Spotify - anyone heard of it?

the latest updates for the ios app are so good. kudos to the ux/ui/design teams

You can select multiple tracks on desktop but not on mobile. (I wish you could on mobile.)

The previous android app had text saying "devices available" and you clicked it and selected a speaker.

Now it has text saying "devices available" and you click it and it takes you to the song playing screen and the text saying "devices available" disappears.

Seems it's been replaced with a tiny little icon that maybe looks like a speaker if your eyes are under 40.

The real estate freed up by removing the helpful text is now taken up by nothing.

And it makes Alexa confusing because she asks you to select “devices available.”

More metadata weirdness:

James Thomas' surf band has three separate artist listings, twice as "The Mermen" and once as "Mermen" (he's also there as "Mermen James Thomas" but I think that's an intentional use for his solo work).

Discography link on the artist page has disappeared. Has top 5 tracks, playlists, appears on but no way to browse their discography. This is on iPad version 12.1.4 .

If you know album title, will show in search.

^ I just checked and you are right, Dan, there's no longer a way to get from an artist's page to the artist's discography in the iPad app. This must have gotten broken recently!

Yeah, the iPad thing has been reported, and I expect will be fixed first thing Monday.

Back to normal now, only difference is changed wording from the slightly geeky 'discography' to 'releases'. Thanks, Glenn.

generous offer here:
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/03/spotify-premium-family-free-google-home-mini/

uk only though.

I ordered mine and intend to sell it straight away on eBay as I don't need it. Wonder if there will be a glut of them though.

Your delivery was delayed. We're working to get it to you soon and will email you when it's on its way.

Presumably they underestimated demand for this offer.

I'm sure many product managers have died on this hill on both sides but: folders

What about folders?

I want them (and I'm gonna feel dumb if they already exist)

it's a little broader than just folders, like I'd love it if more of the playlists were instead available as (maybe even annotated) collections of libraries

There are nestable folders for playlists, although now I'm wondering if you can still create new folders, I assume you can. I don't think they have the kind of features you want though.

They exist! You can make new folders! If I couldn't do that, my playlist lists would be a fucking mess and i would move to another service.

Once upon a time, you could shuffle a folder in the mobile app, but I've griped about that countless times ITT.

Oh good!

Better discovery features would still be cool. I miss the Blue Note app. It's just too bad that we have access to all recorded music and we haven't gotten any more creative with the UI for exploring it. I'm thinking of the Chicago post-rock family tree people posted, that would be a cool UI. Or different subgenres being different neighborhoods and you could build a house that magically had window/balconies overlooking different subgenres ... labels could design their own spaces ... you don't know what you feel like listening to but you dial up a beach, wander around until one of the soundsystems draws you in and it's (insert yr Balearic fave)

No longer possible to remove an individual track from an album you’ve saved?

how the hell do you save an album without every song on the album showing up in the "Songs" playlist? Or am I supposed to just memorise every album I want to listen to?

You can organize via folders but I truly miss the ability to shuffle folders. I make a lot of playlists organized by time period and by genre so the ability to shuffle by folders was very efficient. I could shuffle all genres from the 80s or I could go into the folder and only shuffle 80s punk, or go within that folder and only listen to my favorite Black Flag songs.

Once they took away the ability to shuffle folders, I had to make a lot—A LOT—of redundant playlists to capture that same flexibility.

(I think you can still shuffle folders on desktop but if you can’t do it on mobile it’s worthless.)

Ability to have playlists with just the album, not all the songs, is sorely needed.

probably covered above but the New Releases page not actually showing all new releases really bugs me. its obviously algorithm/partner marketing based... because today i listened to and enjoyed new albums from These New Puritans, Lambchop, Andrew Bird and American Football. all of which are on Spotify but not shown as new releases. i mean i would get it if it showed me a limited amount of new releases based on my interests, but when its showing me a limited amount of things and they're not based on my interests...

I got Lambchop and Andrew Bird in my Release Radar today.

