Spotify’s ugly new disco ball icon accomplished its goal

Everyone hates Spotify’s new disco ball app icon. The sentiment is nearly universal, and I can see why.

The bright green circle of Spotify’s logo is now an emerald green disco ball with a light outer ring. If you know it’s supposed to be a disco ball, this makes sense, but it also looks like a blurry version of the regular logo, as if someone made a knockoff of the Spotify app.

It’s a mess.

But so what? It worked.

Spotify had to go to work on X, replying to people’s angry tweets about how bad its logo was, letting people with their pitchforks out know it was just a temporary change.

As I said, the new icon is temporary — it’s not Spotify’s permanent new logo. It’s changed to celebrate Spotify’s 20th anniversary. Along with the temporary icon, there’s also an experience for users inside the app, similar to the popular year-end Spotify Wrapped, that shows users some of their earliest streams and most frequently listened to songs and artists of all time. (One aside: As a parent, my favorites — just like each year’s disappointing Wrapped — were all things requested ad nauseam by my kids rather than a reflection of my own tastes.)

Spotify wants you to notice the 20th-anniversary features for the same reasons it’s happy that Wrapped is such a hit. It fosters loyalty among users. It makes them appreciate that they have a long history there — warm, fuzzy nostalgia for their favorite older songs, while reminding them that they really shouldn’t switch to Apple Music or a competitor. Think of all the old data you’d lose!

Wrapped has also been a great advertisement for Spotify — people love posting screenshots of their Wrapped on social media, and they happily did the same for their 20th-anniversary content, showing off the earliest songs they listened to.

(Never mind that most users haven’t actually had Spotify for 20 years. Although it was founded in 2006 in Sweden, it wasn’t available in the US until 2011.)

Logos spark strong feelings

There is often a brief period of customer disgust when a company changes its logo — especially if it had been something as well known as the Spotify logo.

I’m reminded of the wailing and gnashing of teeth when the Gap changed its logo (and eventually changed it back); or the weird, loopy, slightly sexualized mark for Airbnb; or — shudder — Jaguar’s redesign of … well, everything. And of course, god help us all when Cracker Barrel attempted a rebrand.

Usually, people get over it, and eventually the old logos start to look outdated and weird. In Spotify’s case, it was just a temporary gimmick. It was effective at making you look, opening the app, and noticing the anniversary features. It got you!