iMessage app removed

[futureblast]

Apple iPhone XS Max and iPad Pro 12.3 2018

iOS 13.5

Spotify Premium Fsmily Account

The Spotify iMessage add on has disappeared so you can no longer search for songs and add them to messages within the iMessage app.

there are a couple of other posts about this subject, Spotify first responded that it was a ‘feature suggestion’ so should be posted in feature request section, the answer was laughable as they failed to even read the question properly.

Then they said it was Apple’s fault as they choose to add and remove features. This is not correct, Apple encourages all developers to create an iMessage add on, even if it is just stickers as it adds functionality to the app and so their phones on genersl. Incidentally Deezer’s iMessage add in is still working fine.

    I have an Apple developer account at work so decided to see if it was an iOS issue or a Spotify issue.

I rolled back my Spotify installation on a test device starting with the latest update, seeing if the feature had reappeared, if not then rolled back agsin to the next previous version of the app.  l can confirm that Spotify App version 8.5.86.739 (839244538), released on Nov 25th was the last version of the app to have this functionality. After installing it the iMessage button became available.

    So the next update; 8.5.94 released on Jan 22 removed this functionality.

   Spotify have since released three more update since the issue was raised by customers on these forums and have failed to re-add the code for the iMessage functionality.

Spotify have 100% removed this functionality. Rather than improving the app they have taken a useful feature away and then not been honest about it to enquiring customers.
   
As a holder of a Premium family account in England it is not a cheap subscription. A Deezer Family account is only €5.99 in Romania so I am paying a premium price and expect Spotify to at least be transparent and honest about why the functionality has gone rather than the terroble excuses they give to customers in the forum. It showed a complete lack of respect for people enquiring about this issue.
   To add insult to injury they also closed the post so no one else could add their input (or complain) about it. It appears they are more worried about criticism than customer service which in my experience always comes back to haunt you later on, especially with a plethora of other services now available (some of which stream in lossless .flac as opposed to the ancient MP3 forma, are also cheaper and carry the same amount of songs).

So.. Dear Spotify, come on, be honest, why do all iOS app version up to 8.5.86 have iMessage integration in them and then all subsequent updates have had the feature removed from the code?

(As a side note, I did try to add screen shots from my iphone but the attachment window said the .jpg format is not supported but the jpg format is.
   This is a crazy web programming error, the dot before the jpg signifies the end of the name and defines the format of the attachment. Any web designer should know that and expect an image upload to have a dot before the file designation).

lets see how long it takes for this post to be closed or taken down, it was posted at 18:58, on the 2nd of March.

[CarlosE]

Hey there @futureblast,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community and welcome.

The integration with iMessage was indeed removed. We're constantly running tests and new features for the app - we're sorry to hear that this isn't letting you have the desired experience with Spotify. Rest assured, we always welcome any suggestions and feedback as it helps us develop a better overall experience.

That's why we suggest to head over to this idea and add your +Vote and comments to show your support. The more votes an idea gets, the more likely it'll get implemented. You can also Subscribe to it so you're on top of any updates we share about it. You can read more about how feedback on ideas reaches Spotify here.

We also encourage you to share your thoughts on the matter, including the screenshots, in that idea thread. This is an easier way for us to track all the feedback regarding this topic, and also to give more visibility to the idea.

If you still have trouble when trying to upload the screenshots, try using an incognito/private window and a different browser, as there shouldn't be any issues with uploading images.

In the meantime, you can find more info on sharing content from Spotify in this article.

We hope this sheds some light on the matter. If you have any questions or need anything else, we're always a post away.

Cheers!

[futureblast]

Why would you move it to ‘new feature suggestions’ this is just a sad ploy to avoid acknol dgimg you have REMOVED he gesture, in fact at no point has Spotify admitted to removing it untill now and only because I’m a Dev and pointed out exactly when it was done. Now inst ad of letting people continue the conversation you have moved it to a new feature request and you want people to vote on whether they want it as a ‘new feature’. 

most Spotify users do not go on this website so will never register their disapproval. You seem to take it for granted that you can deceive customers and not be honest with them. You cultivate your forums so you shut down any negative comments by closing the subject.

    When Spotify was first starting I was lucky enough to meet one of the senior managers in London who had lost her wallet which so found and manage to get hold of her via her Spotify business card. We had a long chat about the service, she was so passionate about it and how it was going to be customer responsive, I don’t know what happened from then untill now. Having a Deezer HiFi account already, I will be switching the family over to them when this subscription cycle comes to an end. They now have more functionality in their iOS app as it still has nothing to do with the iMessage widget and their family subscription is cheaper.

