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Comment by emoII | Hacker News Reader

The UX of Spotify have gone downhill every since they pivoted towards podcasts, and became particularily bad when they introduced the filter-system for your library and the homepage. Please, fire the product managers creating meaningless work just to keep their job. The only good addition to Spotify in the last five years is the _RE_-launch off in-app lyrics.

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When Apple Music launched and updated the UI few versions later I thought Spotify has an upper hand with its simpler UI and better discovery of music. They somehow managed to make their UI worse. Incredible how companies that become popular because of their simpler UI down the road make it complicated and worse.

I doubt this redesign is driven by product managers creating work though (not that that isn't a real phenomenon) but the more insidious effect of the attention economy. Leaving users to drive and curate their own experience doesn't match the "engagement" you can gain by endlessly shovelling an algorithmically optimised feed of content into their eyes and ears, while they endlessly scroll. And the more control you have over what content is being seen, the more effectively you can monetise it by prioritising whoever pays you the most.

yeah, the first paragraph says, "will see their home screen get a substantial makeover that founder Daniel Ek says will see the platform "come alive" with different content - from videos to audiobooks."

It's not just a product manager driving this.

Seriously, when has a PM ever unilaterally stepped up and said "we need to drive engagement"? They've been hired to drive engagement. That's their job, and they need to justify their jobs only in the sense that we all need to justify our jobs.

"Engagement" is driven for by product managers and other oxygen wasters looking to justify their jobs.

The managers are just following metrics. Existing user satisfaction is not one of them.

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