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The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

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Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#51
Bad design is slowly becoming an industry trend, which is surprising because Twitter today has more design influencers than ever before. Personally, I feel that the marriage of design with data has created such a huge mess that there’s just no good escape hatch.

It’s all about simplicity and the 80/20 principle today, which means that designers are bound to look at usage metrics and clicks as evidence of a successful design. Upper management doesn’t have to care as long as the bottom line is doing well and they’re able to kill competition in other ways.

From a user standpoint, though, once you get attuned to the basic functionality you want more power features that cost a lot of effort to build but don’t really make you pay more for them. You just can’t win.

This is why we need competition.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#52

I'm also not a fan of the direction Spotify is going, but if I want to keep listening to music, I don't see a way around it - and I don't think other music services are materially different. I support the artists I care about most by going to their concerts and/or buying merch. I use services like last.fm for better discovery. Spotify doesn't have to be the only way you interact with music. The author doesn't say how…

I got pissed off by their product, so I just stopped paying them. Now I just hear ads every 10-20 minutes, which pisses me off even more. Now I really don’t wanna pay for Spotify anymore.

…it’s probably not the best business relationship, but hey, I didn’t start it.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#55

I dread the interface of Spotify. What do they employ massive numbers of UX people for? Nothing regarding Spotify's interface is any better than 2012. Cards, auto-play TikTok'ified video bullshit, weird navigation of menus and playlists, hidden core functionalities, lack of customization, funneling of user flows into garbage marketing content... It's like they are sitting in a lab and professionally try to find out h…

From what I've heard the Spotify UI is made by multiple teams. Each team makes their own section and other teams don't need to (nor can they) interfere.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#56

I feel like I'm in a weird alt-universe. I've heard frequent complaints about spotify pushing podcasts but I've never once had spotify show me a podcast above the fold that I haven't myself followed. Only if I scroll really further than I've ever scrolled before could I find it. Spotify shows me: "Made for xnorswap: ": 5 "daily mixes" which have always been a bit rubbish because they're not really mixes, they seem to…

>I feel like I'm in a weird alt-universe.

>I've heard frequent complaints about spotify pushing podcasts but I've never once had spotify show me a podcast above the fold that I haven't myself followed.

That you have followed or listened to a podcast in Spotify is what makes you different here.

I have never listened to a podcast on Spotify, despite being a user since the invite-only days, yet the UI recommends podcasts at the same frequency as you've described.

I imagine many of the other people here do not want podcasts to appear anywhere in the Spotify UI.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#57

I can't stand Spotify's redesign anymore. Looking for an improved Winamp-like app with very simple interface and playlists. What should I try? Apple Music is a joke as well. I can't even play some of my custom audio files (they're not music, custom sounds) because Apple thinks they are not allowed to play in my country. I can't play my own audio files because of some buggy software Apple doesn't care about maintainin…

VLC is great for that. Just hit Ctrl+L to open the playlist view.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#58

I can't stand Spotify's redesign anymore. Looking for an improved Winamp-like app with very simple interface and playlists. What should I try? Apple Music is a joke as well. I can't even play some of my custom audio files (they're not music, custom sounds) because Apple thinks they are not allowed to play in my country. I can't play my own audio files because of some buggy software Apple doesn't care about maintainin…

I use Doppler on Mac/iOS:

https://brushedtype.co/doppler/

It's not perfect (adding and syncing music from Bandcamp could be smoother; it requires their Doppler Sync app to sync over Wi-Fi/AirDrop instead of syncing via cloud storage, which would be my preference).

But the UX is decent, it supports playlists, and it just works offline. If you can see your music you can play it which — oddly — has not been my experience with apps for streaming services that are supposed to let you download playlists for use offline.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#59
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which services would you recommend as alternatives for higher quality audio at similar price points?

Apple Music if you're in that ecosystem

What ecosystem? It’s on Android and Windows too, and has a web version for Linux use.

Re: The day I canceled my Spotify subscription

#60

Long article for a single comment: I quit Spotify because I can’t customise the home page which pushes podcasts and music I’m not interested in. For me I navigate my music via My Liked songs + my own playlists for particular moods. If I open the app and press play it defaults to where I left off. The fact there is a home page which shows options similar to what I like is fine, sometimes useful. Yes I’d prefer to cust…

> The one major gripe is not being able to upload my own songs, I love listening to remixes and covers, youtube, spotify or tiktok has plenty of songs I’d love in my library. But it’s a nightmare for a business model that respects artists and a cost structure that needs to be covered. Again, no real good alternatives that do this well + have a normal library + be legal.

But you can, if you have the audio files you can use them as local files [1] in your Spotify library.

[1] https://support.spotify.com/us/article/local-files/

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