In the summer of 2016 we decided to improve the web player. With the rise of smartphones, we learned how to strive for removing clutter, properly A/B test features and understand better what was really needed to deliver a good user experience.

Over the years, we got better at prioritizing a core set of features. The web player, on the other hand, had to download many resources every time the user navigated between views, which resulted in long load times, which impacted user experience. Having iframes for every feature and having that feature load their own JS and CSS might have worked well for the desktop application, which the user downloads bundled with all the resources that it needs. The architecture of the web player was ideal for consistency between platforms, and fit how the company was organized in feature teams.

Thus, the team working on the Playlist view would implement a new feature, and make it available on the desktop application and the web player, without having to care about the underlying infrastructure. In addition, the code for the views was identical on both desktop and web player. The views were isolated from each other using iframes, and this allowed the teams to iterate on and release them without interfering with the rest of the application. The architecture of the web player followed the same approach as the desktop application. It made it possible for users to play music from Spotify as quickly as possible, without needing to download and install any application. Spotify’s web player was released in 2012 and complemented the experience on desktop devices.

A web app within the desktop application showing a third party integration – from Felipe Ribeiro’s talk about Javascript Spotify at JSConf Iceland 2016

Web spotify player