topic Re: Smart Shuffle in Other (Podcasts, Partners, etc.)

Smart Shuffle

Yohji — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 03:18:08 GMT

Is it possible to have "smart shuffle" turned off?

Re: Smart Shuffle

amgmsgti — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:11:20 GMT

Hello,

Welcome to the Spotify Community.

what devide are you running Sptify on?

Regards.

Re: Smart Shuffle

Yohji — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:27:39 GMT

iOS and Desktop.

Re: Smart Shuffle

amgmsgti — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:29:40 GMT

Hello,

Does the problem exist on both devices?

Do you see an incon similar to this one on any of the affected devices?

Re: Smart Shuffle

Yohji — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:31:11 GMT

Oh I think you misunderstood my question, I was asking whether I could have "smart shuffle" turned off and make it completely random.

Re: Smart Shuffle

amgmsgti — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 21:54:34 GMT

Hello,
As far as I’ve just read up, smart shuffling can not be deactivated, although that function may appear in an update.
I’m sorry I couldn’t solve your problem.
Regards

Re: Smart Shuffle

Yohji — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 05:15:25 GMT

Alright, thank you!

Re: Smart Shuffle

Dmav77 — Sun, 14 Jun 2020 15:23:49 GMT

What is the point of smart shuffle??

I use Spotify app on my android, smart shuffle doesn't seem to shuffle my music any different. I thought I had read Spotify rolled out "smart shuffle" to make the player not play an artist's song more than once when shuffling my library. It still seems to play 2 or 3 songs in a row of the same artist, all the time. And it'll even play 2 or 3 of same artist, one different song, then the same artist that just had 2to3 songs played. What gives? What is the actual purpose of smart shuffle?

Thank you.

Re: Smart Shuffle

Yohji — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 06:30:31 GMT

It's not necessarily not playing the song form the same artist, but to make
it feel more "random" instead of it actually being random, e.g. not
repeating the same songs.

Re: Smart Shuffle

johnvestevich — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 16:34:20 GMT

No-repeat and smart shuffle are two different things. A purely random shuffle that doesn’t repeat is what a basic shuffle is. Smart Shuffle here actually prioritizes the songs on a playlist based on how soon you skip to the next track (if you do it within the first 30 seconds, it “demotes” the song and is less likely to go there in future shuffles) or if you specifically select a song from the playlist to play (it promotes that song’s future likelihood). Personally I find this “feature” to be borderline insulting. Why would I put a song on a playlist if I didn’t want to hear it in the future? I have a 600+ song playlist that KEPT going to the same songs with every fresh shuffle, so I had to ruthlessly skip over a bunch of songs for a long time in order to “unlock” the ready of the playlist. It felt like I was scolding a dog or something. At the very least make this extremely basic feature available. Flip that switch, devs. We pay your bills, throw us a bone.

Re: Smart Shuffle

Alex — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 11:33:12 GMT

Hi there folks,

Thanks for reaching out about this in the community and sharing your thoughts.

Currently there is now way to manually control which track the shuffle function will queue next. As @johnvestevich said, the more you listen to a certain song/artist the more likely you're to get them up next in the queue. Respectively the quicker you skip a song the less likely you're to get it again in future listening sessions. Note that if you're shuffling larger playlists (with more than a few hundred songs) your likely got get some songs repeated. A workaround would be to split your playlists into smaller, more specific ones.

At this point, I'd suggest that you or anyone who feels the need for a different shuffle option, go ahead and submit the idea in the Community Ideas Exchange page. You can click here to start submitting it. As this is the way to get your feedback straight to the developer team.

You can have a look at these similar Ideas and add your +Vote to show your support:

Hope you find this info useful. Don't hesitate to reach out again if you have more questions.

Re: Smart Shuffle

MADDMAXx97 — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 13:59:47 GMT

Just turn Spotify on Offline mode. This only works if you have your music downloaded though. IF SPOTIFY IS READING THIS PLEASE REMOVE THE SMART SHUFFLE WE ALL HATE IT!!!!!!!

Re: Smart Shuffle

nanotree — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 15:08:40 GMT

This seems like a worse version of playlist radio, which Spotify has removed and has yet to restore. Please, tell your feature designers to get in touch with actual users.

Re: Smart Shuffle

MattSuda — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 05:12:48 GMT

Good news! Spotify has listened to user feedback and you can now disable Smart Shuffle from the mobile app settings, as mentioned in this now implemented idea. This setting will also be added to the desktop app in a future update.

Steps to disable Smart Shuffle in the mobile app:

1: Tap on your profile picture at the top left corner

2: Tap on Settings and privacy

3: Tap on Playback

4: Switch Include Smart Shuffle in play modes off

Note: This is for Premium users only and right now it's only available in the mobile app, but in a future update, there will be a setting to disable Smart Shuffle in the desktop app as well.

More info can be found in the Shuffle help article here:

https://support.spotify.com/article/shuffle-play/