Opinion: Spotify’s Disco Ball Logo Was Good And Everyone Who Complained Should Have Their Wrapped Read Aloud In Court
For one beautiful week, a music app finally admitted it was a glowing little shame orb that knew every bad decision you made after 11:30 p.m.
I have been watching the public meltdown over Spotify’s temporary disco ball app icon, and I regret to inform everyone that the mob has chosen the wrong villain.
Spotify briefly replaced its familiar flat green app icon with a sparkly green disco ball as part of its 20th-anniversary campaign. Users immediately called it ugly, pixelated, confusing, distracting, and every other word a person uses when an app icon changes before coffee. Spotify has since clarified that the normal logo will return soon, because apparently the company lacks the spine to keep one small party sphere on a phone screen while adults scream.
Cowards.
The disco ball icon was the first honest thing Spotify has done in years. The old logo said, “Here is a music app.” The disco ball said, “Here is the place where you will listen to Charli XCX at the grocery store, cry to a 2014 Lorde song in traffic, and let an algorithm decide you are now a man who needs yacht rock at 8:17 a.m.”
That is public-service design.
People complained that the icon looked out of place on their home screens. Good. Spotify should look out of place. Spotify contains your gym playlist, your sleep sounds, your ex’s favorite album, eight podcasts you started out of guilt, and one song you played 143 times during a period your friends privately called “not great.” A tasteful flat circle cannot carry that history. A glittering green disco ball can at least warn the neighbors.
“The backlash shows how attached users are to visual consistency,” said Devon Markey, an app-branding consultant. “But consistency is also how people end up with 19 beige productivity apps, no joy, and a home screen that looks like a dental receptionist’s mood board.”
Thank you, Devon. Finally someone with courage.
Critics said the temporary icon made Spotify harder to find on their phones. Wonderful. Losing Spotify for four seconds may be the last remaining privacy feature in modern streaming. During that brief search, a user might notice a book, a plant, a spouse, a bill, a window, the feeling of air entering the body, or the terrifying possibility of sitting quietly without queueing a podcast called Optimal Dad Protocol.
Spotify should have gone further. Replace the icon with a rotating object every week. A tiny unpaid artist holding a thimble. A podcast microphone wearing a crown. A 2009 Facebook photo of the user with side bangs. A black square labeled only by the sound of their most-played sad song. If people want an app to study their entire nervous system and sell them a seasonal personality report, they can survive a disco ball with contrast issues.
The funniest complaint was that the icon looked dated, as if Spotify is a tasteful Scandinavian bench company rather than the service that keeps telling you to try audiobooks after you press play on “Toxic” for the 900th time. Dated is fine. Dated has texture. Dated reminds us that music apps used to be websites, ringtones, mall kiosks, burned CDs, lime-green iPod Nanos, and one family computer where someone absolutely downloaded a mislabeled Linkin Park file from a man named DJ_CrimeHorse.
Now Spotify says the classic logo will return, and the people who demanded normalcy can enjoy staring at the same green circle while the app suggests an “after work unwind” mix that includes Nine Inch Nails, Norah Jones, and a podcast episode about passive income. Peace has been restored. The lock screen can heal. The beige people have won another terrible victory.
I hope Spotify changes it back for one more day, just to flush out the remaining app-icon constitutional scholars. Put the disco ball on every device. Make it brighter. Add a tiny reflection of the user looking disappointed. Let the homescreen become what it already is: a little cabinet of private humiliations with push notifications.
At press time, millions of users were reportedly relieved to hear the old logo was coming back, then immediately opened Spotify and allowed a robot to choose 90 minutes of songs for folding laundry with unresolved tax anxiety, which somehow troubled them less.
