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Spotify remembers its widget exists, tests new version in latest beta
Now that iOS has widgets I guess Spotify cares about them again
Spotify sometimes seems to forget that its Android app actually has a widget to control music playback. A couple years back, the company even took it away for a little while, and its design is pretty dated. But now that Apple has invented widgets, they're becoming a hot commodity again, and Spotify is testing a new version of its widget in the app's latest beta update.
Spotify is forcing some paying users to test a confusing new desktop UI
Understandably, they're not happy about it
It's not uncommon for apps and services to try out experimental features with a small batch of users who have knowingly signed up to an alpha or beta test program. However, things get annoying when users are included in an experimental update that they never signed up for and can't opt out of. This is precisely what's happening to some Spotify users who are being made to bear a new Desktop UI that - in polite words - is pretty bad.
I am certainly not the first to say it, but I do not like the bottom navigation bar thing. Perhaps because I have been trained to like the slide-out navigation in my years of using Android. Who knows. Regardless, it is a trend and we are seeing more apps toying with the idea. A few months ago, the Spotify beta app introduced this change. You had five tabs with which to navigate and that was that.
I don't like this recent trend of using bottom navigation bars. Not because it is reminiscent of iOS apps, but because I have gotten so used to sliding a navigation drawer from the side that reaching the bottom of my phone's screen is just not engrained in my muscle memory. Also, the way it's implemented often uses screen estate that can be better utilized to display more data than to provide switches to other tabs that I may not need or use all the time. But that's just my opinion.
Spotify subscribers are in for a treat today as the company's awaited video and podcast service has gone live in the Android app. Spotify Now, the company's start screen "hub" sort of thing, now features video content in addition to the mood stations and other stuff it's had since it launched last year. Spotify's beta app has had video and podcast content for quite a while now through a long-standing A/B test (over six months), but today marks the wide rollout of the feature to non-beta users. Last September, the other major Spotify Now feature, Running, left beta as well.
Joining an ever-growing group of popular apps with beta communities, Spotify has introduced one of their own. The most popular on-demand streaming music service will undoubtedly draw a lot of interest from its users, though, so it is not wide open like many beta programs are. To join, you must first send in an "application" and wait for approval.