When someone sends me an open.spotify.com url, I land on this "log in to listen for free" page, because I don't use the website ever except to complain here. It's redirected me to the play.spotify.com domain.

It happened today, so I decided to just copy the text of the song and paste it into youtube to listen to it that way.

BUSTED!

You found a way to keep me from copying that text (firefox, IE11).  It seems that way all over the play.spotify.com domain. OK, I get it, some people feel selectable text on web apps makes an inferior user experience. I don't feel that way, and the login landing page should be an exception if nothing else, but at least it's a matter of opinion.

So anyway, I'm already annoyed for not being able to copy text, and for having to log in. Now I'm annoyed because the web player takes a million years to load, and I still can't copy text. I'm further annoyed because the XXX I CANT PASTE THE NAME OF THE OPTION BECAUSE I CAN'T COPY IT XXX " "play open.spotify.com links in desktop app" didn't work. Maybe the login process snagged it and it doesn't know I came from open.spotify.com?

OK whatever, I'm logged in now. Maybe I can just open that URL in a new tab and it will finally start playing.

Nope. I just get a screen (on open.spotify.com this time) with a button inviting me to "play on spotify". OK, I guess this is just the "open" screen and the button enters the "play" universe, and I'll end up in the desktop app instead of play.spotify.com if I hit play from open.spotify.com because of the option I set in play.spotify.com

Nope, the button just does nothing. Maybe it's because I'm using an older version of spotify.

I'm not done yet. When I open the open.spotify.com url in IE, it opens in play.spotify.com. That's baffling until I realize some fraction of these options are stored in cookies and not on my account. I'm looking at the options, and then they disappear, because the song I've been testing finally finished opening, and the UI switched to the album view. OK whatever, I go back to the options and change a bunch of them to see which is tied to the cookies by testing again in firefox. I fail at this beacuse it now seems they're all attached to my account. I dont know what the heck is going on.  Now, after some more million years, I start hearing two songs at once, because play.spotify.com can't play songs in the desktop app, but it can somehow shut it off (2 seconds after it begins playing its own music). Well, after several more tries at this I finally get a popup that says its because it detected my account streaming twice at once so I guess the desktop app shut itself off.

After fiddling with the options, which is not easy because the UI design "click a checkmark to change it into another checkmark to disable something" is ridiculous, IE now opens open.spotify.com urls in open.spotify.com.

There's no way to get to play.spotify.com from open.spotify.com. That's probably for the best, as open.spotify.com seems to be a completely alternate implementation of spotify made by people who give a @*(#@.

Well, not completely complete. After all, you can't change how open.spotify.com interacts with the desktop app without going to play.spotify.com

Good thing I dont pay for spotify for the web player.  I wish I didn't ever have to see it.