Next song starts somewhere in the middle

[douira]

On some playlists (the last one this happened on was "Deep House Relax") when one song ends it starts the next some somewhere in the middle after an unusually long crossfade. 

After some investigation, it seems this is a feature that some playlists have. This behavior should have a setting to disable it as it's quite disruptive to the listening experience in my opinion. (and apparently, also everybody else who joined in on this thread) 

Important: This is not the regular crossfade! This starts songs literally a minute in, not just 12 seconds like the normal crossfade. This behavior seems to appear even with crossfade turned off!

Family Premium

Germany

macOS 10.13.6 (latest at the time) 

[douira]

As you might have read (or probably not as this thread has become rather long) we know this problem is not an intentional bug, but rather becomes one as it is apparent that many users dislike this often irrational transitioning behavior to the point of it being perceived as a bug. If the user perceives a behavior as a bug it doesn't matter whether or not it was supposed to be a feature. Therefore user-changeable setting is in order.

[OrangeBird]

I had the same problem, but till now it works for me if you turn off the shuffle option. 

[orxanb]

The only solution that has worked is copying all the songs in the playlist to a new playlist.

[Betomees]

I’m just unsubscribe the Spotify this unsure is disgusting and apparently just happened with electronic, house, chilling musics and it’s 80% of my playlists why someone would do this and just don’t give a f* for what we really want

[nhvider]

Very well put. 

[user-removed]

Have the same issue in every techno playlist, the song skips the hole intro.

any solutions?

[_digitaldemon_]

Just came across this issue. I call it an issue as it took me by surprise; it seems like such a useless featue. After finding this thread I took a zip through some playlists. My personal lists, and those of artists I follow, do not do this. It appears to only happen on playlists created by spotify, and does seem limited to electronic genres.

In 20+ years of enjoying electronic music on various platforms, and meeting hundreds of people through raves and social media, i can honestly say that no one has said to me "You know it would be awesome if my crossfade feature startred where the last track ended, timewise. I don't even care if I was trying to skip the last 30 seconds of a song, and then only get maybe 5 seconds of the next". To be more succinct, this lacks all manner of logic. For my usage, this means extra work in building my playlists. While yes, duplicating the playlist and later deleting it will get around the issue, and requires little time, it is a needless step, and plain annoying. 

Personally I'd like to know why this was done (where is the thread with votes), as it seems to make very little sense. Just because a person skips a track, that does not garauntee they wanted it to flow into the next at or near the same timecode (i've seen it fluctuate). Long story short. It's been months since this was first reported, and seemingly done so without notice. The need to wait for votes is a bit ridiculous in this situation. The simpelest solution would be to have these playlists respect the users existing settings; don't crossfade, at all, period, unless that featue is on.

[douira]

I'd like to remind you all to please vote on this issue here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Playlists-Switch-on-off-crossfade-in-certa...

Apparently one has to vote to get Spotify to fix their software.

But on the other hand, getting super upset about this or being mean about it isn't going to fix the problem either. 

@paperbot if you read the rest of the thread (is it quite long now though), you'd come across the workaround: create a new own playlist that has all the songs of the Spotify-made playlist with the strange crossfade in it. Personal playlists don't exhibit this behavior. (see there original earlier post for more details)

[Maxskorik]

Had the same problem with specific playlist. Enabling hardware acceleration seem to have solved it.

[douira]

@Maxskorik What platform and version are you using? Where is this setting located?

[ccfrank]

My issue with this is that the transition is NOT SMOOTH!!! It is not a fade at all! Just starts at a random place in the song. I was trying to listen to the Brain Food playlist while studying and this "feature" was so distracting I just turn it off and deleted the app off my Mac. Why fix something that wasnt broke? If a user wants their song to fade they can change their setting to accomplish that. 

[mackieg84]

I've just recently started to notice this issue, its a real pain. I checked I never had crossfade enabled and I don't. I also checked it was not the gapless music part and it doesnt seem to be the problem either, I never had it enabled anyway.

Can someone please help with this, it's really annoying.

[diegoogm10]

Its 2019, and still some playlists have this settings and cannot be disabled. It looks like Spotify's Software is making its own mix and trying to join both songs rithms, causing some songs to start at second 40 or so. Trully annoying.

[GustavoZH]

This has been going on for some time now! I seen it happen on Brain Food  and Lo-Fi Beats playlists, which are Spotify playlists, so maybe there is something wrong with their playlists? I don't know, but it is really annoying!

[teachertom]

This "feature" ist terrible. I'm listening to Lo Fi Beats while working and it throws me off when this happens. How can u add a feature that messes so hard with the listening experience and not supply the user with a button to turn it off? Smooth? Nope!

[douira]

I'd like to remind everyone to please vote on the idea to get Spotify to fix this problem. https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Playlists-Switch-on-off-crossfade-in-certa...

[kubasvoboda]

Wow, this is extremely annoying, I seriously thought my app is broken, tinkered with it for quite some time and was dumbfounded since my crossfade was disabled (as has always been).

How could anyone ever thought this was good idea, if it's really intentional? I really think this is a bug, since the "crossfades" are totally random and "harsh".

I voted for the idea next door, hope it gets fixed!

Happened to me in the Brain Food playlist for the first time, as others here also reported. Also I don't think copying the playlist is the best fix, since then it won't be updated with new music, which happens from time to time in these Spotify created playlists if I'm not mistaken? But I guess better than this...

[axl_magnum]

Well, to me this isn't an issue, AT ALL.

It's something Spotify is starting to implement in some playlist... for the time being, only on the ones made by them... the thing is, this feature doesn't fit very well in all playlists (I've been listening to Deep House Relax and the transition is not very well done between some songs).

If you listen to Techno Bunker playlist for example, it actually works really well, despite of your will to listen to an intro of a techno song being the same for 1+ minute... If you just want to listen to the entire song and hate this kind of mixing, there's millions of playlists out there made by users.

It'll be great if this feature were unlocked for premium accounts. Think of yourself making a mix within Spotify in a playlist format, public or private. Totally amazing.

[douira]

@axl_magnum If you like the feature that is just fine. We're not trying to take anything away from you. All we want is an option to turn this off, because, as you can obviously see, this is a matter of personal preference and different people have very different experiences with this feature. As you've said yourself, it works better on some playlists and worse on others.

The point is, that it's critical that Spotify allows users to make this decision themselves. The workaround of listening only to user-created playlists is not a long term solution as it would seriously reduce the value of the service we're paying for. We would also like to listen to curated playlists but that is obstructed by the sometimes very jarring crossfade into the middle of a track.

I hope you understand this point of view. We are not striving for conflicting goals but rather for an option to choose freely.

[axl_magnum]

Yeah, I've seen the submission you made, and I totally agree with it. Just saying that from what I've read, many users think it's a bug and are reporting it as if it were one, or submitting ideas to encourage Spotify to disable this, without knowing. To make it clear, I really like your idea, I've just pointed to the ones that think this is a real issue instead of thinking that is a preference matter.