Ask HN: How is the Spotify app so bad?

73 points by erlich 2 years ago | 81 comments

The library tree view is so terrible.

- You cannot shift+click select to easily add playlists into a folder.

- Any podcasts you follow cannot be moved into folders to tidy things up. They just clutter the sidebar.

- You have to click on a tiny arrow to expand a folder. Clicking on the folder navigates inside the folder.

The fact that podcasts are in the same Spotify mega-app is terrible too. And the podcast experience is a complete mess.

I listened to an interview with the head of Spotify product, and he talked about how great it was to have everything in this mega app. I just feel the opposite of everything he said.

It's one of the most popular services in the world, but has one of the worst user experiences of all the apps I use.

And they actually think they are doing a good job at it.

onion2k 2 years ago |

It's one of the most popular services in the world, but has one of the worst user experiences of all the apps I use.

This is really common. It's a sign that the value isn't derived from the software itself, but what the software enables you to do. It doesn't need to be good. People pay to access Spotify's library of music and podcasts, despite the UI.

When you run a startup having people hungry to use your MVP despite it's flaws is a classic signal that you're on to something valuable. I could list hundreds of shockingly bad apps that have awful user experiences that I've happily used over the last 40 years because they all did something I really wanted or needed to do. Almost every 'enterprise' app is a total mess from a UI perspective - but they make a fortune because the value that users get from them make it worth putting up with.

People think a beautiful UI is something that every app needs, but really every app just needs to do something useful. None of them need a good UI until there's a competitor with an equivalent service that has a better UI. Only then does the UI actually matter, because it becomes something users will use to choose which service they buy.

pushcx 2 years ago | |

There's an excellent pithy saying for this: If something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly.

daghamm 2 years ago |

I actually like the Spotify app.

For things I am (and maybe most normal users?) interested in, it works really nice: choose a song, listen to it, listen to the bands other songs, listen to their "radio" with similar songs, find new interesting bands, repeat.

joecot 2 years ago | |

I tried to leave Spotify. I tried to switch to Tidal, which boasts better sound quality, and most importantly, better payments to artists.

I switch between listening on my phone, my computer, other computers, and my google home devices all day. With Spotify, I can choose which device to choose to from anywhere, and I can also control it from anywhere. I can play music from my laptop, then change songs from my phone, then send it to my google home speakers whenever I'd like.

Tidal didn't have that. Didn't even have google home integration. Didn't even have a desktop app on Linux. I switched back in less than a day. As annoying as Spotify's app can be sometimes, it's the service that works across all my devices, and can switch between all my devices.

miningape 2 years ago | |

Yeah for me this is where spotify shines over their competition - how easy (and accurate) they make discovering new music. But I suppose 1 amazing feature doesn't make up for loads of cruft.

arrowsmith 2 years ago | | |

Are we talking about the same app? My experience of Spotify is that it's terrible for discovering new music - "artist radio" just gives me the same few songs and artists over and over, so if it's a genre where I already know most of the big, popular bands then very little of it is new or interesting.

How do you use Spotify to discover new music? What am I doing wrong?

spiderfarmer 2 years ago | |

Same. There are a lot of apps way, way worse than Spotify, including Apple Music.

_rutinerad 2 years ago | | |

I think Apple Music (on iOS, on Mac it’s quite bad) is really good. But even if it wasn’t, I still would use it just for ratings and complex smart playlists.

frizlab 2 years ago | | |

Honestly it works great now and is, I feel, better than Spotify (it was not the case a few months ago; let’s be clear).

Anyway it’s a complicated subject. I read somewhere nobody wants the same out of their music app and that’s why most of the time they end up being weird pieces of software in order to try and satisfy everybody.

al_borland 2 years ago |

I recently moved from Apple Music to Spotify to see what all the fuss is about, thinking it might get me listening to more music, or different stuff than Apple keeps playing. Using it feels like work and I don’t really get the how they expect users to use the app. I’m tempted to go see if there is a video from the designers explaining their vision so I can use it right. As of now it seems like a mess.

