Spotify - anyone heard of it?

Desktop or mobile?

forks what are your biggest discrepancies with it?

On Mac I briefly had the thing doglatin mentioned of the search bar disappearing without a trace. Some combination of hitting Cmd-L and restarting the app fixed it.

I like the way on desktop the library/playlists window keeps going blank and I have to scroll it up and down to make the text reappear, and the way search still fucks up and looks for the PREVIOUS thing you searched for even when you enter a new search term.

since getting a new laptop with an SSD all of Spotify’s performance issues have gone away for me

haven’t seen the new update yet tho

Yeah, the first thing Tsar Bombadil mentions is here as well (Windows 10 desktop). Adding a playlist, for example, makes the playlist blank instead of updating. I'd almost forgot, since it's easily workaroundable; apparently I now automatically do a little up-down scrollwheel wiggle after making a change. Still a bug that should by rights be a clear fix-now thing on pain of going somewhere else.

Unfortunately, it appears that there is no concept of "bugs" in Spotify, merely "ideas".

"Hey, this thing in your app is broken and doesn't work as you clearly intended it to, how can I enter a bug report?"
"So what you do is, file an idea to fix it, and we'll have a vote whether that is a better idea than, say a special EQ mode for funicular travel or a more colorful Skylander interaction page; our development resources are not infinite, you know."

Yes of course I exaggerate.

Got the update, I see what everyone is complaining about. Search bar at the top has gone, you now have to click on 'search'. Songs can't be dragged into playlists inside folders. Albums and singles an extra click away from the artists page.

For my job I help develop a multi-featured system with a complex web based gui, I can understand the impetus for a redesign that makes things cleaner and neater. I simply cannot understand removing or obscuring simple, common, popular features.

they’re probably not as popular as you think

I guess, yes, they probably gather all sorts of metrics and are very confident that only 0.1% of people ever drag a song into a playlist in a folder.

We're working on bringing back a list-like Discography view, something many of you have mentioned missing in the new UI.

Hmm maybe this thing isn't so well researched. At least they're listening to some user feedback.

once an app reaches a certain scale, power user features get dropped like a hot potato if they require any maintenance whatsoever ime. it’s like, thanks early adopters, we’ll take it from here.

Our users like to think they're all power users, and they're paying ten times as much so we don't have that privilege. Even though our development team is 1/30 of the size.

I refuse to believe that searching for a song or artist is not a popular activity! But I still have the search bar despite updating – maybe the fact mine very briefly disappeared is just a coincidental bug.

otm. Just sounds like trying to push people more into their own playlists and robot stuff.

I still have the search on Windows too fwiw. They seem to trial changes randomly or geographically or something. Usually I see complaints about "the new update" here and have no idea what is going on.

If I were to find out my search bar disappeared as a test to see how quickly I would quit and relaunch the app I would not be happy.

Random by user I mean. Like maybe I'll get stuck with it next week.

Maybe this is exactly what you folks are talking about, but I searched for "Doppelgänger" by Curve, and ... it doesn't show up. I see the band, but it only lists two albums, neither of them that one. And yet, if I google "Curve Doppelgänger Spotify" I get a direct link to it on Spotify. So why does it not show up in the band's discography, let alone when I search for it in Spotify?

maybe a rights thing, it shows up for me in the uk in their discography and as a search result.

But a rights thing that prevents it from even showing up in a search? I mean, it's in there, somewhere. It's in my library now because I added it ...

Oh, wait, shit, I see. I found it, added it, but it won't let me *play* it, because "content not available." So ... I guess a rights thing.

Yep, you can have things in your library that you can't play. I changed my settings so I can see them in playlists too - they're just greyed out. Happens a lot as things drop out of Spotify, or I play playlists from people in other countries. I like to see what I'm missing.

most of the Curve discography is not on Spotify, it is not a search issue

If you're curious about regional availability for an artist, you can see everything that's available anywhere, and where, here:

https://everynoise.com/artistprofile.cgi?id=6WYkr1SJofUO79alKPjop0

lol copyright lockdown on this service is hardcore! Sticking with Curve (for the sake of consistency), I figure out how to add/link my Curve stuff as local files to my Spotify account. It shows up, with art and everything, in my library, but (sneaky Spotify) it will only let me *play* it locally, too, on my phone, on my computer, etc., but not streamed to an external speaker. I guess I can connect via bluetooth and play it that way, but I could have done that without Spotify. I suppose to stream it, even from a local source, it would still have to travel through Spotify's servers, and therefore gets flagged as not approved for (in my case) the US. I assume this also means that if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to share my freshly minted Curve playlist, either, which begs the question: what's the point of Spotify even allowing you to create a playlist of local files if you can't stream it or share it? Hmm, maybe it wouldn't have a problem with me creating a playlist of, say, cat sounds I recorded, because it's not copyrighted, but does with anything copyrighted that's not already on Spotify? I guess that makes sense. I wonder if I renamed all the Curve tracks if it would still recognize and flag them, just from their digital MP3 footprint.

