So Spotify recently changed from a green heart and a block song button to and + and a - for liking and disliking. What is your opinion?
My personal preference would be to bring back the green heart and make a deep red broken heart.
And I know spotify is proprietary yada yada I don’t care for music streaming. So pls don’t let it be a part of the discussion.
To reference this is an old screenshot I found on the internet.
I pay for Spotify and do not like the pop ups for podcasts and now audiobooks. I really do not like how they ruined the shuffle button and now the ugly check mark instead of the heart. I am not fond of the ui at all and will start looking at other alternatives. Imo, Spotify has gone downhill. I miss the old time Spotify.
I HATE the shuffle button on Spotify. It used to be better. I have a Playlist that I used to listen to with the ‘enhanced’ shuffle. Spotify would add similar songs into the queue. It was nice. Now Spotify just plays the same 20 songs or so, over and over again. My Playlist has over 200 songs without even adding the variety into the queue. I’ve started actively removing songs because they are all I hear. This isn’t how listening to music should work.
Oh, I noticed that too. I have over 800 songs in my playlist and Spotify would play about 10 of them in a specific order even though shuffle was enabled. I found an app to fix that for me https://shuffle.virock.org
I also really dislike the pop-ups and “recommendations” that I have no interest in. It feels like I’m being advertised to when I’m specifically already paying, in part to remove ads.
That, along with their incessant and poorly communicated A/B UI testing, is making me more and more frustrated. Don’t get me wrong, the price for a Duo membership is excellent for the amount of music available, but I have started to build out my own collection that I can stream through Plex as a backup, since I expect their platform to only get worse over time
Yes! The shuffle button! Every time I want to shuffle/unshuffle a playlist, it seemingly has to toggle through the smart shuffle bullshit first, which disables the button and shows a loading icon (which can be 5+ seconds on a mobile connection) while it finds awful songs to inject into my playlist.
Oh how I wish there was a way to disable it
I switched to TIDAL. Same price, and they pay the artists better per stream.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into Tidal.
My shuffle button is still a shuffle button, and the heart is still a heart. I also never get popups, but I also pay for it, so if you don’t maybe that’s why?
I pay for premium. Unfortunately, I get full screen pop ups Spotify refers to as “sponsered suggestions”. Ranging from a survey, podcasts, audiobooks, family plans, new artists they want me to like, etc.
To me, they are irritating and as a monthly subscriber, I should not have them. I am happy they do not plauge you. I consider you very lucky.
Hmm, I consider myself lucky as well then. Maybe it’s because I’m on a family plan? Idk, I’m just spitballing here.
I dislike all the algorithms being pushed on Spotify. I just want to listen to albums and that’s it.
The radio function is nice in theory, but it tries too hard to guess what I want to listen to to the point where it felt like any radio I played ended up being variations of the same thing. It is just not a good way to discover new music in my experience.
These days I have cancelled my subscription in favour of actual radio. Fip.fr is brilliant.
I would really appreciate a configurable Radio playlist. Just a slider from “very similar” to “here be dragons” would do.
Actually, I noticed exactly what you’re describing too. There are like 3-4 clusters of artists that Spotify thinks I love, and that’s it. Unless I’m actively searching for something else.
This was old Slacker Radio. You could create a station with any number of artists and then tweak it to discover new artists or just listen to ones you know.
YouTube Music has this feature currently.
It’s alright, but I’ve left YT Music because of all the bullcrap algorithmic stuff they’re doing too.
Yeah, when I tried YT music a couple of times (unpaid) I actually did discover some new stuff, partly perhaps because they have no idea what I usually listen to. Then again I have come to dislike Google enough that I’m not going to pay for their services no matter how good some of them might be. Once YouTube stops working with adblock I’m out of there too.
Eh, kind of. It’s not nearly as customizable as Slacker was. With Slacker I could say I want mostly artists I have selected, but play some new artists, and play the deep cuts instead of the popular songs. You could ban artists from a station or add ones you liked to build it out. And, I think this is most important, all your likes/dislikes/whatever only applied to the current station. I’m tired of YouTube Music playing death metal when I play Blind Guardian radio just because I also listen to death metal.
It kind of lives on in Liveone, who bought Slacker, but their whole app is a mess and they have a very limited library compared to the other streaming services.
I agree and it’s getting to the point where it’s almost unusable for me too.
Every “Spotify” playlist which is what they shove down your throat in every search consists of the same few dozen songs that it thinks I want to listen to. Well if I wanted to listen to the same EDM playlist I’ve already created for myself, I would Spotify. I have to search for specific albums to get any value from the service these days, but that’s difficult when it doesn’t really introduce me to any new music.
This is why I switch to Tidal + Plex. It allows you to just maintain a library and listen to albums while keeping the algorithm recommendations out of the way.
