Beta Spotify App Discussion Thread

[toby10]

..........
I have a SB "Classic", an older model, looking very much like "Touch" (same design, same features except the "touch" screen)....

The Touch is the SB3 replacement, but they are completely different player architectures.

[erland]

I'm tired of registering bugs/enhancements in bugzilla and just see them being ignored, so I post them directly in this thread to start with. If you really plan to start maintaining bugzilla and want me to register them there instead, just let me know and I will do that.

I've now tried The Spotify app a bit and here are some enhancement related feedback:

Enhancement 1:
With Triode's plugin I can select an artist in my local music library, launch the context menu and select "On Spotify" to find more music about that artist on Spotify. This is great especially on the Radio and Controller where entering search stings using a knob is a bit frustrating.

Enhancement 2:
In Triode's plugin I can select "Recent Artists", this is also very useful since you often want to listen to artists you have listen to before. With this menu I can easily find the artist I listened to yesterday without having to do another search with the knob on a Radio or Controller.

Enhancement 3:
In Triode's plugin I can select "Top 100" to list the top 100 artists, albums, tracks in my region. Once again this is very useful on a Radio or Controller where searching with the know is a bit frustrating.

Enhancement 4:
I also miss the "Similar Artists", "Arist Mix" and "Similar Artist Mix" options that exists in Triode's plugin. These are very useful when you want to discover new music using Spotify.

Enhancement 5:
The "Biography" menu in Triode's plugin is interesting but it's not as important as the above mentioned enhancement

And some possible bugs (not sure if they are related to Spotify or something else):

Bug 1:
In the "Recent Searches" top level menu I got multiple entries when I did a single search. I did the search from iPeng, so I'm not completely sure if that's causing the problem. Couldn't test with Radio due to next point.

Bug 2:
In the beginning I had a "Recent Searches" menu but it disappeared after I had switched to another server and back again. I uninstalled Triode's plugin during this process also to make sure it didn't cause any conflicts, I'm not sure if that's related. When is the "Recent Searches" top level menu supposed to appear/disappear ? It's very important with Spotify since the Controller/Radio doesn't have a user friendly way to enter search strings.

Bug 3:
I have a strange behavior where some (not all) of my menus start showing swedish translations after I've started to use/listen to the Spotify app. I have SBS configured to use English. I could understand if all menus were changed to swedish but it's only some of them, it still displays "Now Playing", "My Music" and "Settings" but at the same time I also get "Mina program" (My Apps) and "Applikationsgalleri" (App Gallery) and "Favoriter" (Favorites) and "Sök" (Search). Is there some MySB setting I need to change to get english menus everywhere ?

I don't have any problem reading swedish but I hate when the interface mixes languages and since I tend to use a lot of third party plugins which aren't localized english is the only choice that works if I want a consistent interface.

Besides this the initial quick tests indicates that the Spotify app works very good, my feeling is that the search related enhancements is most important to make it useful without having to use third party iPhone/iPad/Android clients to use it. Searching works a lot better on a Touch or iPhone/iPad app where I have access to a virtual keyboard.

[erland]

I suspect this won't be possible but it would be really nice if third party plugin context menu items also were available on tracks played by Spotify app in current playlist, in similar way as they are on internet radio stations played through SBS. For example, making it possible to launch Michael's Biography/Album Review plugins also for Spotify tracks.

Even better would be if they were also available in context menus under the Spotify app main menu, but I suspect that's harder to accomplish ?

I suspect the issue here is that the context menu maybe is implemented on the mysqueezebox.com side and don't have knowledge of any third party plugins installed in SBS ?

Or is it just something in the third party plugins that needs to be change for them to appear also on Spotify tracks ?

[)p(]

With Sonos you can play different music to each client from one spotify account. Will logitech support this too in the final version?

[Adler]

I think I've done everything correct, however, I can searh and see all the albums and so on but when I want to play a song my SB Radio gives me a "cannot play file" or something like "bad file format". I'm at work now so can't remember the error message in whole. Any idea?

[finnbrodersen]

Adding Spotify to players like Boom, Transporter, Receiver, and Classic would require Squeezebox Server to perform transcoding, since there's not enough space in those players to add this feature.

We are not supporting transcoding Spotify streams on Squeezebox Server right now. But, if you want this capability added to 7.5.3 please add your vote to this thread!

Mickey

+1

Please add support for older SB hardware, SBReceiver in my case.

[Patrik]

Another vote for the official Spotify plugin for SBReceiver!

[PerLundborg]

I see no reason at all to limit the various players.

So I vote for a full player compability.

For the beta it might be an excuse, but not for the official version, it cancels the whole idea of having streaming music in any location of my choice, regardless if the stream comes from my local library of from Spotify. The same goes for syncing players while running Spotify.

I see no reason for why Spotify would limit which players should be targeted, as it is contra productive, ie with the current target I have no use of it, and they will thus not sell me a premium account...

I have long awaited a official plugin to Spotify in order to run it on my setup, but limitation of players is just ridicules, and also severely limits the use I have of it :-(

I currently have the following setup, and yes, I have three Radios, but neither of them are a prime target for Spotify usage...

server @ slimnas (ie freebsd, ie not compatible with Triode's spotify plugin)
Kid 1 (6yrs) - SB Radio
Kid 2 (9yrs) - SB Radio
Kitchen - SB Radio
Livingr - SB Classic
Bedr - SB Duet

[Tractorman]

Please add support for older SB hardware, this is useless if you don't make it work with all the boxes. Triode has made it work, why can't you?

[jakob]

Well, my comment is pretty obvious, but here is some background;

I have invested heavily in several squeezebox players (mostly, receivers, but also others) and controllers/remotes due to the fact that they until now has been 100% compatible when it comes to music and I use this for a large multiroom setup.

When I first learned that spotify would be availiable this was great news! I have not bought a spotify account for the simple reason that it does not work with my music system that is squeezebox based! I have not tried the unofficial app. learned about it today.

But when I now read a little bit more and found out that most of my rooms will be silent due to that there NOW is a hardware limitation is really bad. Not just bad for this app. but I think it's bad that Logitech chooses to different their players when I really can not see that there is no obvious reason (just transcode or do what the unoffical app does).