Introducing Smart Shuffle!

[Joan]

Introducing Smart Shuffle! 

We know that our users love creating their own playlists to capture key moments in time – in fact, playlists created by users often become their most-streamed playlist for the first several months but listening to these playlists slowly fades overtime, and users are eager to discover new music.

With this in mind, we’re excited to launch a new play mode called Smart Shuffle that keeps listening sessions fresh and provides personalized recommendations that perfectly match any listeners’ playlist vibe. 

This update will roll out to Premium users on mobile devices starting today.

How does Smart Shuffle work?

• You can use it in any playlist created by you, and your Liked Songs.
• To activate it, just use the Shuffle button to switch between regular play, Shuffle mode and Smart Shuffle.
• When Smart Shuffle is on, recommendations are added to your session automatically. You can find all the recommendations sitting in your queue.
• You will be able to recognize the music we are recommending with the sparkle (✨) symbol next to the track. For a playlist with more than 15 songs, we’ll recommend one song for every three tracks.
• And the best part, your original playlist remains untouched, so you can add any new track that catches your ear.
• If you like a specific recommendation, just save it using the plus button in the Now Playing View. If that song doesn’t hit right, just tap the minus to remove it from the recommendations. This is then used to better adjust the suggestions we put forward.
• Every time you turn Smart Shuffle off, a new mix will be available every time you activate it again.

Introductory pageHow the queue will look

Adding and removing recommendations.

FAQ

What about the Enhance feature?

For now, Smart Shuffle will replace the Enhance feature.

What will happen to Discover Weekly and other regularly updated playlists?

For the time being, no changes to those will be made. Smart Shuffle aims to improve the listening experience for user curated playlists.

Does this mean that using Smart Shuffle will cause my carefully curated playlists to get cluttered with new recommendations?

No! Your original playlist remains untouched, so you can add any new track that catches your ear. Smart Shuffle won’t change your playlist without your explicit permission. What changes instead is what you'll hear during each specific listening session

We hope you're as excited as we are about this new play mode. The official Newsroom announcement is out, you can check that out too. For any and all feedback on the matter you may have, you're more than welcome to comment in the thread below.

[mld727]

I agree!  Please turn this off. I have playlists with plenty of songs i already know i like. I don’t need Spotify to add to it and i hate most of what they add. I am listening along and then some song comes on and i am like ‘wth is that’ and realize it is one Spotify is suggesting. PLEASE let us decide if we want your input or not.  I want to turn this off!

[fukhan04]

We know you want to push your recommendations, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but please stay out of our carefully-curated playlists. I just want to toggle between normal order and shuffle once in a while without the extra pop-up. 

[zoeurl]

I was having the same problem - I found that deleting the app from my android, then redownloading it removed the feature. Who knows if it'll be reimplemented, but worth a try! 🙂

[Flesh_flaps]

The only way that I just figured out how to manually disable it is by turning off your data/wifi and going offline, and then it resets your shuffle altogether. I know it's not the best solution, but after trying to do some research on it and finding nothing, that's all the help I can offer. I completely agree though, it needs to have some sort of way to disable it for those who aren't interested, and the pop-up shouldn't be forced on us every time we want to shuffle. I just spoke with a guy from the support team, and all he could really say was the it's a brand new feature and the best thing to do would be to come to these community boards or shwhatevs they're being called. Hopefully there will be some change and the higher-ups will take all these mutual complaints into account!

[MrJax]

I completely agree.  I prefer the songs I personally added to my playlists.  And I like them in random/shuffled order but have not cared for any of the recommendations.  Why can't I just listen to my shuffled playlist without having to constantly skip the recommended songs?

I'm on Pixel 6 Pro.  So running android 13. If that matters.

[Ronnoboy]

This 'feature' is extremely annoying. Why would I want recommendations to my own playlists? Rather pretentious of Spotify. Apart from that, I use shuffle a lot in the car. Now I have to read pop-ups and react accordingly while driving.

[duncan_bayne]

There is no reason why Spotify needs to reinvent new UX practices that have been in place for decades.

Well, maybe there is ... it's just not necessarily a reason that makes sense for customers 😉

Spotify recently introduced payola - oh, I'm sorry, it's called "Discovery Mode" - to let music artists pay for placement. (Details in this Rolling Stone article Op-Ed: Spotify’s New ‘Discovery Mode’ Is Just Payola).

I wonder if Smart Shuffle is more of the same - a way to charge artists money for placement, instead of using algorithms to predict what customers would *actually* enjoy listening to.

Anyone at Spotify care to comment? I'd love to know whether Smart Shuffle allows for paid placement.