Also, their AI DJ makes no sense. The worst part about radio is the DJ saying nonsense between songs, and they added AI to say nonsense between songs. I was just looking for a way for it to play songs I’d probably like based on other songs/artists I like. With Apple I’d simply tell Siri, “play good music” and it would play a radio station with my name on it (without an interrupting fake DJ).

aosaigh 2 years ago |

I moved to Apple Music because of the terrible state of the Spotify UI. I hated having podcasts and more recently audio books taking up real estate and generally just started to find it too difficult to navigate.

Apple Music isn’t perfect, but it has a more focused UI that makes it easier to find music.

AHTERIX5000 2 years ago |

They used to have simpler UI which supported default key bindings etc but then kept forcing redesigns which made the UI worse and removed things like ^F search. I switched to Apple Music few iterations ago. It's not as good as the old Spotify UI but still leagues ahead the current one.

I wish Spotify/Deezer/Apple had an SDK like libspotify used to be so that one could just write a simpler & faster client.

yakismugurakis 2 years ago |

It's all about financial performance now more than ever. Crappy electron and whatnot apps that takes GBs of your disk and RAM, firing good people, implementing AI for every shit, just for a manager to have a better quarter and get his bonus, you’re the last of their priorities as long as you’re hooked and pay. Personally, I’m using what gets me a free month or so when possible, and from time to time I pay for Apple Music because of their Lossless and Classical on iOS. For home I’ve built an audio station with a Raspberry Pi 4 and Moode Audio and listen to Radios mostly.

lambdanil 2 years ago |

For those unaware, it's possible to use alternative clients for Spotify using a 3rd party daemon.

https://github.com/Spotifyd/spotifyd

a3w 2 years ago | |

For those unaware, spotify is not a podcast player. Most podcasters get no money from spotify. Podcasts are a wild ecosystem, spotify is a business that feeds of that. Some audio productions are labeled spotify exclusive podcasts. Well, they are not podcasts. They are, like audible, audio productions on a single platform.

Fun fact, AFAICT the fastest growing major podcast platform is re-uploads of podcasts to youtube. Which makes no sense on most mobile platforms, but at least the visibility of entries to the public will be high.

angra_mainyu 2 years ago | | |

> Which makes no sense on most mobile platforms

Why? I watch a lot of podcasts on youtube, it's interesting to see the interaction, so the visual component is not a negative.

In fact, the vast majority of podcasts I've heard aren't audio-only. The only one audio-only ones I've listened to are the old Opie and Anthony show uploads.

dalf 2 years ago |

Podcast is one of two the reasons I've unsubscribed Spotify (as you describe, the UX is terrible).

The other one, I was not able to "teach" the algorithm what I like even after 3 months.

cddotdotslash 2 years ago | |

Same, canceled my subscription of nearly 10 years last week. It felt like every inch of the interface was being used to push podcasts in my face. I came to Spotify to play music and discover new music. Both of those were getting more difficult to do, so now I use YouTube Music (which I was already paying for via YouTube Premium).

solarkraft 2 years ago | |

Similar here. "Podcasts" (without RSS feeds) really ground my gears and eventually I got fed up by the algorithm playing the same 8 songs I didn't like (in playlists of hundreds).

FWIW, Tidal isn't all it's hyped up to be either; they also do some dumb stuff. But it's a solid competitor that at least isn't Spotify.

raziel2p 2 years ago |

you/we are not the target audience. most people love the auto play features and just want a selection of playlists or radios to put on. this is the majority audience that Spotify makes the most of its money from.

lukan 2 years ago | |

That is probably the answer, even though I do not see why it cannot support both.

For example why is there no "stop after song" feature, sometimes I do not want to be "engaged" but really just listen to one song/podcast and then no more, without having to stop some random shit afterwards.

SiempreViernes 2 years ago | | |

I can turn off autoplay in the settings, it's named something like "automatic play of similar content", it doesn't work for you?

KingOfCoders 2 years ago |

(Android) It also gets easily confused with Wifi and whether or not I'm online (because I'm in a room with bad wifi reception). It sometimes blocks on playing downloaded content when there is no internet (when listening in bed and internet is turned off). This has not changed in the last ten years. Not sure why they have thousands of programmers, and tribes and squads and who knows what else.