I hit that "follow" button on every artist I'm even remotely interested in, and I'm pretty sure it keeps my release radar pretty on point. It feels pretty customized to me every single week.

I stumbled across my list of followed artists on my phone earlier. There weren't many names on it but for some reason The War on Drugs were, which explains the mystery of why that stupid band kept showing up on my Release Radar. Later on I tried to find the list again on my phone and couldn't! Anyway eventually tracked it down on desktop and did a bit more pruning then added some artists I actually like.

BTW, the Google tip someone mentioned upthread of finding other people's playlists that feature a song you like is great (eg site:spotify.com love is deep matthew e. white). Ended up finding a guy who has a load of great playlists I'm plundering. Would be great if this function were built into Spotify.

Is it just me or is the iOS mobile app fucked today? The new releases section in search has disappeared and reappeared twice for me , new song by Becky G and other artists are just not even there when u click it

they’ve just done an update to the ‘browse’ section and it’s still rolling out. my app is wonky as well.

agh wrong thread ignore delete delete

Is this "Hulu free w/Spotify" a limited time thing for people who get it? I don't mean is it being offered for a limited time because I know it is; I'm asking if the free-Hulu part will expire after a certain time for people who sign up for it, or do they allege that it will last for the duration of the Spotify account.

Dear Spotify: please just stop changing the UI. Just stop.

I love the new UI but I prob use the app different than u

So wait- saving a track and liking a track are the same thing now?

Dear Spotify: please just stop changing the UI. Just stop.

― calstars, Saturday, March 23, 2019 6:41 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for real. my searchbar disappeared? i kind of use that feature often

The thing for searching within a playlist moved up into the "..." menu.

Is this "Hulu free w/Spotify" a limited time thing for people who get it? I don't mean is it being offered for a limited time because I know it is; I'm asking if the free-Hulu part will expire after a certain time for people who sign up for it, or do they allege that it will last for the duration of the Spotify account.

I know this is probably not Glenn's department, but I wonder if my right honorable friend has any insight into this deal. (sorry, under the influence of uk commons fussin')

Nothing with these services is ever permanent beyond a few months - I expect they'll bundle it for a while, see how the uptake pans out, and then either kill it, make it a paid upgrade (ie still cheaper than standalone Hulu) or continue as is.

I'm grandfathered in with the defunct Unlimited at $5/mo, and it's going to take some expression of permanence to get me to step into the Hulu snare.

The thing for searching within a playlist moved up into the "..." menu.

― glenn mcdonald, Sunday, March 24, 2019 7:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was looking around online and saw ppl complaining about this but it's not the issue i'm having -- on desktop (mac) there used to be a bar at the top of the program to search from anywhere, now i seem to have to go to the search page which takes a cpl seconds to load. don't know what happened there but i hate it.

I am tired of managing my library at the 10k limit. generated playlists are worthless if I can't easily save the songs I like to remember them later. The limit has forced me into actively managing a library of songs, which is the fundamental problem streaming solved for me. I will always appreciate spotify for moving streaming forward, but I am going to try and use the amazon prime music I already pay for anyway to save $15/month. lagoon's prophecy etc.

Self-hosted music streaming is the solution for your own library, you can forget about Spotify/Amazon/Apple Music ever doing that well. Plex (that's what I'm using), Emby, Subsonic, Ampache, Funkwhale, take your pick and don't look back.

Ugh. I can understand having a limit but why have it be so low?

xp the limit isn't for my own library of digital music. I don't own any digital music (technically, I spent maybe one hundred dollars on mp3s that are now lost forever). the limit applies to just saving the artist/song/album names to "your library" and not even downloading. It is absurd.

still a huge issue that i have no idea why they havent addressed

I can think of two reasons why they might do it: 1) to bound the amount of number crunching they need to do when finding your library's overlap with other users' libraries and 2) force you to prune your own data so they have a better idea of who you currently are and what you currently like.

but to be clear, it is still bad and dumb. so I am throwing a tantrum and leaving.