely on a company to do its homework.

I sincerely hope you take my entry here seriously and act on it.

Thanks

[smidny]

Hey!

Thanks very much for your story.

I'm sorry to hear that your experience with Spotify has become unsatisfactory. 

Your Music is a pretty new feature and it will take some time (along with invaluable customer feedback like yours) for us to iron out any glitches across all the platforms we are available on.

Spotify is expanding and developing new features and tools all the time. 

I would like to try and inspire you towards using Spotify happily and having patience with us whilst we work through any issues which occur. I have seen the level of dedication, thought and care which all departments at Spotify have for the product and its customers. We really want what is best for everyone and work very hard to be the best app we can be! 

It is extremely difficult to bring out a feature in a program like Spotify and it be flawless straight away. A podcast app from a small developer can be optimised within days because it is comparatively a tiny program with a tiny customer base. Spotify is a complicated and advanced application with an active user base of more than 40 million people. We have well over 20 million tracks with 20,000 new ones being added everyday. We support countless devices in 58 different markets. This is one of the big reasons changes don't often happen over night at Spotify.

I hope that you'll consider holding on just a little longer until we get Your Music fully tuned in over all devices. I'm genuinely sorry that you have lost your passion for Spotify and I hope we manage to make the adjustments you want before you decide to go down different avenues to listen to your tunes. I kindly ask that you have some faith in us once again and give us some time to get things ironed out. 

Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you. 🙂

[user-removed]

Hi there smidny,

thanks for a response! Although I'll have to be honest: You're avoiding the important points I made...

Of course Your Music is a new feature, when in some form is was debuted in 2012 and released in April 2014, that gave you 16 months to figure out a working system. 6 months after release we are still having issues. Do you honestly think this is acceptable of a company like Spotify? Talking of your app: there are competitors out there that - based on their applications - can get the job done overnight (changing and adding new features to ALL platforms). I don't want to do any advertisement for them here, but I'm sure you're well aware which specific one I'm talking about 😉

I would, to give me some more confidence, like some direct answers and clear honest timeframes to following questions. And please don't try to talk out of it! If there is nothing planned, let the customers know! Here are my questions:

-> When is Spotify app going to be updated for iPhone 6/6+?

-> When is the iPad app going to get the promised "paint it black" update from April 2014 (see press release stating "very soon!")?

-> When are decent management features (duplicate warning, more than 10.000 tracks in Your Music, show all followed artists, allow local music in Your Music,...) coming to PC and Mac apps?

-> When are the album seperators under "Artists" in Your Music in the iOS app coming back?

-> When are the many bugs in the Spotify iOS app going to be fixed (problems with control center, power usage, offline tracks, missing album art, I could go on for ever...)?

I would be completly satisfied with accurate and concise responses.

When it comes to Your Music for iPad, this forum and the SpotifyCares Twitter account clearly shows that people have been mislead several times here! I would love just a little honesty and transparency here!

Thanks in advance for not letting me and others down!

[MattSuda]

-> When is Spotify app going to be updated for iPhone 6/6+?

The iOS developers are currently working on this, but there is currently no estimated release date. There will be no estimated release date given. It will be announced when it's ready.

-> When is the iPad app going to get the promised "paint it black" update from April 2014 (see press release stating "very soon!")?

Spotify screwed up the communication on this. The use of "very soon" was a bad choice of words. It is still coming soon though, for real this time.

I've had the team look into the album art bugs several times so I'm hoping it will be fixed in an update soon.

[smidny]

Hey, hd-henny!

Thanks for getting back to me and expressing your concerns.

You have my word that I will always be honest with any customer and will always do my best to answer questions and troubleshoot issues (I work for Customer Support). 

My job is to help out customers with existing features and do my best to make sure everything that is currently in Spotify works smoothly for them. I understand why you'd think I'm 'avoiding' your points/questions but the truth is that because I can't help you out with release dates of features, it is not my style to guestimate and make something up to appease you. That would be lying and misleading and that is why we stay pretty vague about release dates unless we have a definite date which we know for certain a feature will be ready by.

All the very best to you hd-henny, have great day and don't hesitate to get back to me and let me know your thoughts. 🙂