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Spotify's UI is a case study of the negative impact of assigning single screens to single teams, designers and managers. There is no cohesive vision. The useful

Spotify's UI is a case study of the negative impact of assigning single screens to single teams, designers and managers. There is no cohesive vision. The useful functionality is all obscured by esthetics. I am perpetually annoyed at how poor spotify is at it's basic purpose. They have leaned way too far into recommendation systems and over designed layout. 99% of the time, I know what I want to listen to. Spotify's UX is designed for people to 'browse' the app. That doesnt resonate with me, at all. I know what I want. My biggest gripe with spotify is it's inability to reliably answer the question of "what playlist or source am I currently listening too?". A constant flow that spotify fails to deliver on is this: Search for a song, play the song, then the rest of the album, on repeat, without shuffle. It's annoying to have to load multiple slow UIs to navigate from search to album, visually search the album's track list and play the song your after. Itunes and Windows Media Player set the standard for how media should be navigated and Spotify should use some of those old standard concepts. EDIT: Try browsing Armin Van Buuren's massive discography on Spotify.

moolcool 4y ago
iTunes and WMP were okay, but nothing ever has topped Foobar 2000 IMO.
djhworld 4y ago
I might be having rose tinted spectacles but I remember when Spotify first launched in the UK, maybe 2010. The app was _screaming fast_ in comparison to iTunes at the time, and I think it had a similar interface to itunes as well (although could be misremembering) with a table-like layout [1] I really don't understand what happened between then and now, it was really a big deal at the time where the UI was snappy and playing a song was almost instantaenous. Nowadays, while the playback speed is still just as snappy, the UI feels much worse [1] https://www.cultofmac.com/102309/spotify-will-launch-in-the-states-between-july-5th-and-july-15th/ https://www.cultofmac.com/102309/spotify-will-launch-in-the-...
- OldTimeCoffee 4y ago
  It's no longer a native app, it was rewritten in 2015 to be non-native. It's the same story everywhere, they're using Electron (or similar) so they can maintain one codebase for everything written in HTML/CSS/JS.
12ian34 4y ago
I am similar to you, in that most of the time I know what I want to listen to... but it is worth considering that your personal use case of Spotify might not be the same as everyone else's. Spotify is doing pretty well making money so my bets are that your use case which you say isn't served well (and I'd agree) is much less common than others which Spotify does cater better to.
meristem 4y ago
I do not work for Spotify. The following are a bunch of educated guesses based on how 'old standard concepts' drift towards 'new concepts'. 1. They test their UI with their target users (assumes they have a handle on who pays $$$ for the service besides ad revenue) 2. People who just want functionality are not a high percentage of users or use cases 3. A good number of users/use cases value visual feedback via simple, larger imagery over condensed information displays (condensed displays are also harder to design well) 4. There are halo and competitive effects, and all apps of a certain class end up looking alike and imitating each other's visual languages and decisions, with design gradually drifting towards a new set of rules that become 'standard'.
UglyToad 4y ago
I'm definitely becoming one of the tin foil hat lot but since the redesign I've gone from perhaps 40 hours listening per week to almost zero but am too lazy to cancel the subscription. By that metric I think the redesign has succeeded, I've soft churned but they get the subscription and pay out no royalties. Never assign to malice yadda yadda yadda... but there's no way such an atrocious redesign doesn't have an ulterior motive. The designers have done their job well it's just optimizing for something else.

moolcool 4y ago

iTunes and WMP were okay, but nothing ever has topped Foobar 2000 IMO.

djhworld 4y ago

I might be having rose tinted spectacles but I remember when Spotify first launched in the UK, maybe 2010. The app was _screaming fast_ in comparison to iTunes at the time, and I think it had a similar interface to itunes as well (although could be misremembering) with a table-like layout [1] I really don't understand what happened between then and now, it was really a big deal at the time where the UI was snappy and playing a song was almost instantaenous. Nowadays, while the playback speed is still just as snappy, the UI feels much worse [1] https://www.cultofmac.com/102309/spotify-will-launch-in-the-states-between-july-5th-and-july-15th/ https://www.cultofmac.com/102309/spotify-will-launch-in-the-...

OldTimeCoffee 4y ago
It's no longer a native app, it was rewritten in 2015 to be non-native. It's the same story everywhere, they're using Electron (or similar) so they can maintain one codebase for everything written in HTML/CSS/JS.

12ian34 4y ago

I am similar to you, in that most of the time I know what I want to listen to... but it is worth considering that your personal use case of Spotify might not be the same as everyone else's. Spotify is doing pretty well making money so my bets are that your use case which you say isn't served well (and I'd agree) is much less common than others which Spotify does cater better to.

meristem 4y ago

I do not work for Spotify. The following are a bunch of educated guesses based on how 'old standard concepts' drift towards 'new concepts'. 1. They test their UI with their target users (assumes they have a handle on who pays $$$ for the service besides ad revenue) 2. People who just want functionality are not a high percentage of users or use cases 3. A good number of users/use cases value visual feedback via simple, larger imagery over condensed information displays (condensed displays are also harder to design well) 4. There are halo and competitive effects, and all apps of a certain class end up looking alike and imitating each other's visual languages and decisions, with design gradually drifting towards a new set of rules that become 'standard'.

UglyToad 4y ago

I'm definitely becoming one of the tin foil hat lot but since the redesign I've gone from perhaps 40 hours listening per week to almost zero but am too lazy to cancel the subscription. By that metric I think the redesign has succeeded, I've soft churned but they get the subscription and pay out no royalties. Never assign to malice yadda yadda yadda... but there's no way such an atrocious redesign doesn't have an ulterior motive. The designers have done their job well it's just optimizing for something else.