[Mobile] [Other] Smart Shuffle toggle setting in settings menu

[LiamTems]

Smart shuffle is a fun way to discover new songs, but it comes at a cost. Want to reshuffle your queue? Bam, wait a few seconds longer. Want to unshuffle your playlist? Bam, no longer works, and goes to a completely random place in the playlist.

To me this is an unwanted complication, and I'd much rather be able to choose in the settings menu whether I want to enable the Smart Shuffle feature, or disable it.

[Mitre226644]

Thanks for the qualifying yourself now we’ll all make sure to accept your comment as truth.

As a software developer, you should know firsthand that on a platform, you’re not going to have the ability to please everyone. There’s one product- everyone has to use it. And further I doubt you work for a company that serves 700 million customers. 

And it blows my mind that people complain about the sub price. It’s literally the same as Amazon, Apple, and YouTube. 

[jumiduss]

@Mitre226644

Thanks for your snarky and pointless drivel.

Stating a toggle-able feature that cycles through three mode selects, and removing one of those choices, is anything but trivial is nonsense. Make it enabled by default, with a settings choice to disable. Literally effects no one that doesn't know any better, and pleases those that want control over it.

"Not pleasing everyone" is not the same as forcing a behavioral change without bothering to integrate it, and the fact people defaulted to downgrading their release should be a clear sign it was implemented wrong. Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good, and being widely used, if anything, encourages more user customization.....

If you pay for it you should have a say in what features you'd want. Especially if they release forums specifically for requesting said features. This topic, along with subsiquent related topics, have met the engagenent threashold for corporate response, AND clarification on developement. Neither have been completed going of the corporation's guidelines, not some random dev complaining in the forum.

It's mind blowing someone would talk out of the a** so much with no contextual, and situational awareness.

[phil13131]

@Mitre226644

In addition to what the person before me has said, please realize that this idea thread is not about Smart Shuffle as an idea, which I believe is a good one, if one so wishes to use it. But the implementation that causes multiple second delays on turning it on and off and the fact that it often doesn't work properly to turn it off and the fact that it's forced on you by default that is the problem.

No, I do indeed not work for a company with 700mio. users. But from what I have learned, the more users you have the bigger your responsibility it is to be careful with functional changes. Having the feature not be default or as a separate toggle button, independent of turning on shuffle or having an option to not use it at all as an option in your settings would not have created much of an programming or planning overhead.

This was purely a poor design feature and Spotify should at least be brave enough to admit that.

[Mitre226644]

Jumiduss,

I appreciate the semantic efforts, man. Those big ones kinda tripped you up though with the spelling but you’ll get the hang of it. 

You’re actually correct in that I don’t have a context on this feature- I don’t rely on it as I prefer to listen to albums.

Here’s where the pointless drivel comes in: I  couldn’t care less about the functionality issue you are ever so hurt about, but I do care about the fact that you soak in the stuff you enjoy without any semblance of appreciation, but if something is wrong you jump at the opportunity to be an entitled germ. It’s your grandiose perception of your own importance, and that you seem to adhere to that wonderful old fashioned dynamic that as the customer you deserve whatever you ask for that’s the issue. Or another way of saying it would be that you make life worse for others. 

Do whatever suits you in this heroic pursuit but don’t let your head get too big so you can’t fit through doorways.

Phil, 

Your points in your response were practical and I get where you’re coming from more so than the Judas guy. You, unlike him, seem like you could use communication skills to help fix this inconvenience with the feature. 

Good luck. 

[WaltJabsco]

Please give us the option to turn off smart shuffle, I can just pick radio if I want to hear songs I haven't heard before.

[ellested]

I posted this before in a more elaborated form, but I think it got removed. The reason they won't change the smart shuffle feature, is because it's better for their business.

You'll have to figure out why, as writing the reason will delete your post.

[jumiduss]

@Mitre226644

My bad, we can pass over your original post that attacked someone while not understanding the topic. From your response, you don't even have a stake in the game yet felt the need to enter your irrelevant opinions on the matter. Your criticism of anything I said, barring the grammar, is completely applicable to yours.

Providing the option to disable a new feature is trivial. Like I said, the fact there are forums dedicated to the matter, and it has met the criteria Spotify set for a response. Not entitled, just stating they haven't followed their own policies while being given a year to do so. Providing reasons to why something can be justified is not equivalent to stating my own opinions. Is it annoying to have to wait for a network to lag to switch between shuffle and sequential? Sure. Life moves on.

You went after someone, someone else called you on it, then you threw a tantrum "because feelings". It's not the community's job to develop, troubleshoot, or provide solutions. It's a feedback forum. The original poster you attacked provided feedback, I tried to justify why someone could be upset with the system, and phrased attacks similarly to your first post, which was not only nonconstructive, but provided no sensible use.

[ELEVIN]

I am a producer, artist, playlist curator and Spotify promoter.

I created and manage a few playlists on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uyZrAH44ABuUxXS6qXjh4?si=cf4faa663e304b61

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6T8LIdgOcTky2ztSJ8MVwy?si=5c19d2c591f24ba9

• These playlists have a significant number of active followers that consistently listen to the music I curate and the number of followers is consistently growing at more than 100 new followers per day. (80,000+)
• Most, if not all, of my playlists followers were originated by paid advertising. To date I have spent over $50K USD in advertising just for my playlists.
• This means I bring and engage tens of thousands of users for Spotify every year.
• I created a 501(c) non-profit organization, ELEVIN Foundation, around the concept of helping rising talent reach their audience via including on my playlists the tracks that are a good fit musically and have the right level of production quality and providing feedback to the rest. (https://elevin.org)
• To date we have given feedback to more than 10,000 artists and accepted more than 500, who in total generate over 20M streams per year on my playlists, thanks to my paid promotion efforts.

The reason why I reach out, besides sharing my Spotify path with you, is to tell you that I noticed a change in the product that greatly affects my work. Recently, the shuffle button first click action was changed from "Shuffle" to "Smart Shuffle". This means that my followers and listeners that use Shuffle are now accidentally listening to tracks that are not in my playlists, while thinking that those tracks are in the playlist. Artists work very hard to get in and I work very hard to make the playlists amazing, only to have all that work diluted and altered by the "Smart" algorithm.

I hope you understand the negative impact this change has on dedicated artists, curators and promoters of Spotify.

I kindly ask you to please return the default to just normal old Shuffle. 

Regards,

ELEVIN

[jumiduss]

@ellested

Thanks for taking the time to re-share!

I check back in every once in a while to see if anything's been said from them/ people. Someone could come up with a couple different ways it's beneficial, knowing it's at least intentional is good enough to stop caring for me lol.

[paypalsucks]

Over a year now and smart shuffle still annoying. Please remove this feature that nobody likes or uses.