It's barely usable for radio plays (favorites, queue, last played, ...) as it does act on songs not albums in general.

Raag_malhar 2 years ago | |

bad network issue is really annoying tbh, it will not play even downloaded playlist, we have to specifically go in setting and enable offline mode, but then it won't change back to online once we are connected to good network.

geraldhh 2 years ago | | |

offline content not playing smoothly with a spotty connection is something i noticed in the last years as well; driving me nuts

walthamstow 2 years ago | |

Yes absolutely. This is why I moved away. I live in London and take the tube semi regularly so offline content is non negotiable.

I migrated to Deezer then started downloading flacs from Deezer and serving them with Plexamp.

juliangmp 2 years ago |

The android app has been awful for years now. Don't even think of using it if you have a bad connection, even the context menus have an animated loading circle thing.

I'm now actually trying out other services, the official youtube music app won't even launch since I don't have google play services. But there's a lot of free/open-source clients too so I'm currently going through these.

petargyurov 2 years ago |

Offline playback: my biggest issue with Spotify. I have my library downloaded, why is the UI "loading" and blocking? It should be instant.

onion2k 2 years ago | |

It's could still doing the authentication loop to check that you have the 'right' to access the things you downloaded, depending on how often the app refreshes the token they use to check.

petargyurov 2 years ago | | |

But if I am in Airplane mode (or generally without any signal) why would it bother? Unless it checks a locally stored token for validity, which would be exploitable; but even so, a local check should be near instant.

geraldhh 2 years ago | |

same here, very disappointing.

i suspect the client is loading "something else" (artwork, lyrics, canvas animation) over the network

awelxtr 2 years ago |

You know the funny part?

On Linux is even worse.

aramndrt 2 years ago |

Can anyone suggest a minimalist music streaming platform? I'm looking for a digital substitute for collecting CDs, something similar to the old iTunes. Maybe Apple Music is the right choice, or are there other options available?

leokennis 2 years ago | |

I find Apple Music excellent for the "I had 800 CD's; now I want those same CD's, but instead in a digital streaming library on my phone".

You can add albums from the Apple Music catalog to your library. In iTunes on Mac you can change the tags if you want ("Making Movies (2020 remaster)" → "Making Movies" or something). You can easily star music, download for offline use, listen in lossless, create playlists, on Mac create smart playlists ("All albums where artis is "AC/DC" and year is between 1980 and 1990") etc.

comprev 2 years ago | |

Bandcamp might be what you're after. It's where I get 95% of digital music especially when bundled in with physical media.

mingus88 2 years ago | |

A plex server with the Plexamp player.

I purchase FLAC on bandcamp and add them to my plex library. The mobile app lets me stream and download to the device from anywhere

It’s the modern day equivalent of collecting CDs. These releases will never leave the platform and you own it outright.

They even launched a suggested playlist feature based on ML analysis of your library. It’s not half bad

threeseed 2 years ago | |

Apple Music and Tidal are the only two with high-res audio.

And since they often encode from the 24-bit studio masters you will get better audio quality than ripping from CDs yourself and likely from most “pay as you go” sites.

adrianh 2 years ago | | |

I'll add another to that list: Qobuz. High-res music, good selection. I've been a paying subscriber for a few years now and can recommend it.

Tarq0n 2 years ago | |

People usually suggest Roon when it comes to actually substitute a CD collection, it works with a couple of streaming services but it is an extra expense.

mdrzn 2 years ago |

+1 to Spicetify, it completely changed how I use the Spotify app on desktop: https://spicetify.app/

e12e 2 years ago |

Fwiw, the YouTube music android app is pretty bad too. I generally need to force stop it a couple of times pr listening session because it freezes up getting the next track.

Also find it curious that there's apparently no Bluetooth hot key to "like" the current song, only single click for play/pause and double for skip. Bit maybe that's a Bluetooth headphone protocol thing?

leed25d 2 years ago |

Do you think that this might have something to do with it? https://www.npr.org/2023/12/04/1216950219/spotify-layoffs-17...

i0nutzb 2 years ago | |

Most likely, no.

Not using the mobile version that much, so I can't give feedback on that, but the desktop player is getting worse and worse for the past few years: searching, discovering (by browsing), library/playlist management etc.

