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Comment by criley | Hacker News Reader

Their most recent desktop update is a total disaster, their support services are wholly incapable of responding to email in any decent fashion, they still do not provide release notes...

Seriously, go read the community forum response to their recent updates. Unmitigated disaster might be an overstatement for how poorly they're launching updates.

Spotify, you're already overextended. Your staff categorically cannot keep up with what you're asking. Your software is stretched and bugs are flooding in. Each release is introducing MORE broken features and half-baked implementations of last years catch-phrases.

Please, Spotify, stop expanding and start fixing. I've been a loyal customer for some time but I will leave and I will take my money to a company that is actually capable of releasing working desktop software on a schedule...

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Check out Rdio. It's a super simple UI, focused on the music, and more importantly IT WORKS.

The only downside is that their catalog is missing a few exclusives that Spotify was able to get.

This. Rdio is great.

+1 - I've been a subscriber for 2 years and it feels like it's becoming less and less and less about the music. I built the first iOS app with their API ( http://mixtapesapp.com ) and have been debating porting it to Rdio just so I can switch myself.

What are the problems you are having? All of the upgrades on OSX have been fine to me, no crashes at all. I also like the new version that lets you easily follow other users, thats how I've discovered a lot of good new music.

The web player (currently in beta) is much better. I don't even use the desktop version anymore. I'd guess they gave up on the desktop client to focus on the web and mobile.

I hope they start to shift focus back. I don't know why anyone would use the website when there is a desktop app available that responds to media controls on the keyboard. I started using Rdio and never use the website. Spotify's site is definitely better than the dekstop client but I don't see why anyone wants it on the web.

I didn't think anyone used those keys. My current keyboard doesn't even have them. There's no technical reason a web app couldn't support it, but I don't know how standard the scancodes are.

There's no technical reason a web app couldn't support it

There is- the media keys work no matter what application you're currently focused on. A webapp couldn't do that, unless Chrome extensions allow you to do something weird.

And a web version is far more convenient than a desktop one- you can just load it up anywhere. Spotify's desktop app has slowly got slower and more resource-hungry.

>> "And a web version is far more convenient than a desktop one- you can just load it up anywhere"

I just use the mobile app when I am away from my own computer.

I have a laptop and I use the multimedia keys.

Spotify has always responded to my media keys in a buggy fashion. Sometimes I have to press play/pause twice to get a response. Almost every time I pause with the keyboard, it resumes playing by itself about 5 minutes later--highly annoying.

I just realized my media key for "skip to next" was double registered by Spotify, so it would always skip the next song and move to the third. It took a few truncated albums to figure that out...

I agree, early versions of spotify felt like a jukebox application that happened to pull songs from the internet.

New versions feel like a half baked social network.

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