[sparky_s_mom]

I just got the smart shuffle feature recently and hate it like I never knew I was capable of hating. It manages to find songs and bands that I actively dislike to add to my playlist. I've tried to turn it off while still keeping the normal shuffle on, no luck. Please please please, Spotify, give us a way to disable it, thank you so much.

[ChrisNZL]

+1. Want to be able to disable Smart Shuffle completely.

The shuffle button now takes extra taps to toggle off, and messes with the queue in the process.

iOS: If I have regular shuffle enabled and a song displayed and I want to not use shuffle anymore, tapping the shuffle button turns the button into a loading indicator, in which it goes into "Smart Shuffle mode", and I have to wait for it to finish loading.

After, I have to tap it again to disable Smart Shuffle.

HOWEVER, at this point, since Smart Shuffle became initiated for a moment, an unwanted song gets added to the "queue", meaning that even though the icon is no longer in any shuffle mode, the previous tap has added an unwanted song... So I have to tap "Next" to advance to the unwanted song, then "Previous" to go back to the previous song, which then at least seems to clear the queue.

All this because I can't disable Smart Shuffle completely.

About ready to jump ship to Apple Music or something else. Smart Shuffle is infuriating.

Please, let us have an option to disable Smart Shuffle completely. Worst feature of Spotify by far.

If I want random related songs, I will use the Radio feature, which works well. But please, leave Shuffle alone!

[bkromhout]

I agree that this is a terrible and frustrating feature. Not only do I not want it in the first place, but right now it seems like it's completely broken on Android...turning it on works, but turning it off just straight up doesn't. It shows the little notification telling me the smart shuffle songs were removed, but it in fact did not remove them, and didn't disable the smart shuffle, no matter how many times I click it.

Additionally, it's just bad UX to overload the shuffle button like this. I want it to have 2 states: shuffled and not shuffled. Now it has this third, broken, unwanted state, which is a huge pain point.

This is a seriously bad feature, and an incredibly frustrating UX for people who don't want "intelligence" baked into their music. I curate my own playlists because I want to listen to exactly what I've added to them—nothing more, nothing less. If smart shuffle is going to stick around, PLEASE give us the option to completely opt-out of it in the app settings!

[xomxrta]

it’s unsatisfying to switch from not shuffle to shuffle and back bc it’s loading for this smart shuffle option 

[epansei]

Good God man, HOW in the world did this garbage even get past QA??

WHO in their right mind is making these decisions?? Unbelievable

[Billsbills]

100%. I’ve tried contacting support to see if there was a way to disable and they just said I was picked to try out the feature and can’t get rid of it. The feature is literally bugging out my playlists and not allowing me to have a queue. And even when I have smart shuffle turned off and just normal shuffle, I still get smart shuffle songs

[raendum]

This is so annoying. It also messes with the sorting. I.e.: I have my most recently added song at the top of my playlist. When I'm in shuffle mode, but want to play the playlist in order I'm forced to select Smart Shuffle first, which makes my playlist then play in reverse.

I also don't care about recommendations. That's why I make my own playlists in the first place.

Luckily reinstalling the app fixed this "feature" for now. 

[velocity981]

There is a simple solution that I have personally found to be very effective.  It's called Apple Music.  I am not saying Apple is perfect, but if I want a big company to ignore what I want from their product, I'll choose Apple.   Just a hunch, but I don't think the Spotify folks are giving a %^$# what we think here

[mmatt]

Currently, when you use the Shuffle button (on Mobile) it goes Off —> On —> On (Enhanced) —> Off

On bad connection, it goes Off —> On —> (Load for a long time) —> On (Enhanced) —> Off

So, if you have bad connection, you have to wait longer than normal to turn off shuffle on a playlist.

I think a good solution would be that you could tap and hold the Shuffle button and a drop-down menu to enable one of the options.

[Juanny]

Thanks. I also agree with everyone here. Smart shuffle is terrible and there should AT LEAST be an option to completely disable it so that it doesn’t appear at all when you tap the shuffle button.

[Alistair107]

This sort of disregard of customer preferences (straightforwardly to shuffle the songs selected) is how large market positions get eroded ... quickly.  If your customers are spending their time googling how to get rid of features you've foisted upon them, you'd better be in a market where there's no competition.

[achinca]

This is just SIMPLY AWFUL. What in the world are the management and product team are smoking at Spotify. Features are supposed to enhance the product, not destroy it.

[BananaMan1422]

Agreed if you have bad internet, not only do you have to hit shuffle an extra time before reverting to normal, it also takes like 10 seconds for Spotify to load the recommendations so you have to wait even longer. I’ve also had an issue where every time I turn off “Smart Shuffle” it removes my queue and makes me start at the beginning of my playlist instead of continuing from where I was at