It's like the Spotify guys are not even using Spotify anymore :)

_fw 2 years ago |

The iOS app feels much buggier in the past few weeks. Lockups when returning to the app, phantom pausing, and worst of all, clicking the podcast I’ve been listening to doesn’t take me to the right episode… I have to scroll to find it.

Not great when you’re trying to listen to a 700 episode series!

jamescun 2 years ago |

I was recently in hospital with not-so-great WiFi.

With the mobile app, I would often notice Spotify loading album artwork, lyris, artist information and even video before playing the music. It's network prioritisation is deeply disconnected from the users wants.

I remember when Spotify heavily optimised to play music in the quickest possible time. Enshittification indeed.

rpod 2 years ago |

There's spicetify, which you can use to remove podcasts from and customize the UI of the desktop client:

https://github.com/spicetify/spicetify-cli

TheCapeGreek 2 years ago |

For me the big signal is when there are tons of years-old quality of life feature requests that are unaddressed, like blocking podcasts from your podcast feed (listen to one startup podcast and it'll constantly put more of those automatically playing), or even a less awful high contrast dark mode (or even a light mode).

My biggest bugbear is how the web app is just as atrocious. If you leave it open too long without playing something, it just won't play the next song you select (just keeps loading forever) until you reload the page. That and the general latency in UI responsiveness (Is this a server issue because I'm in Africa?)

For a company with so many engineers, designers, etc, they really miss enough low hanging fruit that they turn into papercuts. All of what I've mentioned have been issues for years.

All that being said, I haven't moved off. I still like the Discover Weekly list and the algo is pretty well tuned to my likes so I can't be bothered to train YT Music/Apple Music/whatever to find me new stuff.

marcus_holmes 2 years ago |

I'm semi-convinced it's the bad feedback loop of analytics => product team.

"I'm totally lost in this shitty UI, I have no idea how it's supposed to work" looks very much like "I love this interface, I could spend hours just looking at it" if all you have is analytics data.

DocKitKat 2 years ago | |

Nah, it's not a platform that generates money based off eyeballs scrolling through ads, keeping the interface front and center for longer etc.

Spotify optimises for music/podcast/audiobooks hours consumed or songs added to playlist/downloads etc. Being lost in the UI would very much be a negative signal in the data, and easy to separate out from "I love the app and am able to play the content I want" for any analytics team.

j_san 2 years ago |

For me the Android mobile app is sometimes skipping songs or not switching to the next one when swiping or tapping the next icon. Often recognizing another device as playing doesn't work. If it recognizes it then editing the song queue doesn't work more often than not (especially removing songs from the queue). I hate it. It is so bad, I'd be ashamed having so many users, so much money but such an bad app.

jacknews 2 years ago |

Spotify is used as a case example in scrum training.

No correlation implied.

localhort 2 years ago |

You are lucky you haven't tried Apple Music yet. I found it hideous and can't wait to go back to Spotify where things are more organized.

JohnBooty 2 years ago | |

I use them both, and they're both a mess to me!

ryandvm 2 years ago |

Enshittification - it's the most powerful force in software development.

When you have investors pushing money to spend, project managers that have to show something, and hordes of developers under your employ, even the best software experiences will succumb to feature bloat, change for the sake of change, and tooling churn.

Windows, Slack, and Spotify are perfect examples of once decent products that somehow get buggier, slower, and more confusing with every release.

Very few companies have the wherewithal to just pause, evaluate their product, and say: "nah, this is good".

kitallis 2 years ago |

quiz: try copying the name of a track/album from the desktop app

carvking 2 years ago |

Resource hog as well

safety1st 2 years ago |

* Download music you want to listen to

* $ sudo apt install vlc fzf

* $ rvlc "$(ls | fzf)"

mariusor 2 years ago | |

First step left is left as an exercise to the user, right?

safety1st 2 years ago | | |

See you on the high seas

JSavageOne 2 years ago |

Yes Spotify UI/UX is absolute garbage. It's not even possible to simply view a list of all songs by an artist. Also I had to turn off autoplay because the recommendation engine wouldn't stop autoplaying the same song.