Better explanation of how the app works (Spotify+Youtube)

[Cwpute]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Pain

Currently the app's description on Fdroid and in-app UX don't mention explicitly that the account details (playlists, reommendations…) come from Spotify's API, while the actual music data comes from Youtube.

This is not only about being tranparent, but also about the amount and quality of reported issues.
Many users come here and probably on your Discord to tell such or such song canot be played. If they were told right away that songs can only be played if they're available on Youtube as well, this would alleviate much wf your work regarding those reports.

Suggested solution

Update the app's description on Fdroid to what you have on this repository:

An open source, cross-platform Spotify client compatible across multiple platforms
utilizing Spotify's data API and YouTube (or Piped.video) as an audio source,
eliminating the need for Spotify Premium

Include a disclaimer when starting the app for the first time, explicitly telling that again

Include a blurb of text for specific in-app bugs that can be traced down to Piped or Youtube not working as intended.
For example, if the song cannot be found, tell users to check if that song exists on Youtube before reporting a problem. If Piped doesn't answer calls, tell users the problem comes from Piped, and try changing the API to Youtube…

Useful resources

The comments from various people in this closed issue #480 show how many asume the app works (exclusively with Spotify), and their realization afterwards.
Probably many other issues since then related to songs not playing, due to either Youtube, Spotify or Piped themselves having issues.

Additional information

No response

[Flaburgan]

+1 to this. I downloaded the app, connected with my (premium) spotify account (had to do the weird thing of copy pasting cookies, I am not sure why we can't have both options if one is fine entering their spotify credentials), and then the first song I played (Fever, by dua lipa and angèle) was a complete mess. Car noises in the background, very low quality audio. Then the song is 2min57 but was displayed as 4min04. I clicked next and back, and I had my next playlist song audio played while still being in the first song in the UI!
In the end, I had to search a bit and understood: the meta data are coming from Spotify, but the audio from YouTube. Why that may sound clever, I don't see how that could actually give good quality results: most of the video clips I know have a very different audio from the song studio version. The length of the song itself is rarely the same (that one minute in my case screwed up everything). Maybe Spotube should use the spotify API only to get the name of the songs, but the metadata should also come from YT?
Anyway, it would indeed be less confusing for users if it was more explicit about what going on under the hood.
I guess it does not fit my needs anyway, as I'm perfectly fine paying for a premium account, and I want good quality audio. An high quality lightweight open source spotify client without tracking would be welcome though, but I will keep searching.
Keep up the good work anyway, thanks for what you're doing.

[adb-luna]

+1 to this. I am a Spotify Premium subscriber because the content creators I listen to deserve to be paid. It is not clear to me at all if I can use Spotube to avoid Android App snooping (which no one is entitled to) while still paying the content creators.