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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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
I don’t use Spotify anymore, because paying means less quality for me. But at first I thought this was a joke, because I couldn’t find the dislike (not that it ever did sth in Spotify)
Can you point out the minus for grandpa here who can’t see for shit apparently?
-
- feels like the clearer icons if I just go on your text description. More of this, less of that. Heart always to me felt too much, like do I really love this song? So I only hearted very few songs, and only blocked even fewer, because that’s also very harsh feeling. So I prefer this, if the UI is good? But I can’t really tell from the image
There is none, I don’t think the screenshots are of the new design OP talks about. I also checked in my app, and I have either a +/- (well I have a + in a circle that adds songs to playlists) nor a 👍 or 👎 or anything.
I think that’s in fact supposed to be the joke, anyways. That Spotify does not have a like/dislike button.
The minus only shows up for recommendations/auto-generated things, to allow for signals that this is not the stuff you want to listen to.
It wouldn’t make sense to have it in for example your liked songs, as those are curated by yourself, instead of being curated algorithmically.
The " - hide this song" button is hidden with all the other options like add to queue, view album/artist, etc. For me it’s the 3 dots in the top right
-
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
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
deleted by creator
My experience has been that the “-” was exactly the same as a skip. Spotify still plays those songs and even if I’ve gone to the artist or group and selected “don’t play this artist” they’ll still come up. So this redesign seems more honest, in that you don’t like the song but they’ll still play it.
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.
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
Turn off autoplay similar content in settings.
Just toggled that setting and it didn’t seem to change anything
For me it let me get past the 80 song limit in lists, guess it’s pretty limited in what that does. Sorry
Eh, not your fault, just Spotify not being able to figure out how to make a customizable product.
I still have issues with it even though autoplay is disasbled. It does not want to shuffle my songs, just add others to shuffle in. I prefer the seperate shuffle and enhance buttons.
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 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
I switched to TIDAL. Same price, and they pay the artists better per stream.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into Tidal.
Do you hate grammar and spelling? Reading your text hurts.
Heart*
Liking*
Disliking*
My*and use punctuation. It’s like you’ve made a conscious effort to make it really bad.
Sorry I’m not a English is not my native language. I changed it up so it isn’t that bad
You started a sentence with a lower case ‘and’. It’s like you’ve made a conscious effort to be a dick.
I prefer it this way. I like the function of the double tap open up a prompt to choose a playlist, feels more convenient. As for the heart vs plus button, i like the symbology of the plus button more, but that’s personal preference.
A flaw that I heard many times in this teard is that it looks like a volume button
I can see that. Not something that crossed my mind first time I saw it, but makes senses
Good thing I don’t use Spotify.
Get your downvotes ready.
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.