I do not accept your answer in order to close the thread.
   You have not explained why you have removed the functionality from the iOS app when the code was in place and needed little work if any to migrate the app over to iOS 14.5 and you have not explained why you closed the previous thread with a moderator statement that was in all honesty a blatant lie. You could have at least had the descent to tell people that you had removed the functionality.

i do not need to upload photos now as you have acknowledged that you removed the iMessage widget but still it should be a simple task to do on a website run by a software company without having to change anything my end.

one other thing, why does my original post not show up when I search the forums?

[Mdahling]

I’d like to support the original poster in EVERYTHING the poster has pointed out. I was one of the first people to post in the community forum about this issue. Frankly, the iMessage widget was the 2nd highest reason I have continued to subscribe to Spotify. I might start a Reddit thread on this to have people move to a different music streaming service just because of the horrendous customer service and the outright lies and closures of posts in forums. This ‘new idea’ is not a new idea and we should not have to post in a separate section to pose this functionality as a ‘new idea’! Funny how on April 1st 2019 an announcement was made that Google acquired Spotify. I see no android user complaints. It’s just us iOS users!! Hardly anyone comes on this site to check, post, or vote. And it was stated by one mod that the idea needs 500 votes to be considered??? Like seriously??? My original forum post has been up a month and has 50 ‘likes’, which was also closed down by Spotify so no one could comment and express their dissatisfaction. This is appalling! Just bring it back!

[futureblast]

Thanks for acknowledging the post! If you search “iMessage” in the forums nothing comes up so I suspect a bit of good old Google shadow banning is going on and the posts about this issue do not shoe up including the ‘New Ideas’ post so obviously it won’t get any votes. 
     I didn’t realise Spotify was taken over by Google, so more data mining on paid accounts no doubt. I guess Android is miffed with Apples slick iMessage app so want to reduce as many widgets as possible to reduce the usefulness of iMessage and of course the only ppl that suffer are the customers.

     I don’t even expect you to get a notification of this reply in which case I will be lodging a complaint with the European Commission in regard to its Digital Markets Act (DMA) and this anti competitive behaviour, even these forums seem to be managed to stifle conversation and prevent any open discussion of what appears to be behaviour that negatively impacts customers. As I said no topics containing iMessage show up using the forum search function. I have made a snapshot with the Way Back Machine to at least record these posts were made before (going on Google’s behaviour with shutting down channels and debate) Google/Spotify delete the posts completely. 

I suspect Google is upset with Apples new policy of disabling third part apps from data mining customers information, without their explicit consent, in fact, now thinking about it, I wouldn’t be surprise if the Spotify iMessage widget was recording people’s messages. That would explain why they had to remove it quick time or it would of been flagged by iOS for collecting data without the necessary permissions from iMessage... hmmm... the plot thickens...

[Mdahling]

I only got the message of your reply because I subscribed to your thread. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known. It’s just a pitiful shame and downright low how they’re treating their customers. I’ve been with Spotify for over 7 years. Every other streaming app has an iMessage widget AND includes lyrics. Both of which Spotify has either taken away or won’t implement. I’m in Canada btw. I’m done. I’m only keeping my family plan up, because of my daughters, until my free 3 month trial with Deezer runs out. Then I’ll be fully switching to Deezer. 

[futureblast]

Funny.. if you put iMessage into search now it comes up with hits!

    As for the posts where Spotify claim its down to Apple and then an install issue. I’ve recorded them permanently on rhe Wayback Machine so even if they’re deleted in the future there’s a permanant record of the original posts. I’m not 200% sure if Foogle has an interest in Spotify as I believe the original announcement of the buyout was an April fools joke and apparently Spotify is one of those internet companies with a high valuation but doesn’t actually make much of a profit.

Yup I’ve got a Deezer account as well as the Spotify family. As a heads up, if you know anyone in other countries around the world- Deezer’s subscriptions prices are location locked so in Romania a family account is €7.99 which is sbout $8 US, Estern European countries, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines etc have the lowest subs, it’s really cheap so you could get a friend to get a sub for you, that’s what I did. Its probably why Deezer is the number one music app in most non-Western countries and many St people in Canada, UK, US etc havnt heard of it.

