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Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by machomaster on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:06AM (#39259354)
One of Spotify's biggest problems is their terrible UI, lacking even the basic functionality. I don't understand how they haven't been able do the bare minimum for 15 years now.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by lawgimenez on Monday February 05, 2024 @08:11AM (#39260872)
My most hated Spotify feature is the address confirmation of all your family members (family plan). I entered our new home address and it wasn’t even there. My parents are on the other side of the world, Spotify should understand that families are not residing always in the same area.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by ctr on Monday February 05, 2024 @03:37PM (#39266811)
The plan is explicitly described as "Premium accounts for family members under one roof" on their website. https://www.spotify.com/us/family/
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by crashingintoyou on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:25AM (#39259483)
I've been hoping to Spotify to go out of business since they went and took Rogan's podcast and a few others as Spotify-exclusive. Not always a Rogan fan, but he's occasionally had some interesting guests. However the Spotify experience was so bad I abandoned podcasts that required me to use their client.

(Suppose I should think of dialing back my Spotify hate a little now that apparently in the renewal they're no longer keeping Rogan as Spotify-exclusive)

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by jpsouth on Monday February 05, 2024 @06:43AM (#39260146)
You hope they go out of business because they bought the rights to some podcasts?
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by matwood on Monday February 05, 2024 @08:04AM (#39260819)
The OP was annoyed they bought a podcast they liked and then put it behind a UI/UX which is hard to use. Presumably if Spotify went out of business Rogan would end up back on the open market. Turns out the new deal lets Rogan put shows back on YouTube so it doesn't matter.

BTW, I agree about the Spotify UI. I never liked it and was a GPM user until they destroyed it by pushing me to YTM. Now I use AM, since if I'm going to tolerate a poor UI it might as well work well with all my devices.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by jpsouth on Monday February 05, 2024 @09:04AM (#39261301)
Out of curiosity I tried to find the podcast in question on the Spotify iPhone app. Literally 3 taps and I’ve found a full list of episodes.

I’ve also tried on my Mac, slightly more presses (four, to be exact) as I had to press ‘podcasts & shows’ to refine the search slightly more.

I don’t see how that’s hard to use. Each to their own though I guess, I’ve not seen how difficult it is your side so can’t really comment.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by matwood on Monday February 05, 2024 @09:39AM (#39261667)
I don't care for the Spotify UI in general.

For podcasts, I think people who are big into podcasts are also particular about their player. I know I am. For me, there's space for a music app and a podcast app. They are both audio, but otherwise very different.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by nebula8804 on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @03:23PM (#39280023)
Heres my anecdote: the app randomly craps out when playing a podcast. Seeking randomly breaks, it is not as "fluid" as Youtube, really struggles when there is a break in data coverage which makes usage while driving a car a massive pain when you need to be focusing on the road. There are other random quibbles but this is the jist of my experience. I am so glad I can finally dump this garbage now that Rogan is coming back to youtube. I can find other sources for my music but Rogan's occasional good podcasts forced me to install this junk in the first place.

Its amazing how so many apps really struggle at the edges. For a company as big as Spotify they should do better. Its probably a side effect of their company's culture.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by machomaster on Wednesday February 07, 2024 @01:15AM (#39285132)
The biggest problem is not the difficulty of using, but the impossibility of using. The issue is not so much that features are difficult to find/access, but that the most basic of features don't exist anywhere at all.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by rightbyte on Monday February 05, 2024 @07:57AM (#39260767)
I have no clue who this Reagan guy is. But sometimes you don't want to support people.

Music is usually considered art and you are a boring downer of you complain about artists political or personal controversies. That is another thing. And the artist always have the benefit of doubt of the protagonist in the song not being the artist himself.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by hasty_pudding on Monday February 05, 2024 @08:28AM (#39261016)
Jon Reagan is one of the most famous podcasters lol
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by jpsouth on Monday February 05, 2024 @09:10AM (#39261358)
His older brother, Ron, is also pretty famous for some stuff he did a while back.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by abenga on Monday February 05, 2024 @11:54AM (#39263379)
Ron the actor?
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by hasty_pudding on Monday February 05, 2024 @09:33PM (#39270071)
Yep he was in some great flicks.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by jpsouth on Monday February 05, 2024 @09:09AM (#39261342)
He’s a podcaster, not musician. Basically a talk show I suppose?

