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.

Different playback options.

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

🌟 I would like to disable Smart Shuffle permanently. Can I do that?

Yes, you can! Just go to Settings and privacy and then to Playback and toggle the option Enable all play modes to off. This will mean you will only have the regular shuffle. 

Note: This option is for Premium users only.

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.

[hbcn]

I don't need nor want this new feature. It's been many times that after pushing the shuffle button and get on with what was doing, after some bad songs I realised that, AGAIN, the so called "smart" shuffle (actually the opposite of smart)  come in action to destroy my mood with random songs I never wanted. I still wondering why I pay spotify subscription if in the end Spotify make listen whatever they want anyways. This is really disturbing and every time makes me angrier. Please, I want an option to disable forever the possibility of enabling "smart" shuffle when pushing the regular shuffle button.

[Lewkiy]

I don't know if it really does something to post here but please allow us to at least disable this feature, and bring back smart shuffle ! I beg you. Plus, for the people that don't like enhancement, simply don't use it...

[muffinoffunk]

I hate this feature.  Its super annoying when I am trying to listen to music in the car and then I am like what on earth is this tune playing as I hate it and then I have to figure out how to turn off smart shuffle when I am driving.

Can you please put something in settings so you can turn it off if you don't like it?

[DavidSherri]

Joan

Smart Shuffle is ok but I probably won't use it.

How about shuffle with a memory.  Shuffle that remembers what has been played in the last 10 or so sessions and doesn't play those songs again.  There are over 600 songs on my favorite playlist but if the session is stopped the current shuffle may pick up a song recently played.

Many of us stopped listening to radio because the Top 40 went to Top 20 and we just couldn't stand it.

David S

[Gineuz]

The main Problem is that it does require a good Internet connection, so often times it doesnt load and i cant get out of shuffle mode entirely. Please add a setting to disable it entirely.

[Ubercharge]

Please just bring back the Enhance button. There was never an issue with it and this frankly creates more. The shuffle button should not have more functions than “shuffle” and “play in order”. Not only that but the enhance button had better recommendations. 

[121553490]

No wonder my playlist with over 1000 songs always plays the same 40 or 50 EVERY session. This is obviously not a feature users want, but rather Spotify has implemented for their own personal gain. Turn**bleep** OFF

[121553490]

Which version did you revert to?

[MikeMusic1]

If i can’t turn this disaster of a feature completely off i’m switching to apple music.

[holymolyfreak]

Is this feature related to the issues I have that simply selecting/choosing a song now makes it skip through a totally random list of songs *WITHOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING THE SONG I HAVE CHOSEN*.

If I select a song from a playlists, it scans the playlist and again *DOES NOT PLAY THE SONG I CHOOSE TO* 

I have deleted the app, restarted my phone, reinstalled the app, cleared the cache, but no cigar..

I use an iPhone 11, IOS 16.4.1 

[Khaasiid]

Smart shuffle keeps crashing my spotify when i try to turn it off. Please add a disable feature. 

[theM94]

Honestly all you need to do is keep a spotify "classic" and maybe call it beta. Because that's what it feels like. Programmatically might seem sound, but clearly, none of your employees uses spotify.

You keep dumbing the app down, making buttons bigger, more rounded.

Spotify was great.

Now I'm considering switching to downloading FLACs again, because the core feature (which is streaming music) changes appearance and usage. WHY THO.

[arkanesky]

^ couldn't agree more. I'm spending more time in foobar2k and bandcamp app these days just because the spotify app runs like total trash, its native shuffle mode only selects a subset of ~200 songs and shuffles those repeatedly instead of actually shuffling in the totality of your playlist, and don't get me started (again) on the absolute dumpster fire that is "smart shuffle".   you know something sucks when they have to pre-emptively name it "Good Thing" because it's so offensively bad they have to begin damage control before you even use the "feature" for the first time.

[arkanesky]

"Smart Shuffle" is like a mason jar labeled "Good-Smelling Fart"

just ridiculous.

[Eggznbakey]

I HATE HATE HATE this idiotic smart shuffle feature. I don’t care if you want to include it in the app, but at least give me the option to shut off this obnoxious waste of time completely! It has become INFURIATING waiting for the 5-10 second lag delay every time I want to skip through this option when switching between regular play and regular shuffle. How do none of your devs test this garbage and kill it before you enrage your customers with something no one wanted, and that doesn’t even work well anyway??? Boggles the mind. 

[welchsjuice44]

I hate smart shuffle, it's honestly so annoying having to wait for the smart shuffle to load before I'm allowed to take it off, and sometimes it takes forever to load, I'm really thinking of switching apps cause of this, so annoying 

[Skoteh90]

This is not intuitive and the functionality is overall worse than the 'radio from playlist' feature.

[ArinBlackheart]

I have 95 emails about this thread. Not ONE is a response from Spotify about how they may or may not fix this feature or listen to any of the feedback. Meanwhile I'm now running into an issue where depending on how I listen (not the device. It changes between speakers and headphones) suddenly half my library can't be listened to on desktop. And you'll never guess how well that will go trying to fix it. 

[kaworu_bloodpaw]

@ArinBlackheart

Does it give you a "This content can't be played right now" error? I might have a solution to that.

[ArinBlackheart]

It does. Only in the desktop app though