    The only thing I’m hoping they do is move their Hi-Res flac access onto the family account. It works amazingly through a wired system. 
    I know everyone wants hi-res sound but what they don’t realise is it’s incompatible with Bluetooth so just doesn’t work through wireless headphones (yet). A lot of devices that support Spotify Connect don’t have the Deezer equivalent either but the new chip that streaming radios and speakers use for Spotify Connect have Deezer built in so it will start to become more common.

    Deezer is huge in non English speaking countries and is going to make a big drive to get into Western markets so keep an eyes out for some good offers! 
     It’s disappointingly to see Spotify be so unresponsive to customers, this whole forum and ‘new idea’ thing is just a marketing ploy. I was reading a request from 2010 requesting mono audio for people with hearing problems, it’s had like a thousand of people vote for it but never got implemented. In England companies have an obligation to not discriminate against people with disabilities so you could argue that Spotify is not meeting its obligations under the Equality act here... the fact that they have churned out 4 updates in the last month on IOS alone though shows that they have the resources and plenty of coders to add thst sort of functionality.

    As far as the iMessage widget goes... the only thing left for me to do if force the last functioning version of Spotify that had the widget,  onto a 14.4 iPhone (for work reasons all my devices are on 13.5 to test for backward functionslity of new app update). I’ll get one of the guys in the office to do it. Wouldn’t it be interesting if it still worked?

Out of curiosity what iOS are you on? Do u let your phone automatically update or do it manually? Oh, and do you do PC backups or have an iCloud sub?

haha, it won’t let me post “authentication mismatch” guess Spotify doesn’t like not being able to harvest all my device info as I have a permanant VPN turned on! Just as well I always copy my posts before sending! 
   Ok third time now this; have they banned me from posting? Hmm...

[futureblast]

Quick update for anyone interested.

  The iMessage widget still works on iOS 15x this is because it runs off of a simple web messaging bot that is actually HOSTED BY SPOTIFY. 
    The iMessage widget opens a web page that searches Spotify. The web-bot then creates the address and meta data needed to make the ‘Music Card’ (the unique Spotify message bubble) that gets sent to your contact. It doesn’t even need the Spotify app to be installed for it to work as the metadata is created by Spotify’s dedicated online web api.

If your interested in how it works you can read Spotify’s simple tutorial telling you how to incorporate a Spotify search into a messaging app on their developers website found here; 

https://

developer.spotify.com/use-cases/mobile-apps/messages/

As Spotify puts it;

“Messaging

Introduction

Want to give your users a way to share music while they’re chatting with friends & family? This guide will show you how easy it is to make music-sharing and discovery a seamless part of your messaging experience.”

So, Spotify has a web api that they host for free for any app developers to use. It just needs a few lines of code to create a search widget, Apple makes it easy to link the code to the messaging app and as you can see Spotify even provide a simple tutorial telling you how to do it.

The ‘Music Card’ can be created and displayed on any device, Android or iOS and when people send a ‘Music Card’  its essentially just a free promotion for Spotify. It’s the only reason Spotify go to all the effort of hosting the web api. Spotify want developers to chose them over other music services as It encourages people to download the Spotify app to preview the song and your letting your contacts know you chose Spotify over other music apps so it adds credibility to their service.

   So.. considering they go to all this effort to create and host a web api so third party developers can create in-message Spotify ‘Music Cards’ you’ve got to ask yourself why on Earth would Spotify stop using it themselves on iOS devices?

   If you read the tutorial on how incorporate a Spotify search into a messaging app you’ll see it’s not rocket science and Spotify’s own code still works (see the pics), they just choose not to include it with their iOS app anymore.
  It makes no sense to me whatsoever. Apart from making the iMessage app less functional it’s caused a lot of resentment towards Spotify from its subscribers (especially once you realise how simple it is to incorporate it into the messaging app) and if anything will cause them to loose some subscribers. I have now moved to Tidal because the audio quality is better and now use a Spotify logon from my partner solely to send ‘Music Cards’ as I have retained the iMessage Widget. If I do accidentally loose that then I won’t have a use for Spotify anymore.

• In theory it would be quite easy to create an independant Spotify iMessage widget using Spotify’s web api thats free and open source. There’s even a hook to insert your subscription status and Apple has a hook that would open the ‘Music Card’ in the Spotify app...

   

  

   

  

   

[Mdahling]

I can’t seem to locate the tutorial and the link brings me to a broken page. 

[futureblast]

Try this,

https://developer.spotify.com/use-cases/mobile-apps/messaging/