My point was more the GP wanted to see Spotify go out of business because they bought a podcast. I just thought it was a bit of a wild statement to make.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by account42 on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @07:56AM (#39273696)
I would like any company that makes anything "exclusive" to go out of business.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by rrr_oh_man on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:09AM (#39259372)
Like what?
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by Robin_Message on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:26AM (#39259485)
My three biggest pet peeves are:

- You can't turn your queue into a playlist (and you can't see previous queue as part of the queue, only as limited history.)

- Clicking a song or album sometimes clears your queue and starts playing that instead (I know there is a logic to it, but a mistake or mis-click is easy).

- There is no shortcut to add to queue, just long press then find the menu item.

It's possible everyone else is only listening to albums or curating playlists then playing them, but I like to pick things as I go like a jukebox and it sucks at it.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by grujicd on Monday February 05, 2024 @06:06AM (#39259823)
What I'm missing is multiple "currently playing" lists, each keeping its current position as I switch to play a different one. Use case: listening to a discography of the band, and if I wish to listen few songs from some other band. I can't go back to where I was with the first band. Foobar had multiple ad-hoc lists since forever. Now I balance between Spotify and Youtube music in these cases.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by rekoil on Monday February 05, 2024 @07:50AM (#39260702)
Yeah I really wish there was a global history of my plays that I could look at.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by valtis on Monday February 05, 2024 @01:53PM (#39265269)
You could link Spotify to last.fm, it saves all your plays.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by r2_pilot on Monday February 05, 2024 @02:20PM (#39265696)
I request my Spotify data (via their gdpr site) annually and put it in a sql database so I can do my own analysis.
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by mandarax8 on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:31AM (#39259536)
> - There is no shortcut to add to queue,

There is, just swipe the song to the right.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by JoBrad on Monday February 05, 2024 @06:55AM (#39260259)
You can also tap the kebab menu and select “Add to Queue”
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by fragmede on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:36AM (#39259574)
that's neat! totally not discoverable though
Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by 130e13a on Monday February 05, 2024 @05:40AM (#39259610)
most of the views (in the iOS app at least, idk about android) are asynchronous, in that they will always prefer to load data from their servers over using locally cached stuff.

meaning that, if you have a bad internet connection and tap on eg an album, it'll open the view for that album and you just have to look at the progress indicator for in some cases up to 20+ seconds, even if you have downloaded that album and all the info is there in the local cache.

this happens annoyingly often, e.g. when leaving an area where you're connected to wifi and your phone hasn't yet switched over to celluar data.

Re:Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growi... by machomaster on Wednesday February 07, 2024 @06:07AM (#39287083)
I tried Spotify shortly after it was released. It was in a bad shape and missed essentials (e.g. basic filtering by name or in lists) to the point of being unusable. I usually am an avid writer of feedback, but here it was clear to me (sic!) that devs simply lacked resources to implement all the essentials and they were coming in short time.

But imagine my surprise when I checked Spotify a couple of years later and the situation was still the same. Ok, I thought, they must have had different internal priorities, but once they get those, they will make UI at least semi-usable.

A few years passed, but the answer was still no. Once again I didn't write because clearly they must have had thousands of actual users writing and demanding the essentials and those things MUST be on their way, no way they weren't!

Several years later and the situation was still the same... This is when I stopped making excuses for the developers. They must be technically incompetent, be dim product-management wise (not understanding features, people, customers, lacking a vision, not to know how to collect, analyze and work on feedback) or stupid/unmotivated. But probably everything of the above.

I only criticize the technical aspects, not the business side. And I don't even criticize a much more challenging podcast/video side of things. I am merely talking about the lack of essentials in the basic music player. They couldn't even do that! I can bet money that the podcast implementation is on no better level. Other people's comments support that assumption. I am not surprised in the least.