[shimman]

Spotify has always been garbage software long before LLMs. PM/devs like to justify their constant a/b testing to gamify metrics to curry raises/promotions but for end users all we're dealt with is a constantly broken/changing UI.

My biggest peeve with Spotify UI is how hard it is to add something to your current playing queue, an action I would assume is quite common but you have to scroll down to hit several controls before you can do it.

[Starman_Jones]

Not to mention that, if there is a queue, clicking Play on an album will play only the first track and add the rest of the tracks to the bottom of the queue. Did the PM honestly think listeners wanted that?

[OptionOfT]

Sounds like they have the same problem all software companies have as soon as the MBAs took over.

Metrics, not for the purpose of making the software better, but to justify someone's existence in the company.

[rchaud]

The MBAs work in the interests of the C-suite. It's their stat-padding that's made Daniel Ek a billionnaire despite running losses for 99% of the time he's led the company.

[fainpul]

And the C-suite works for the shareholders. And the shareholders exploit the current economical system etc.

Most problems which keep cropping up are systemic. Learn about the system that produces the problem to find the root cause. Put the crowbar there.

[rdevilla]

The techcrunch article is my favorite piece on Spotify, and proves that LLMs will not save you from your own stupidity.

For years now the Spotify release team has been rotating their package signing key on every release. [0] This completely defeats the point of package signing, which is to assure you that the next release is coming from the same people as the last one. In Spotify's case this is impossible to ascertain, as one cannot easily distinguish a legit new signing key from Spotify, from a supply chain attack.

With all this extra "intelligence" and productivity you would think such long-standing trivialities and security flaws would have been addressed by now. Not so if the humans driving those agents don't understand basic concepts or recognize a problem even exists.

Instead, merely, "fuck the Linux users."

I cancelled my Spotify long ago when music started disappearing from my library. Pirated music does not disappear.

[0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/spotify#comment-1048914

[omosubi]

The Spotify hate is so forced. Everyone's complaints boil down to "the UX doesn't work exactly like I want". I find these changes mildly annoying like anyone else, but Spotify is miles ahead of everyone else in terms of discovery and it's not even close. It's not perfect but no service is.

[gib444]

It's really not. The UX changes are like coming home every day and finding your cupboards have been totally rearranged, the fridge is now outside, and the dishwasher is in the bedroom. The next day, the dishwasher is in the garden, and your cups are in the bin.

I left years ago when their "discoverability" started forcing random Nordic music into my Spotify Weekly. Support basically told me to accept it or go away, so I did, and never looked back.

[happymellon]

Don't you just swipe right on a song to add it to the queue?

[shimman]

I wish! Just tried this on the iPhone app (sure it's all the same flavor of electron) but it doesn't work.

[piva00]

It does work, I just did on my app, swiping right will show an icon to add to queue on the left side of the track, slide it until it's green.

The iPhone app is not Electron, it's a native app.

[shimman]

This appears to only work for songs, this action does not work for podcasts or playlists. Wow! What bad engineering culture, likely only caring about what's in the ticket and not the feature overall. I guess this is what happens to a product after spending a decade only hiring people who can do leetcode.

[piva00]

There's no leetcode interviewing at Spotify as far as I know.

[cuuupid]

I mean Spotify sucks but Electron is a desktop framework, not what their iPhone app is built with, and you can queue by swiping right on their official app.

[shimman]

Wow, this only works for songs (and it's left) but not podcast episodes (my main use case). I had no idea you could do this! If I have to blame someone, I blame snapchat for making "unknown UX controls as something for users to discover" as the main pusher of the UI trend.

Rather than sending me marketing materials, I wish companies would send power users tips/tricks. Would definitely read those emails.

[happymellon]

I don't use Spotify for anything other than music so wasn't aware of this limitation, but on Android it is definitely swiping right.

That rubbish that it's different per platform.

[fdghrtbrt]

Keep doing. Hearing people complain about streaming software, when they could be playing their sounds locally with free software, makes my day every day.

[shimman]

I have been looking up DAP devices (digital audio players), anything you'd recommend that you know? Use to rock a Zune until the desktop software was unable to connect to it, loved that device.

Really tempted to buy this device:

https://store.hiby.com/pages/hiby-digital-miku

Because the color scheme and buttons look cool, not really aware of the waifu but she has good taste.

Do agree about local sounds, streaming audio sounds so compressed and awful. Very inefficient compared to the audio quality of locally hosted music.

[anotherhadi]

But Spotify is so much simpler.. And recommendations are great

[lowenbjer]

Three dots next to the song title, menu opens, "Add to Queue", done.

[shimman]

I click three dots, add to queue is at the bottom of the list, need to scroll, then click add to queue.

Why do I have to do so many actions when adding an item (say a podcast) to my current playlist? Why can't there be a single button that says "add to queue," why hide an common workflow behind nested menus and actions?

Wouldn't adding songs to your current queue be an extremely common action by users? Or at least power users?

I think I might become one of those people that makes their own frontend music player for Jellyfin. Adding and modifying playlists are something I do often (wrote like 100s of collages on what.cd back in the day), but with Spotify these actions are so fucking painful.

[lowenbjer]

Fair point, for me there is no scrolling required though, its like nr 3 in the list.

I wonder how long it will take for AI to learn how we work with software on an individual level and adapt the UI to fit our usage patterns.

[anon7000]

I disagree, Spotify has been very stable and performant for the last decade I’ve been using it. That speaks to decent software development. UI/product shifts are sometimes eh, but the core library has everything you expect from it. Music discovery tools are decent. I’ve tried Apple Music & YouTube Music on and off over the years and they aren’t better.

Adding a song to the queue on my phone is two taps away (3 dots > add to queue) or just swipe right on the list item. On desktop it’s one of the top options when you right click. It’s really not that bad.

The chief complaint is that the home page changes frequently and is hard to navigate, which is fair, and also pretty typical for tech companies. But all I really need is library & search, which are front & center without that.

[pixel_popping]

I agree too, additionally to that, the whole API ecosystem is good enough to build alternative clients.

[nmstoker]

I recall it being crap back in 2009 when the mobile software was highly flakey: it would sync over 1Gb of my playlists but was really unreliable so every few days it would get corrupted and require to resync the data in its entirety. At the time this quickly added up to more than my broadband plan would allow and I was stuck without the music and without normal speed internet (it would revert to some super slow level) I complained and they didn't seem to care as it stayed unstable and they kept advising to try again when my data cap was removed, it would fail again and then I cancelled my subscription.

[samuelg123]

Try using apple music

[TYPE_FASTER]

I bought another app to play Apple Music because that’s how much the Music app usability has decreased.