Spotify's app is bloated. I've been premium since 2014 but I'm reaching my limit of all the garbage the app has. I wish I could deactivate all podcasts and audiobooks. I don't care about it. I don't mind AI music and ghost artists but I wish looking for some sort of music would bring up playlists from actual people instead of the bubble generated AI from Spotify. I feel instead of exploring and expanding my limits when I search for music I'm just self padding myself.
Agreed, and the Apple Music Desktop App suffers from being a legacy franken-iTunes nightmare.
After cancelling Spotify I surprisingly ended up on Tidal, and it's been amazing so far. Feels like how Spotify used to feel before they started shipping the org chart like all big companies eventually do. Plus its cheaper, offers higher quality streams, and gives bigger payouts to artists.
The app is terrible. It is so hard to do what most people want to do. There is so much content in the way. Simple things like adding music to playlists is awkward. It’s incredible that this company has the arrogance to brag about their org structure, when the output is so dysfunctional
Spotify would probably argue that Apple has control of the OS, so they can surface all of their apps, pre-install them, whereas Spotify has more pressure to leverage their existing install base by bundling everything into one.
I would bet every dollar of my net worth that they are critically wrong on this; its such a beautiful little package that some VP can sell a higher-up to explain away why something they're responsible for isn't performing as expected. I've heard dozens of people complain about how crowded the Spotify app is becoming. I don't know anyone who actively and regularly uses Spotify as a podcast platform; when Joe Rogan was exclusive to Spotify for a bit, I heard a couple people complain about that, which means they were (begrudgingly) using it; but that isn't the situation anymore.
How these complaints convert into behavior changes, subscription cancellations, etc; I don't know.
While I don't disagree about bloat: I like the podcast features, but I hate audiobooks. My wife doesn't listen to podcasts, but loves audiobooks. I understand appealing to a range of users. Some configuration options might be warranted.
What's wrong with specialist services? I love audiobooks, use audible a lot, yet that keeps trying to push it's podcasts on me. I also like podcasts but I have a different app for that, with different features and demands as required by podcasts. I don't often listen to music so have never bothered with Spotify, but music player apps are rarely good for playing audio books or podcasts so why are they all trying to combine them just because they're audio? It's like making a fridge-freezer-oven-microwave-blender device just because they're all kitchen things, so there must be synergy.