You can't use Spotify Connect for casting local files to speakers, regardless of their copyright status. The tech just doesn't work that way – it's not like bluetooth where you're sending the music bits to the speaker. Spotify Connect is just like telling another device to get the stream that you've selected on your phone direct from Spotify.

Ah, I suppose that makes sense.

Still curious about the way this stuff works, I flipped on the VPN on my phone and set it to London, just to see if Spotify's library would adjust accordingly. It didn't (still not much Curve). Looking into it a bit more, it looks like for it to work via the VPN I'd have to switch my account location to the UK as well, but good on Spotify (I guess) for being one step ahead of me, because I think the only way to do that is to switch my billing information to reflect my "location," too, which seems to be asking for (a different kind of) trouble, and too much of it as well. So nice job, Spotify, for thwarting my slightly more than modest efforts to make streaming Curve through Spotify possible!

suggest you start your own Curve streaming service called Meandr

Did the new desktop app remove support for local files?

Spotify no longer has is new versions; just a kaleidoscope of mysterious user experiences

"A B testing"

What a title:

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/evan-greer-spotify-is-surveillance/

nice

The patent in question was speculation that never got made, never mind used, but the EP is pretty good, so I guess that's something.

The patent was granted three months ago, so I'm not sure what your point is. That said, every tech company with some kind of presence in vocal-interface land has a patent much like that, and vocal analytics are currently already used in plenty of other contexts, so yes suggesting Spotify are uniquely interested in this kind of data is not accurate

Anybody tempted by the Car Thing?

The patent was granted three months ago, but the application was filed in 2018, and even that was an addition to an earlier patent filed in 2016...

2018: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=10891948.PN.&OS=PN/10891948&RS=PN/10891948
2016: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=9934785.PN.&OS=PN/9934785&RS=PN/9934785

I know all that. So what?

“Never got made” means the same thing as “hasn’t been made yet”

Yeah, those are pretty recent filings. It’s one thing to point out the tech hasn’t been implemented (and may never be), but not sure why Glenn would point to the timing.

Oh God, it's finally hit me. The version I'm now on on MacOS is the first I really feel like complaining about. I can live with the search bar going given that Cmd-L is quicker than clicking into the box anyway but:

• Share options are now just 'copy URL' and 'embed'. Sharing to Twitter was my workaround for when I needed to copy-paste the artist and title. Now there's literally no way to do that on the desktop app. And what about the Spotify URI? Aren't there still tools using the API that required you to paste that in? Maybe URI has been totally deprecated, I dunno.
• Sorting in a playlist has been changed so that sort by artist you now have to go to the top and select it from a pulldown menu, instead of having a column header to just click on. That's a pain in the arse if you're wading through a long playlist, and makes the lack of a quick way to return to the top even more annoying than it was. Fuck dragging a scrollbar.

I would copy paste the version number but of course that's not allowed.

Oh, ha - there actually is a special copy button for the version number, that you don't see elsewhere: 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de-a

I guess we're only on v1 so what do I expect, eh?

I don't subscribe to Spotify but do have it installed (as it's the way most ppl seem to want to share playlists). I still have the search bar on Mac, even after updating to latest version - though it's 1.1.56.595.g2d2da0de (no "-a" at the end), maybe that makes the difference?

I'm on a Windows PC and the desktop app still has all the various options for sharing: FB, Twitter etc

Ha ha - re: URI, they're really testing the power of those power users:

Hey! Thanks for your feedback about the desktop app's new look. To get the URI of a content, just right-click on it > select Share > hover your cursor on “Copy Song Link” > press “Ctrl” on your keyboard. The option to “Copy Spotify URI” should appear. Hope this helps /KB

— SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) April 12, 2021

Someone on the SpotifyCares team didn't get the memo:

Hi Ottis, help's here! Can you DM us screenshot or video of the issue you're experiencing, as well as the playlist URI? To get it, open the Spotify desktop app > click the three dots next to the content > Share > Copy Spotify URI /RA https://t.co/ldFdZRiNAt

— SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) April 15, 2021

Considering they face multiple competitors offering a more or less identical service at the same price, I’m surprised Spotify isn’t more focused on member satisfaction.

Oh - there's one improvement for geeks in this desktop update: a track's total number of plays now shows on its album view without you having to hover over that little graph.