Good to know, thanks! I tried it out back when it was known as Wimp, but jumped off the wagon during all the controversies. I’d really rather not use anything owned by Jack Dorsey, but I might be a bit too principled for my own good haha
I know what you mean with the radio function I would also love if it would give me something similar to the song i was listening to not the stuff I usually listen to
clicking “go to song radio” does that… ?
I see the plus, but where is the minus button you mentioned?
If you press the 3 dots in top right you’ll get a bunch more buttons including the " - hide this song" one.
Sorry it was a bad screenshot I changed it to a better one
For context the old one was that one
Ouu, fairphone earbuds? Slayy
Im guessing the button changes to a minus when clicked.
The button likes the song when clicked, it just fills in. You have to go to the menu to get to the minus button
oh that’s just silly
If you press the check again it pulls up the playlist menu so you can add the king to playlists. Which, I actually appreciate.
My app only has the plus currently. I think it’s a dumb change. The type of change you make because you need to change something. Nobody that is competent enough to use a smart phone app would see any benefit from it being changed to a plus and as others have pointed out… it’s a music app, plus and minus are usually associated with volume.
That kinda looks like volume control lmao.
Heart or even thumb icons for likes and dislikes are acceptable. This looks stupid like if it belongs to c/assholedesign
I was thinging adding and removing from playlist or something. The old icons are so much more clear, why would you change that 🤦♀️
I don’t use spotify, and I thought those are volume buttons, and did not understand where are the like and dislike buttons until I read the post. I think this is just a dumb design choice.
I didn’t know Spotify changed this. I opened up the app, and sure enough it popped up with “the heart is now a plus.”
Yeah, I don’t like it. Just a random plus sign on the “now playing” screen isn’t obvious what it does. Yes, the app told me, but that only appears once.
I wonder if we can complain and get them to change it back.
I completely hate the new “+” symbol, the heart was so easy to understand
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YT Music does it best:
yea I also used yt music for over 2 years but it doesn’t work on a de-googled phone. So I switch to spotify because they doesn’t require google play services. One of the things I miss are the in the client integrated music videos on my secondary display
Have you tried MicroG?
If I install something and it just plain doesn’t work without google play services - it gets immediately uninstalled and I find an alternative.
Wouldn’t install on my grapheneos phone
Don’t use Spotify and it took me a while to even find the mentioned buttons in the screenshot. Looks like either volume controls or add/remove from playlist. Better would be thumbs up/down.
It’s pretty misleading if your not familiar with the interface, isn’t it?
The plus to me signifies that the song will be added to a playlist and personally, I’d be pretty confused if it doesn’t bring up a prompt to choose said playlist. The minus is even more confusing in that context.
It is some kind of what you said. If you press the + button again you get a menu to add the song to a playlist. Another point that I missed is that the “like” button also adds the song to your favorite list.
That’s kinda like double-mapping a button on a controller, yeah you get used to it but it just makes it more complicated IMO.
Tidal still has the heart and hides away the option to add to playlist in a hamburger menu, which adds one tap but personally, I use the heart function way more often so I don’t really mind.
What’s wrong with just a thumbs up and thumbs down?
There’s no functional difference between +/- and 👍/👎.
So what is the result of 5👍2?
That’s easy
There are definitely differences. + And - imply addition and subtraction, while 👍👎 imply pleasure and displeasure, or agreement and disagreement. The + and - in this context is quite ambiguous, because it could mean volume up/down, or adding or subtracting the song from a playlist for example. Those would be my first guesses without context I think. Color coding them would help, because it would give more weight to the action, but I think the iconography is still overly ambiguous compared to other options. Source: am professional designer.
Because negative feelings don’t belong anywhere near a social product…. Just look at what YouTube and Facebook did
Don’t use Spotify much and I never would have guessed those were like and dislike.
They aren’t. The plus adds the song to a playlist, by default the liked songs-list (a second tap on the plus lets you change which list it goes to). The minus is a “don’t recommend this”-button.
Press it once to add to Liked. Press it again to add to another playlist. Not great, not terrible.
I just read through all the top-level replies to this post, and you’re the only one that actually understands this change. They didn’t just change the icon, they added new functionality.
Your description isn’t quite complete, though. Pressing it once adds to the playlist you most recently added to. Basically, it remembers which playlist you last added a song to, so if you’re listening to a radio station that matches one of your playlists vibes, it makes it really easy to add the songs as they play.
This new functionality perfectly matches my “flow” of music collection, since I add to separate playlists instead of to Liked. This feature changes nothing if you only ever add to Liked.
So basically, everyone in this post is complaining about a feature Spotify added that genuinely enhances my experience and is only a minor visual change for everyone else.
I see the plus in a circle symbol. What are you adding the track to? Some sort of list?
I don’t see a minus in that screenshot.
The plus is adding to liked songs playlist
