For an app that only has ONE real job
For an app that only has ONE real job, playing music, Spotify does an incredible job of making the experience absolutely horrible. My account currently looks like it's been shadowbanned or something, and as always, it happened completely out of nowhere for no apparent reason. The app demands an absurd amount of GPU/System attention/resources for something that should just play audio, constantly introduces unnecessary features that arrive broken, adds dominant functionality that interferes with other applications (such as screen recordings, Spotify just ends them), and somehow can't even play music if my headset is configured with a higher-quality audio format than whatever Spotify happens to support. That alone should be a major red flag. In this case, it simply refuses to play anything at all. Whatever problem you're having, the troubleshooting journey always seems to start the same: • Reinstall through the Microsoft Store? Still broken. • Reinstall using the standalone installer? Still broken. • Clear the cache? Still broken. And the list of troubleshooting steps you're expected to go through just to fix an application whose primary purpose is clicking "Play" on a song is honestly hilarious. I do absolutely nothing with Spotify except listen to music. I don't use videos, social features, recommendations, AI features, or any of the other extras they keep adding. I just want to play music. Yet somehow the application continues to break in the most random and frustrating ways imaginable. The most frustrating part is that this isn't even a new problem. I was dealing with this kind of nonsense years ago, and now, years later, it feels like absolutely nothing has changed. Different, but also similar bugs, same bad experience. At this point, I'm simply done with the platform.