There is, apparently, one way to bring about the world that ought to be: indiscriminate hating. That’s the lesson I’m taking from this week’s news that streaming platform Spotify will remove its God-awful disco ball logo and bring back the smooth, normal, non-eyeball-assaulting Spotify logo we’ve all been cool with since 2015. The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad logo was rolled out last week to celebrate the company’s 20th anniversary and was supposedly meant to resemble a disco ball. What it actually resembled was the weird, dull effect apps get while they’re updating, which is exactly what I thought was happening when the logo forcibly appeared on my Spotify app without my consent.
The logo is completely inconsistent with the rest of the app’s design and 3-D in a creepy way that, to the untrained eye, might suggest AI-generation—something I’d be marginally more forgiving of if the app weren’t already trying to sic a playlist made by a robot called “My Life as a Movie,” promising (threatening) to “make me a playlist for when I’ve got main character syndrome” by combing through my listening data with its spindly robot fingers. Boo! Tomato! The graphic designer who claimed responsibility for the disco ball logo said on May 16 that he was canned by the company over the uproar the design caused, which I might feel worse about if he didn’t keep bragging on the app about using Figma.
Luckily, while Spotify still won’t pay artists enough, kick Joe Rogan off the platform, pledge to stop running ICE ads, or prevent its founder from investing in military drone strike companies, it will, at least, change its logo back. “Alright, we know glitter is not for everyone. Our temp glow up ends soon. Your regularly scheduled Spotify icon returns next week,” some poor Gen-Z intern wrote on X yesterday in response to the backlash. Stop being cutesy on X, Spotify. Fix what you’ve done.
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