topic Re: What's that thing...? in Your Library

What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sat, 18 May 2024 08:38:43 GMT

Plan

Premium

Country

Sweden

Device

Samsung S23 ultra

Operating System

Android...something

My Question or Issue

Hi. : )

I'm not sure what it's called so i apologize in advance for what may be a somewhat vague description.

See it used to be (at least about 6-12 months ago) that when i listened to an album and liked a specific track i pressed something, and "bloop" a couple of new tracks "similar" to that previous track appeared in the playlist. Most of the time those tracks were from artists that i haven't even heard of before, so not something that i had already added somewhere somehow. I liked that feature cos i often get stuck on listening to the same stuff over and over. Problem i have now is, where is that feature now? Has it been removed? Did i remove it somehow? What did i press to get those other songs to pop up? Because i'm in a playlist and i'm pressing all the buttons that seem obvious to me, but nothing happens...well other than that that should. Help?

Re: What's that thing...?

Amay — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:06:49 GMT

Hey @The_infamous_one, welcome to the Spotify Community!

From what I can understand from your description, you are looking for a feature that adds new recommendations to your playlists.

It sounds like something that Spotify launched recently, Smart Shuffle! This used to be the Enhance button before the launch of Smart Shuffle. It does a similar thing where you can turn it on and see the suggested tracks in your queue.

Please go through this article once and let me know if that helps. 🙂🎵

Re: What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:27:47 GMT

I don't think that it helped... I tap the "shuffle" button but nothing visible happens in the playlist, so i try and tap the "+" button to ad a tune to my liked songs to see if that changes anything, but nothing happens. I'm pretty sure that's the way i did it the last time this feature worked for me, i tapped the +button and i could see that instantly 3 new songs in a row popped up in the list right after the one i had just added.

Re: What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:31:04 GMT

oh and i forgot...sorry, my device is my PC, not on my phone. (if that makes any difference) My bad

Re: What's that thing...?

Amay — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:34:38 GMT

Thanks for the quick response @The_infamous_one! Here is something else that you can try:

Open any playlist that you have created
Scroll to the bottom of the playlist
See the list of recommended songs and add any song from that list
That should refresh the list for you, and you can also click refresh manually

When you create a new playlist with no songs, then this is shown upfront, otherwise you can find it at the bottom on both the mobile and desktop apps.

Let me know if this is what you were looking for.

Re: What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:45:54 GMT

No, thank YOU for YOUR quick reply : )

However, while i was waiting for your reply i tried something else... see i was listening to the radio-thing you know, like "eminem radio", "wu-tang radio" etc and that's where i needed new songs to be added. So i picked one of my own playlists instead, and whatdoyaknow, the shuffle button gave me two option, shuffle or smart shuffle 🙂 I guess it doesn't work with the radio-thing for some reason?

Re: What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sat, 18 May 2024 12:52:56 GMT

Just noticed that there's no + button... 🤔hmm?

I'm in my own playlist with almost 1000 tunes, and i have the smart shuffle activated but how do i make new songs to "materialize"?

Re: What's that thing...?

Yordan — Sun, 19 May 2024 13:19:08 GMT

Thanks for the additional info @The_infamous_one!

Smart Shuffle only works in playlists you've personally created, and since radio stations are created by Spotify, the option isn't available there.

As for Smart Shuffle's song recommendations, you'll find them in the queue instead.

Cheers 🤘

Re: What's that thing...?

The_infamous_one — Sun, 26 May 2024 08:45:38 GMT

Well i got it to work, but i feel like it was better before. Right now the "recommendations" show up all the way down and gives me recommendations based on what's already in the playlist so songs from the same 3-5 artist keep coming up, over and over and over and over. Now and again something else pops up, but 90-95% is stuff from those artists that are already in the playlist, AND i have no idea when i actually get to hear any of these new songs...if ever, cos the shuffle is activated. If i turn the shuffle of then the playlist starts the same way every time, and i will for sure never get to those tunes cos there's a lot of them. If i on the other hand leave the shuffle on, then because of the algorithm, an overwhelmingly large majority of the songs i hear are those i have already heard. It's like a vicious cycle, first it plays a few tunes then it keeps playing them because it has already played them, and almost never lets me hear anything new.

It used to be that the "recommendations" showed up in the middle of the actual playlist, and once i tapped a button and added them to the playlist, more of them showed up, immediately and right after the one i had just added. That way i could hear**bleep** all the time. If i'm not mistaken there were 3-4 new recommendations every time, and (maybe i'm imagining this) they had various levels of diversity. Like at least one of the tunes was a lot different from the others and if i kept adding that recommendation i could eventually get sidetracked from one genre to a completely different one i, or pick one of the others and stick to whatever was within a certain frame. Couldn't "they" have kept both versions instead? I'm sure the existing one has it's benefits, but i'm just not seeing them right now.