Spotify has steadily gotten worse over the years. I remember a long time ago they had a cool feature where you could long press on a song to preview it. There was also a decently organized library tab, not as advanced as itunes but passable.
All gone. Now you get an algorithmic homepage that's constantly shifting and trying to push podcasts on you...
The engineers that did that have gone, replaced by newer folks...
As companies get larger, the engineering talent reverts to the mean. The first crop of engineers, that were passionate about it, and made it a success. After they move on, they are replaced with average corp. employee, that joins Spotify as safe/boring job. Hence anything interesting gets removed, and the most boring features survive.
Ps. I was one of the involved on that feature. I didn't write it (It was done in Sweden), but I created one of the earlier demos, (and patents), and that eventually became touch to preview.
This seems very plausible, as an outsider looking in. There's also the problem of when new people get hired and out in charge of new sections of the product, and they feel that they either need to make a change to justify their existence, or that they have found something that really works well for the way that they use the product without realizing the variety of ways that the user base uses the product.
All gone. Now you get an algorithmic homepage that's constantly shifting and trying to push podcasts on you...