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Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

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Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#51
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 control…

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

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

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#52
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 control…

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

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.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#53
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 control…

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

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.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

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.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#55
post #54
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 po…

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.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#57
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More thing for Spotify is that their users are, more or less, locked in. That stickyness is what allows companies to try this dumb shit; management will hardly feel the impact of their bad choices - cause they are standing on many years of foundations. It's like when Homer Simpson was carried up the mountain by Sherpas and thought he owned the achievement.

How so? Spotify can be switched for YT Music, or Apple Music, or Deezer without any issues. You can also just buy albums on Qobuz instead. You can, ultimately, resort to one of the best things the internet offered since its inception - piracy. If anything, Spotify is one of the easiest services to replace. And I say this as a paying customer.

I tried tidal for the Lossless (dont care about the 24bit, i care about no EQ and compression added to music) but i went back to spotify for their recommendation model. Its a moat for me.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#58
post #19

This is just the latest in a series of vibe-coding caused bugs, Spotify famously claimed their best devs were no longer writing any of their own code: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify-says-its-best-deve... I don't understand enterprises who take this stance, there is tons of room between "don't utilize AI for coding" and "exclusively utilize AI for coding."

Spotify is a terribly run company. Zero innovation. Bugs. Frustrating interface design. It’s awful and they deserve to lose at this point. I’m surprised anyone ever praised their management techniques.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#59
For anyone looking for a spotify alternative, please join me in making a better, self-hosted spotify!

1.) Buy music when you can, and when you can't, pirate!

2.) Run Gonic(1)! (or whatever you want, I'm not in charge of what you do at the end of the day, but Gonic is a.) very light, and b.) a subsonic(2) server, so it's compatible with anything that supports that family of services)

2a.) How you run it is up to preference, I have a NAS that runs mine, you can also run it off something like Pikapods(3), a VPS (you know what a VPS is), or off your own desktop/laptop/raspberry pi, who cares.

3.) Download a subsonic compatible player, which is much more open to preferences, but I highly suggest Symfonium(4)

4.) Enjoy music streaming without ads, limits, or artists you don't like!

(1) https://github.com/sentriz/gonic

(2) https://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

(3) https://www.pikapods.com/

(4) https://symfonium.app/

to be clear, i have no relation to any of these products, outside of supporting the development of gonic and donating to symfonium. if anyone is interested I can do a more in depth write up of how I personally manage my stuff, but it's not much more complicated than this, just with a TB+ of music in a folder.

Re: Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers

#60
post #19

This is just the latest in a series of vibe-coding caused bugs, Spotify famously claimed their best devs were no longer writing any of their own code: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/spotify-says-its-best-deve... I don't understand enterprises who take this stance, there is tons of room between "don't utilize AI for coding" and "exclusively utilize AI for coding."

[dead]
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