Spotify Desktop hanging/crashing when adding tracks from Smart Shuffle to playlist

[Aconite]

Plan: Premium

Country: UK

Device / OS: PC, Win 11

My Question or Issue: I have a large playlist (~2000 tracks); my preferred way to expand it is listening with SmartShuffle and then adding the tracks I like to the list. However, almost every time I add (or remove) a smart shuffle track to the list, the app hangs (all controls stop functioning) and I have to use Task Manager to force shut down the app.  I have no issue with app stability in any other situation, nor do I have any issues adding tracks to this playlist by other methods (e.g. if I add from Discovery list or Release Radar it functions perfectly) - only occurs when using SmartShuffle within the list I am adding to.

Feature request: in the queue rather than interspersing the SmartShuffle tracks every other 2, it would be fantastic to be able to filter to just those so I can focus on a tailored discovery session when I want to.  I do not want to manually click on fragments at the bottom of the list - I just want to stream new tracks that are directly based on the underlying playlist so I can further enrich it.

[Ivelina]

Hi there @Aconite,

Thanks for posting in the Community!

If you've tried any troubleshooting steps so far, it'd be very helpful if you could let us know so we can avoid repeating any suggestions from our end. Let's gather some details. 

Does this happen only with this playlist with the many songs, or even with other playlists? Have you tried on a different device to see if the app's behavior is the same there too?

We recommend deleting and reinstalling the app you're currently using so you can get rid of any corrupted cache (that can cause issues with Spotify's performance) and then downloading the version you weren't using - either the one from our website or from the Microsoft Store. They can have different behavior so this is worth testing. 

When it comes to the feature request you have, if you'd like you can post an idea about it on the relevant idea board. Here you can read more on how ideas work and the higher the number of votes it gets, the more likely it is for it to be implemented. We also suggest checking this help article for useful tips on how to submit an idea.

Keep us updated 🙂

[Aconite]

Many thanks for the reply. This only happens with the long playlist, and only when in SmartShuffle mode.
It is not a problem with any other playlists, and I can get round the issue by dumping the tracks I like into a "holding" playlist and then adding them to long playlist when I am not using SmartShuffle. 
I have not tried on another device (I use my PC for 99% of my listening) nor have I reinstalled yet because it seems to be working perfectly in every other situation. I'll give those steps a try.

[Eni]

Hey @Aconite, 

Thanks for your reply. 

No worries, take your time to test this and let us know how it goes. 

Also, we suggest that you give a different internet connection a go to see if that makes the difference.

Keep us posted.

[Aconite]

Thanks - on a Cat6 wired broadband connection that is rock-solid for all other work and gaming apps, and no way to change it.
In every other aspect Spotify works perfectly - it is very specific to this issue with SmartShuffle (I can add other tracks to the same or other playlists with no issue)

[Aconite]

I have now uninstalled the app (was the windows store version) and replaced it with the version from your website.
Unfortunately the issue is still there, exactly as it was in the Win Store version.
Watching it as it breaks down, it looks as though it is trying to recalculate the smart shuffle for the playlist on the fly - the queue vanishes apart from the currently playing track which plays out but everything then hangs indefinitely at which point you have to kill the processes with task manager and restart.

[Yordan]

Thanks for the provided info so far @Aconite.

Since you mentioned that the issue occurs only with this one playlist, what you can try is moving the songs to a new one to see if that does the trick: just open your playlist, tap the three dots menu and select Add to other playlist > New playlist.

Once created, navigate to it and toggle Smart Shuffle on to see if the issue would still occur. If it does, it's worth checking if it would persist in Safe Mode with Networking.

In any case, I suspect that this might have to do with the size of the playlist, so something else you can try is reducing it a bit by splitting it into a few smaller ones to see if the app's performance would improve.

Keep us posted. Cheers!

[Aconite]

Thanks; unfortunately copying the songs into a new play list didn't resolve. The behaviour is exactly the same.
The issue is that I specifically want this to be a long single playlist of all the music I enjoy - I am tired of micromanaging smaller individual lists, so I just put this on smart shuffle, keep expanding it, and that drives my listening.
I am working round it by dropping the tracks into a "holding list", and then moving them into the long list when I am not actively listening to it - that works perfectly, so i think the issue is a combination of the playlist length and Smart shuffle (if I don't have smart shuffle enabled I can add tracks to it seamlessly).

[MartinT · Accepted solution]

Hey @Aconite, 

Thank you so much for the efforts you've made up until now in troubleshooting this.

We would like to mention that at a certain point when a lot of titles are added to a playlist that might cause some technical inconveniences as a large playlist can take longer to load and make changes on.

It's not ideal but for now we would advise to continue using the workaround you found and make sure you keep the app up to date in order not miss out on a fix. 

Cheers.

[Aconite]

No problem at all; many thanks for the tips to try to resolve. 
The workaround is manageable as long as I remember to do it most days so that it doesn't build up too much.
One point to make - I do think this would be improved massively with some of the suggestions in the enhancements list currently regarding better ways of discovering new tracks based on a starting playlist. Smart Shuffle is the best way I have found of doing this, but if that could be handled as a separate queue of just the new material it would avoid the issue of the queue/SS trying to recalculate with each addition.