Spotify updated its web music player today, and users who have seen the changes are repulsed.
Oh, cool, they've upgraded Spotify Web Player and made it worse in every single way! Awesome! ??
— Alex Mullane (@Mullane45) March 7, 2017
The update drastically changes the layout of the web player, artist pages, and the search functions. It appears that the player no longer runs on Adobe Flash, which is a plus for anti-Adobe music lovers.
If the reactions of some users are anything to go by, however, the new update brings with it some major issues.
geez, spotify… now i need more clicks to save an album, can't sort by recently added, search results harder to sort through… ya effed it
— Mike Barber (@mbarber86) March 7, 2017
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There are numerous reports of crashes, pages which won’t load, and functions breaking down. When I went onto my (heretofore rarely used) account, I got a bar across the top of the first playlist I selected, which said “Oops, something went wrong while loading the playlist.”
This happened for every single playlist I loaded.
Also, whenever I started playing a song, I couldn’t search for another piece of music while the song was playing. If I tried, the search would only appear if I refreshed, which stopped the song already playing. So, no creating a seamless metal playlist for me!
Finally, other users report that Spotify is now able to sneak ads past their adblockers. I couldn’t personally confirm this, but other members of the TNW staff did. Those same users reported that the Radio feature wasn’t working for them.
@SpotifyCares I can no longer add songs to other peoples playlists that I previously had access to?! After updated webplayer. ??! Help
— Ice #10 / #28 (@icelaine) March 7, 2017
Besides the bugs, some users find the web player is more inconvenient. Artist pages no longer have lists of songs, but rather album covers and singers. It takes more clicks to be able to save albums and songs, and some users report being unable to add songs to other people’s playlists.
Spotify Support, meanwhile, are in full “damage control” mode. Several of the tweets sent out by the “SpotifyCares” account have been to reassure customers they are taking all feedback into consideration.
@_OO7_Eli Hey there! We appreciate your feedback. We're still testing and improving the new web player, so we'll pass this onto the team /NG
— SpotifyCares (@SpotifyCares) March 7, 2017
Reddit has come up with a fix, though only for Chrome users willing to download an extension. Other users can just send their feedback to Spotify and hope for the best. The team appears to be fixing the bugs on the fly.
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