Spotify’s User Interface: A Contextual Analysis
The following content was produced as a final project for a college course on reviewing the arts.
Spotify’s mobile app is an integral part of my life, and has been since not long after my very first iPhone (a 4S) arrived at my door in 2013. I was just a sophomore in high school and had been a fan of the desktop streaming application since roughly 2011. It was among the first of many fancy Apple Store apps I was eager to download on my new phone, and upon reflection, was among the best of them. Excluding social media, Spotify may very well be the only app I still have on my current iPhone from that era. Its incredible, constantly evolving user-interface (UI) is one of the ways Spotify has kept me listening for nearly six years, and I’m about to tell you how.
What’s UI got to do with it?
Short answer: More than you’d think.
Users, more often than not, appreciate consistency in a brand’s UI. This appreciation for consistency usually disregards quality and keeps users coming back to what feels familiar to them. Such a phenomenon is common across most creative mediums in which we participate; it’s arguably why Disney keeps producing remakes and Marvel movies. Having said this, Spotify’s UI has been fairly dependable since its desktop release in 2008. Its users, including me, know what to expect when we open the app. Luckily for Spotify, which is the Apple Store’s most popular music streaming app, we’re usually expecting a good thing.
So, Spotify has looked the same for the last decade?
Short answer: Absolutely not!
Since Spotify’s conception, we’ve endured several redesigns of the app’s UI alongside switches in digital design trends. When the app was originally released, it was at least an eight-out-of-ten on the scale of skeuomorphic tendencies, and as such, would have been effectively hideous to modern eyes. Nowadays, the app is more reflective of our collective current obsession with minimalist design choices.
Alright, the UI is “consistent”. What makes it good?
I stated earlier that Spotify’s UI has been a constantly evolving project, as most mobile applications are and ought to be. Evolution is always a good thing, but it does not always imply stark improvement. I would go so far as to say that Spotify has failed its users on more than one occasion in terms of usability and overall experience. Even its information architecture is deeply flawed, as one would find it literally impossible to locate a singular song on an artist’s page without first knowing which album the song was on. However, despite major inconveniences such as this, the app is still visually breathtaking and is, most of the time, very usable.
Define “usable”.
Most users are only on Spotify for a few reasons. They want to listen to, discover and save music and see what their friends are also listening to. As such, the app’s overall usability is dependent upon the ease with which the user can accomplish these goals. An app’s popularity often correlates with its usability, especially in the context of those meant for consumption of text, music or video content.
Is Spotify more usable than other music streaming apps?
There are a plethora of heuristic usability analyses available for Spotify’s top competitors, Pandora and Apple Music. But we’re not here to talk about usability, really. While usability is a major contributor to decent UI, it’s almost impossible to rank the three apps in that context. Each is incredibly flawed, and maintains a loyal audience regardless.
So, what’s the point?
Spotify. Is. Gorgeous.
Really? That’s it?
Short answer: Yes.
One of these apps is not like the others. It is dark, sleek and enticing to users, and could even be described as somewhat artistic in nature when compared to its competitors. Spotify has somehow figured out a way to incorporate an element of artistry to its UI that is unparalleled by other applications. There are a few others, like Tidal and iHeartRadio, which have come close to Spotify in the context of pure visual beauty, but these applications are largely inaccessible to users for reasons outside of their UI. Spotify manages accessibility, beauty and usability all at once, and none of these factors really seem to impede upon one another, which, in some ways is itself beautiful.
You’ve said all this to tell me that Spotify is nice to look at?
Short answer: Yes! And what about it?
Disregarding jest and my very obvious crush on the the app’s overall design composition, visual harmony is a priority for a vast majority of users. In fact, users are more than likely to be forgiving of a product’s usability flaws if the product itself is more aesthetically pleasing than unusable. Users are usually opposed to products that sacrifice usability for beauty, however — for example, a misplacement of text so as cut off characters at the top or bottom, which often renders said text unreadable, is a technique that is commonly disliked by users outside of the arts world. Spotify has sacrificed almost nothing, except for perhaps a decent information architect, to maintain an application that is both equally beautiful and functional.
You really use Spotify because you think it’s pretty, and that’s all?
Short answer: No.
I keep using Spotify because of its developers dedication and success in creating a competitive, balanced music streaming product in a world where millions of developers are trying and failing at it. Spotify’s familiar, constantly-evolving UI is reflective of these efforts, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed listening to music alongside the product’s development for the last several years. In a multitude of ways, I, too have evolved, and I feel like Spotify has come of age with me. It’s my gorgeous best friend with a perfect taste in music, and I couldn’t possibly be any happier for it.
Works Cited
- “Spotify Music.” App Store, Apple, 14 July 2011.
- “Spotify UX Analysis and Redesign.” Renee Lin, Medium, 19 March 2017.
- “The Aesthetic-Usability Effect.” Kate Moran, Nielson Norman Group, 29 January 2017.
