Spotify on Windows Phone 8.1 has become practically unusable

Question

Hey Folks, I've had this problem for a long time (many many months) and have been too lazy to post assuming that this is a issue affecting loads of others and that it would just get sorted but I've come to the point where I really need to find out what is happening. I absolutely love Spotify and use it reuglarly on my ipad and windows phone however my love affair with Spotify on my phone ispractically over.  The app has become really unreliable and more often than not...unusable.  Often it takes forever to load and I just see the scrolling (loading) green dots for ages before I give up.  Ages being 5-10 minutes before I lose interest.  Assuming I do get in, I then go to my playlists and the whole thing happens again, more and more scrolling which sometimes results in the playlists being revealed or again i just simply give up. If I do get to a playlist, I will select it....cue more scrolling whilst it tries to load the track lists which invariably never happens.  Art work, none existent and if I do manage to play one track, the rest of the tracks on the album fail to get listed.  If I even dare to go back to look at the playlists again, the whole thing starts over.  It can literally take me twenty minutes to get round to playing one track! You'd think that this might be the sort of behaviour you'd get in a area of bad signal but this happens when i'm at home using my 50mb wifi and despite being connected to my wifi, which is reliable on all my other systems, I often get the message saying that Spotify is offline or can't connect to the network. I assume that this isn't a problem with my phone and is affecting others out there but it's become intolerable and since i pay my monthly premium Spotify subscription I expect a product that works.  I understand that things get glitchy but this has been happening for the best part of the year and I really should now cancel my payments.  If the problem gets fixed then I'd gladly sign up again and pay the fee but at the mo I'm not sure what I'm paying for. I never have this problem with the app on my ipad so clearly this is a windows phone problem.  I have tried deleting the app and resintalling but nothing seems to work. Could you guys advise anything else I can try or at least let me know that you're aware of the problem and are trying to fix it and let us know when an update will be sent out. I know this didn't happen when I first used Spotify over a year or two ago. Thanks :-)

Answer 1

Hi, So glad it's not just me that is having this issue. The app is virtually unusable at the moment. The thought of having to uninstall and then spend hours, maybe days, re-syncing is not something I'll consider. Just sent the following e-mail - I'll let you know their response. If they offer me 2 months free, I'll ask them to take the offer and place it where the sun don't shine. Premium is pointless if the app doesn't work!!!!! Hi, I hope you can help. I have been a Spotify premium customer for a fair while now, and up until recently, would have recommended you to anyone - in fact, I have done just that, many times. However, seeing as you seem unable to sort out the issues with the app on Windows phone, I feel our relationship is at breaking point, and that makes me sad. A summary of the issues I have.1) Speed - It would be quicker for me to go visit the band, ask then to set up their instruments and play a song for me than it is to start the app, and get to a playlist - even when connected to wifi. I have a commute of around 90 minutes, and about a 3rd of that is spent trying to get to a playlist and start it actually playing2) Reliability - quite frankly, this is a joke. When I eventually get to a playlist, try and open it, it crashes. Admittedly, these playlists are quite large (700+ songs) but it's now started doing it on smaller playlists (one in particular is 270 songs). Considering the amount if time it takes to get to a playlist, and the time I spend curating these playlists, the thought of having to break these down into smaller chunks is not something I am willing to consider at this point.3) Syncing - 48 attempts (yes, I'm that sad that I counted) to sync a playlist of 700 songs. Sometimes it just stops (seemingly randomly) and says 'pending'. I later found out that this is because songs on the playlist had been removed by the artist (yes, I'm looking at you Prince!!!). Once I'd fired up the desktop app, removed these from the playlist) and then re-opened the app on my phone (after it had crashed) it would start syncing again. And then stop. And then crash. Surely it could simply skip unavailable files rather than just stop. I'm really rather fed up. I love Windows Phone. It's UI is far better than anything Android or that other lot have come up with, it syncs with my other Windows devices, and the majority of the apps I use (with the exception of iPlayer) are pretty darn perfect. They work. They don't crash, nor take an age to load. So please, please, please tell me that a) you are working on a fix, and b) that you will treat us Windows Phone users as equals. Some of us are normal. You'll probably ask for these so here are my detailsPhone - Lumia 640 (was the same on my old phone - a Lumia 920)OS - Windows Phone 8.1 Update 2 (8.10.15148.160)Spotify Username - rm4rml I don't want to move to one of the rivals, as I've been a Spotify user for as long as I can remember. I love it like a child. We've been through a lot together. Some good times (Prince adding all his music) and some bad times (him taking it all off again), and the offline access is essential to my experience. Thanking you in advance.