[Android] Remove the Shuffle / Play Button

[-quazar]

Hi, I tried out your new design, which I have mixed feelings about, but nevermind that. The most annoying thing I come over in the new Spotify (for iPhone by the way) is the dumb, big, overlapping, unnecessary shuffle play button that pops up everywhere. Is this a bug or is this on purpose? Could at least had add an option for it. Also, it doesn't look streamlined at all with the current design. Did it even occur that not everyone wants a shuffle play button?

[Dalar]

I came back to Spotify after spending 6 years with Google Play Music (which sadly ended and Youtube music isn't nearly as good). This design choice boggles my mind! I don't remember if it existed when I was using Spotify years ago, but I'm sad to see that it has been addressed only now — and poorly. Probably the most confusing things are (I'm using Android):

1. The normal big play button icon suggests a sequential play (this is an industry standard folks!)
2. The logic is different (it's standard) on desktop! So the same big green button, but works differently!

With playlists I understand that shuffle play could be the most preferred play mode. But even with albums and EPs, really?

The new cosmetic iOS update is a good first step, less confusion. But that won't solve the complete issue that there's a dominant UI feature which people don't like and one can do nothing about it. IMO there's two good solutions:

1. Let the users make the choice in the settings.
2. Play button function would differ in releases and playlists, and this should be clearly visible.

My 2 cents. It would be nice if your lead UX designer (or product manager or similar) could also chime in to the discussions some time.

[jbadmin]

Same as the previous comment from @Dalar, I too am a Google Music refugee, and am struggling to find an equal replacement. Spotify checks most of the boxes, but I don't think I was even as frustrated at YouTube Music than I have been with using Spotify on Android. Mostly because I know Spotify is a better service than YT Music.

Has this big, non-intuitive "Shuffle"-only button been there the whole time without a simple "Play" button, with 59 pages of comments to change it, and it's still not changed? This is literally all you have to do: (pic below)

I'm on the Family Premium trial currently.

[rsgreen]

Adding another voice to this topic.

Tracks on albums/EPs are placed in a deliberate order, and the album is meant to be listened to in that order.  Most people expect to play an album starting at track 1.  Please make this the default option, or at least make another button along side the shuffle button to give users the option.  Why you have not done this after multiple years of complaints is beyond one's ability to comprehend.  I've been a user for years and it annoys me each and every time I open the app on my phone.  Open album, press "Play".  Easy peasy.

[Bugplanet]

Agreed, I came back to Spotify after several years of using Pandora and Apple Music. I hate that big green button, I always hit it and get shuffle which is not what I want. Why can’t we just have a play button.

[biv_3]

Spotify - because this forum supposed to function as a community it would be great to hear from some kind of Spotify representative. Is there such a team that could take 5 minutes to comment considering there has been over 60 pages of user requests?

[Hisserbee]

You also gotta love the hostility of Spotify on this CYA Ideas platform because I specifically searched for this issue and could not find an existing idea for it. I only ended up here because my own version of this complaint was marked as a duplicate and I followed a series of duplicate/similar idea links to finally find this one which actually has votes, but is misleadingly labeled as "[Android]" when it should be "[Mobile]" (all the [Mobile] ideas I was directly linked to by the mod only had 1 vote themselves). They are clearly doing everything in their power to prevent users from having a unified voice on this so they can claim that not enough people want the change to warrant them making it. A real company with a sound user feedback system would group all these pages with the exact same complaint in one ticket instead of putting that on the users themselves.

I encourage everyone to vote with their dollars and switch to a different service that isn't so user hostile because they're clearly not going to fix this when people have been complaining about it for 6 years and they actually rolled out this garbage change to more platforms in response. I hear Tidal is good.

[Hisserbee]

Here's an example of another Idea with 46 votes that should count towards this. This is the kind of nonsense you are more likely to find when actively searching for this problem. It was closed for not receiving enough votes in a short enough time frame, and the mod linked to another issue with only a couple votes, instead of to this one which might actually get the desired results. If you see a page like that first, you are likely to get the impression that you are in the minority in not liking this UI, and give up, meaning less votes for this no-brainer improvement, insuring the change won't get made. This is clearly a concerted effort to avoid responding to the most common user feedback.

[Winter404]

I bought Premium a few hours ago, look in my albums and find that the play button is still "Shuffle Play".

Huh, that's weird, I though. Maybe the app just hasn't refreshed. Whatever. A few hours later + closing the app it's still there.

Now here we are, after digging around for a while and I find that the default behaviour for the mobile Spotify app is to shuffle play whatever album or playlist you're looking at.

What?
Is this a joke? Did one of the UI designers lose a bet? Did they think it'd be entertaining to read the nearly 60 pages (as of the time of writing) of comments of people who don't like this?

This is such an insignificant issue that I just have to assume this is the case. It's such an insignificant thing, and it's utterly baffling. Not only is this contrary to the industry standard in quite literally any app or service that plays music, but it also goes against one of your KEY MARKETING POINTS OF PREMIUM. "Buy Premium to play any track you want and not be stuck using shuffle play". So I hope you can understand my confusion when the big green button above all my playlists still says "Shuffle Play"

For a quick solution until this issue is solved, you can click the first track in your playlist/album that you want to play in order. You know, instead of the big green button with the word "PLAY" on it. This is, quite literally, the most unintuitive thing I've ever seen.

I want to reiterate that this is an insignificant issue. I'd even go as far as to call it a non-issue, don't want to shuffle play? just click the first track on the list. Yet, exactly because of it being such a non-issue it's completely and utterly incomprehensible why this still hasn't been changed. Like user "jbadmin" proposed, you could just have something like the mock up they posted. If you want to have a slick round icon like in iOS, just put the "play" icon next to a "shuffle" icon.

But no, it's still an issue after nearly SEVEN YEARS, since this was first posted.

So what conclusion can we come to from this?

Well, it has to just be bad faith, doesn't it? Someone at Spotify either really likes this design, and wants it to stay that way. Or maybe someone prefers to listen to their music in shuffle mode and so they'd rather it stay this way. I don't know, I genuinely do not know. And since there has, as far as I can tell, there has been no official word from Spotify (apart from the Status Update on 2020-11-04 which clearly misunderstands what this thread is about) I have no choice but to just make assumptions like these.

I hope this was helpful in describing exactly what the issue with this whole thing is, and why I personally think it should be changed.

[stallthedigger]

I'll add my voice to the seemingly hopeless chorus asking for this terrible UX design-choice to be fixed - for albums and EP's, the big green button should be a simple 'Play'. Shuffling a playlist is one thing, but like most listeners I want to listen to albums the way artist and producer intended. It's what I pay for, and it shouldn't require an unintuitive workaround.

At the very least, let users choose for themselves what that Big Green Button should do!

[k8jxil8kdbc7dqb]

There is a claim at the top of this discussion that this has recently changed for iOS. That is a very vague statement. What has changed? I have iOS and updated most recent version, I still can't just hit the large green play button for an album and have the album play. If you go to an album, surely the default should be to play the album as conceived and to have it shuffle play should be the added option. As far as I can tell this is not the case in the current iOS app.