You identified some of the main problems I have with Spotify on iPhone too. Also, GLOBAL SEARCH. That is totally needed and I don't have a clue as to why that isn't implemented.

Ohh man so valid, however, this really just is the tip of the iceberg. If you think about the stuff IN the navigation, not just where its located the meaning associated with the organizational models is gobledygook. For example, what is "home" How is this meaningful to me? How am I supposed to relate to a bucket of features that don't really help me ground myself in the listening experience? I could go on and on and on....

I literally almost did this exact redesign a couple days ago when I was getting annoyed with the hamburger menu.

I HATE that they don't have a dedicated button for Feed or Messages. It's just an Alert icon that takes you to your notifications, where it shows activity by default and you have to tab over to messages. Just add a damn messages button! Or at least, as you suggested, change the alert icon to the feed icon so its more obvious that messages are in there. I didn't even know you could see messages on the phone app until like a week ago when I investigated.

Great article though. You hit the nail on the head and this would seriously improve the overall UX of their app.

Just an design experiment i did to see why I was frustrated when using Spotify

My current bugbear with iOS Spotify is not being able to easily see what albums I have saved locally to my phone. When I'm out and about I don't always want to stream music over my 3G connection. I've had to create a "Downloaded" playlist as a workaround.

Agreed fully. Spotify on mobile is a pain to use.

Spotify does indeed a/b test the global navigation on the bottom, and I managed to play with it for about a week. It was snappier to move around to be sure, but created a big traffic jam of options in the bottom when you add in the sticky footer and such. I'm really not sure which mode I prefer, to be honest.