My Dirty UX case with Spotify’s Discover Weekly.
By: Omri Hillel
Tags: UX Design, Spotify, Case Study, Discover, User Experience

I think Spotify is great. I used to spend a significant time searching for new music as a kid and teenager. I have my special taste and I rarely listen to the popular mainstream. I used many other platforms before such as pandora and last.fm to find new stuff but I didn’t feel like they really knew me and it made the process frustrating. So as you can guess when I found out about Spotify I was thrilled to check it out. It took some time before Spotify was released in Israel and I'm an active user since.

I told you I’m active

When I say “active user”, I am referring to the relationship I have with Spotify's platform. It means I heart the songs I like, follow artists, and I am highly engaged with my release radar and discover weekly playlists in an attempt to help Spotify's algorithm suggest the most relevant music for me.

They’re doing their job so well, that most of my library is filled with songs and artists I never knew before.

And let me tell you, they’re doing their job so well, that most of my library is filled with songs and artists I never knew before. Spotify introduced me to some of my favorite artists and songs. But unfortunately, sometimes they are doing their job too well.

Missing a song

I started the last week of November 2020 as usual, with my new discover weekly playlist. I came up with a small set of rules for that process. Most of the time I just leave it playing on repeat and once in a while I hit like or hide. I try to rate the whole playlist before the next week so the algorithm will have better results the next time. What happens with songs I’m not so sure about? I leave it there without any action.

For this specific week, I had more songs I wasn't sure about than usual. I had one song stuck in my head and I wasn't sure if it came from the discover weekly or from anywhere else. Eventually, on Sunday night, I played the whole playlist again to check if it’s there, but it was quick browsing and I probably missed it.

The problem was that I didn’t know the name of the song or the artist, and all I remembered was a few notes of the melody (I tried to Shazam it, you should have been there)

Monday came and my discover weekly playlist updated, but this song kept playing in my head. The problem was that I didn’t know the name of the song or the artist, and all I remembered was a few notes of the melody (I tried to Shazam it, you should have been there). When Thursday came and the song still jumped to my head once in a while, I decided it’s time for action.

I started searching through the mobile app to check my playing history, it’s not easy to get there. You can find some in your recently played section, and if you add songs to a playlist you can find some other songs history. But too much time had passed and the history didn’t have what I was searching for.

You can find some in your recently played section, and if you add songs to a playlist you can find some other songs history.

I tried another option which was to check the history from each device I have connected to Spotify, it actually showed different songs on each one but still, too much time had passed.

Let’s ask for help

My next step was to contact the support team and ask for help. Here’s the transcript of the chat I had.

Well, I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy, there’s a reason Spotify refreshes this playlist every week - it keeps the users engaged and the limited lifetime keeps you alerted for songs you like and you want to save, as I do regularly. But I know a bit about the technical stuff behind the scenes and I knew they surely keep some kind of data about the previous playlists because they need to generate a new one based on my choices and streaming history, don’t they?

I guess it’s more complicated than I thought. I was sure the whole point of Spotify is to help me get familiar with new music so what’s going on? as you probably guessed, it didn't stop here. I knew there must be another answer.

I tried to talk with another support advisor and got the same answers (which made me ask the “are you a bot” question).

I was so frustrated! it’s been almost a whole week since, and I was stressed that if I won’t find a solution soon, the data will really get lost not to mention I’ll forget the song. Fortunately, I had another idea. I contacted the support team again, asking for my latest streaming history, this data should be available as part of the GDPR rules.

Finally! an efficient answer! I asked for my data right away and waited a few very nerve-racking days until I got the long-awaited email that says my data is ready.

I had to wait a few days to get the data ready for download

A little piece of hell

I was so excited to see what I'm gonna find there and the moment I extracted the zip file I found this

And now what?

Let’s say I’m a normal person (let's say). What the hell does a normal person do with JSON files? Who knows how to even open these? For the common user, it can be very scary.

Data from hell

I opened the JSON files through notepad++ and guess what, it’s gonna be a long long time ‘till I’ll find this song because everything here is in chaos. There was only text, with a lot of distractions and not a lot of useful info. Some details like an album cover or play count could help me organize all of this data. Unfortunately, I had to find the relevant date period, sort and delete all of the songs I knew already and their multiple appearances, and then pick each song, search for it in Spotify, and play it. it took me two hours to find it (later on ;) )

The whole time everything I thought about was “Why the hell do users have to go through this process if the data is right there???”

I have to fix this

I am a product designer. And this whole process was so frustrating I had to take a moment and check whether it’s possible to integrate this feature into the app interface easily, or there is a real struggle that explains why they don’t do it themselves.

another section under the current discover weekly playlist with last week’s playlist.

I went in two directions which I think should be considered. The first one is very simple and adds another section under the current discover weekly playlist with last week’s playlist.

The other option was the more complex but informative one. I thought that if Spotify will make the history of the discover weekly so reachable, this feature won’t get the special place it has now for the user. where it’s a new playlist just for you which you need to consider rating. My take was to add another flow through the menu screen. this new space will have up to two weeks back from your discover weekly playlists. Can we all agree that if you have an earworm you heard two weeks ago and you can't get it out you might have a different problem?

Can we all agree that if you have an earworm you heard two weeks ago and you can’t get it out you might have a different problem?

Final Thoughts

My concept of Spotify is almost identical to Spotify's company info page:

“Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity - by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.”

I think with this situation we have a real study case for this statement. When I can’t easily check my streaming history - especially the discover weekly, many parts of the system lose. Consider I couldn’t remember the name of the artist, the song, or the lyrics.

So one can miss a great song, which might belong to a great artist, and they can’t share it with others, so big loss on play count. The user feels no one takes care of him and we all know everything here eventually translates to profit. This feature has to be accessible without all the struggle described here.

With that said - I think this feature is not urgent for the release radar playlist. The reason is that the songs and artists on your release radar are based on artists you already follow or might have in your library. So if a song from this list becomes an earworm, I might have a better chance of guessing who it belongs to. It rarely occurs to me that I have previously heard of the artists appearing in my discover weekly, which makes it much harder to guess.

In conclusion, I have to be clear. Spotify’s algorithm works too well. If it made me go crazy about a song I heard a few times over a week - It knew this song fits for me, and I just know I can’t be the only one who missed a good song because of an algorithm. So please, keep rocking, with history.

P.S

Yeah yeah, I know. Here’s the song.