Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

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I canceled my Spotify subscription because it was so dang buggy. Getting it to play music for longer than an hour was simply impossible for a myriad of reasons.

I switched to Amazon Music and at the time the webapp looked pretty much just like mainstream Amazon: drab, white/orange/blue, simple. But dang, it was rock solid. I couldn't get it to error if I wanted to. I could leave the tab open for weeks and it'd play music on command without missing a beat. They have since redone the site to make it look more trendy and more Spotify-ish. This new skin brought bugs with it and it's not the reliable workhorse it used to be. It's still way better than Spotify though.

I am very sensitive to buggy software. And in my opinion, most software available today is just riddled with bugs. I completely switched away from Apple because of this for example. To me, this is the real tragedy of modern software. The bad UX, the dark patterns, the slowness, etc... None of this stuff bothers me all that much when it comes down to it. But bugs, bugs get me every time.

There's a good unofficial Rust library for Spotify called librespot that powers some great terminal clients. I use ncspot and it's pretty good once you learn the weird quirks (e.g. song radio is buried deep in a context menu).

Subplot: I doubt they care. Since spotify is designed to lose money it has little reason to care if customers cancel, it's only going to be concerned if investors lose interest.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I think bugginess just doesn't affect bottom lines of most companies these days, hence the state we're in. Also, anecdotally, I find people are very tolerant of bugs and just suffer in silence a lot of the time.

" I find people are very tolerant of bugs and just suffer in silence a lot of the time."

Most people probably blame themself of not getting it.

Or throw hands in the air of what to do about it.

And most don't know that you can make software that fits to the user needs and not the other way around.

OpenSource could have potential here, but most free software developers are not really into UX design either and seem to expect the same tech level of their audience as they have.

If your users don't have another option, or your product has serious network effects, users will keep coming back. From Fast Company 2016:

"To test its users’ loyalty, Facebook sometimes made its Android app crash for several hours over the course of several years. ... Users were so hooked that they “never stopped coming back,” despite the errors."

https://fastcompany.com/3055089 (2016)

It is always fascinating how little respect FB has for its users, yet they stay.

Why did you write "yeah" and then contradict everything parent said about revenue impact?

Are you equating "bottom line" with revenue? Is that why you feel this is a contradiction? Bottom line also has a more general definition of "the company's end goal". If the bugs don't impact Spotify's goals, then they are not motivated to fix them.

what else can the users do?

How do you even run a company like that? Sounds soulless af.

I mean, sure make money for your investors, but shouldn't you also try to fulfill your mission statement? Or is the mission statement only to make the share price go up?

So you just make it look good on financials?

What do you mean by « Spotify is designed to lose money »? Also, a decrease in number of users will definitely worry Spotify and draw negative investors’ attention.

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