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Spotify is auto shuffling through alexa app

Spotify is auto shuffling through alexa app

 

Plan

Premium

 

Device

Galaxy s8

 

My Question or Issue

 I have an echo dot and very recently Spotify has started to turn on auto shuffle every time I ask to play an artist's music. I have tried turning it off through the app and via voice commands, but every time I do so it is turned back on as soon as I ask the echo dot to play another artist. Spotify version is 8.4.66.733 armv7

 

 

 

Reply
72 Replies

They don't really want you to submit this as an Idea, they're just giving you the run around. There actually was an Idea posted about this very issue before they posted suggesting to submit it as an Idea. Someone responded to that original Idea that it's a bug, not an idea, so they shouldn't use the Ideas section for it. The original Idea was closed.

 

Rant aside, I'm with the others. It's absolutely idiotic that a Shuffle on/off setting wouldn't "stick" between music sessions. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to listen to an artist and then just given up and shut it off, because it's playing random songs that I've never heard of. I'm switching to Amazon Music, as it is the same price and doesn't have this issue.

For everyone adding likes to these posts or reading this thread, please vote for the “idea” to reverse this change (that was never voted to be changed in the first place, it used to work perfectly)

 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Alexa-Stop-auto-shuffling-songs-when-you-request-an-arti...

 

Or better still move to Amazon Music or soon Apple Music

This is not the case for me. My favorite album is "The Stranger" by Billy Joel and anytime I ask Alexa to play the album, it shuffles it instead of playing "Movin' Out (Brian's Song)," which is track 1.

It should default to playing the popular songs when you choose an artist and then shuffle if you request it. The very least they should add an alexa command

 

"Play popular songs by Oasis"

 

Right now, it's a disaster and the latest changes have made it even worse. It used to start with the popular song and then shuffle so you could catch it before it started shuffling. Now you can't even do that. It starts in a random location/song so there's no way that I know of to listen to the popular songs.

When I want to listen to a specific album I want to hear that album in the order the tracks are on that album. Not shuffled at all. If I want them to be shuffled or a "popular mix" I should be able to request that from Alexa via my Echo Dot for a specific artist. The DEFAULT setting for Alexa should be to play an album as it was released with the tracks in the proper order as chosen by the artist, producer, or engineer.

Heres an idea, change this to what WE all want, no shuffling (I have premium family) just the albums in order or the top artists songs first.

 

Otherwise I might as well go over to Amazon Music which I will pay a lot less for a as a Prime Member.

 

If you dont intend to fix this please let us know so we can start cancelling our subs.

I didnt post for a little rant, this is a Spotify breaking issue for the millions of us that use it via Amazon Alexa products.

Can we get a moderator response please on whether this issue is going to be corrected or not as using Spotfiy via Alexa is worthless.

Having to state each specific song each time for each artist is really really fecking annoying.

Premium family member and a fresh owner of several Echo dots. The auto shuffling is so annoying and stupid, that if it's not fixed in few weeks time, I'll cancel my subscription. There is always Amazon Premium after all. 

Iv come to the conclusion they wont fix it or cant fix unless they scrap
shuffle voice command.

I think by the lack of response from Spotify Moderators your probably right. The only way to get round it is to play off an phone or pad which sort of defeats the point of owning Echos.

 

I will look into Amazon music for family.

I think we're not going to get an answer here. I think there's a couple of things you can do:

 

1. Contact the support channel and speak to someone: https://support.spotify.com/uk/contact-spotify-support/

They're only going to fix this if we take their time and make sure they understand people want this fixed

 

2. Start a trial on http://music.amazon.co.uk - it's got a discounted 3 month offer which works.

 

I think there's two things that spotify can do to fix this problem

 

1. Disable Shuffle as default, but I'm not sure if this is a limitation on how Alexa implements the voice command since Amazon music does this too.

 

2. Implement "Play the top songs by Kings of Leon" like Amazon music which doesn't shuffle and allows you to listen to the popular music of an artist.

 

I'm going to cancel Spotify if it's not resolved in 3 months. The smart speaker implementation isn't good enough at the moment. And they don't seem to want to help the community improve it.

I don't understand how it is possible we are still fighting for such a simple feature. 

I bought an alexa echo recently and I immediately noticed this weird and frustating behaviour. 

It even happens if you play unrelated playlist and then go back via phone to your favourite one... 

I am a huge Spotify supporter, but this and offline support for smartwatches is making me change my idea... 

I just verified is an embarassing bug actually... 

If you ask alexa to play a playlist this is will happen accordingly to your shuffling config. 

But if you first ask Alexa to play an artist, first it will explicitly shuffle it(not desired) and then SET the preference of shuffling!! 

So the next time you play a playlist even through the phone, you will have it shuffle it... 

This is definitely a bug, so I think that a professional software house should fix it... 

Am I right? 

 

One thing some of you may have missed as you are new to this- it used to work! It always played songs in the order they appeared in the app, not randomly. I am 100% sure of this. It changed sometime in the spring last year.

 

So either Spotify or Amazon changed something. It seems unlikely that it was Amazon given that it works correctly with Amazon music. What we need first is Spotify to acknowledge that this has been changed which so far the official posters have refused to do instead asking us to vote on a feature request to implement new functionality which is clearly the wrong way around.

 

Also, this is not an android specific issue as I use iOS and the issue is exactly the same. 

 

 

I think that Amazon changed the default "Play music by..." command so that it shuffles by default. But Amazon music have implemented "Play popular/best/top songs by ...." which stops the shuffling and defaults to popular tracks (which everyone instinctively expects and wants). I've tried speaking to various agents at Spotify but haven't had any sort of response from a product manager/developer on what they're doing about it.

 

I'm going to make a youtube video to demonstrate the problem. Each time you speak to someone you have to start explaining it all again and telling them you have the latest app etc...

So it's even more embarassing...
If it has been a regression introduced by a software update, how on earth is possible that it has not been fixed in 6 moths or something?
it seems obvious to me that it should at least be a configurable option if I want Alexa to shuffle or not.
I do believe you should ask explicitly if you want something shuffled or not, for sure, not forcing my successive music sessions...
I was happy with Spotify, but if Alexa integration is that clumsy I would evaluate to switch to amazon music...

I am now trialing Amazon Music Unlimited, you get 6 accounts under the family plan not 5 as with Spotify which suits us better having 6 in the household. Also nice not to have shuffling. I have 3 months to decide whether to switch fully.

 

Yeah - I'm also on a trial and plan to switch off Spotify in 3months if it's not fixed.

I think it has all the same tracks (40m+) so it's not going to be a big deal if they don't sort out the problems. I've used spotify for years though so it'll be a bit of a shame.

Signed up just to say this: SPOTIFY: This is a deal breaker for customers who use your service through Echo devices. There are too many comparable services out there for your customers to put up with this annoying bug. My best guess is this wasn’t intentional and is now lost somewhere in the grey area between the two companies and it’s just not queuing up high enough on the corporate priority list. I can’t imagine some product manager thought that this was actually a good idea and launched this as a new feature. Regardless, PLEASE FIX THIS. 

So Any news?
Do we really just need to switch to a different music supplier ?
I was testing few hours ago again and it's so frustrating to ask to play an author and getting back random tracks, 99% of time not popular or even known...

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