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

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.

[Gurrra]

I just got the feature, and while I can see it being useful sometimes I do find it VERY annoying as it's implemented now. I mean I turn shuffle on and it populates my queue with recommended stuff, but when I turn shuffle off to listen to my playlists or whatever in order I still have those recommended stuff in my queue. I don NOT want this.

Common Spotify, I appreciate you trying to add new stuff for us, but most stuff you added recently is nothing I want with that very annoying left sidebar on desktop that's somehow supposed to make it work more like the mobile app being the worst. Can we just please revert Spotify to what it was a few years ago?

[RZA24]

SPOTIFY HELP US THE **bleep** OUT PLEASE

[AJ_Dee]

Even when I turn smart shuffle off, after a song from my playlist it goes back to that mode and a random song plays. Please either fix this or give us an option to permanently disable that feature.

[Dyscomancer]

ABSOLUTELY needs a permanent disable toggle. Been using the service for over 10 years now and this is the first thing that has made me seriously consider cancelling my subscription.

[MixHypnotic]

I hate this. I want to enhance my playlist then edit songs as desired from there so I can relisten to the new mix of songs again. I hate the black box concept where Spotify decides what I want and serves it to me. Only I know what I want, Spotify can only make suggestions. Stop removing music organization functionality and replacing it with smoke and mirrors "smart" features that remove the ability to curate a collection. 

[juggles1234]

Are we taking crazy pills now at Spotify? Isn't spotify supposed to hire prestigious tech workers, and these are the decisions that are being made? How do you not have an option to remove the smart shuffle option? Unbelievable. If it's not gone by next billing cycle, I'm finding another streaming platform to spend my money on instead.

[djdasubz]

PLEASE. GIVE. US. THE. OPTION. TO. FULLY. DISABLE. SMART. SHUFFLE.

[jonobo42]

I know I'm in the minority here...oh, wait EVERYONE feels this way!

How can this still be an issue? People have been complaining for over 1/2 year! We PAY for this service. I listen to my own library while coding. Suddenly I hear a song I've never heard before and don't like at all. Did you all sit around coming up with the dumbest idea ever for your product, get high and then decide to name it "Smart"?

[Spudak]

Bring back Enhance!!!! Enhance was amazing, Smart Shuffle doesn't do what I want it to do, it's far less user friendly. At some point one must ponder the idea of "if it isn't broken, don't fix it" - Enhance is/was better!! Please please please bring it back!

[shewitt1]

Please just separate Smart Shuffle into a different button than the regular Shuffle button! It's trivial to implement coding-wise, and not that hard for your UX designers to figure out how to present elegantly. Hijacking the regular shuffle button with this third toggle option that requires a synchronous network call (that often fails on mobile if you aren't on wifi) is a horrible idea that ruins the experience of listening to music so much.

At least a few times a week I hear a song I like when on regular shuffle and I want to then listen to that part of the playlist in order, so I try to turn Shuffle off. Instead of turns Smart Shuffle on, so then I tap again. But then sometimes this 2nd tap doesn't work forcing me to tap again, or it takes 2-10 seconds, or just plays another random song. The worst is when it seems to have turned off, but it actually randomly turns back on once I look away blasting me with recommended music I did not want to hear.

If Spotify really can't be bothered to make basic playlist controls a priority for their UX and bring back the regular shuffle button (Enhance as a separate button is fine, it never got in my way), it might be time to explore Apple Music instead so I don't have to deal with poorly thought out ways to shove machine learning/sponsored songs onto their users when they didn't ask for any.

[greycode]

Smart shuffle **bleep**ing sucks. Give us back enhanced mode.

[Julian_1]

BRING BACK ENHANCE I **bleep**ING HATE SMART SHUFFLE SO MUCH

[Bobwing14098]

The Smart Shuffle feature is extremely annoying and has ruined my Spotify experience. I do not want, nor do I appreciate, the forced injection of songs I have not selected. I've tried to turn it off without success. I will be compelled to find another service if this issue isn't resolved soon. I would appreciate a response.

[Jorra]

In my "Liked songs" I can only do normal shuffle.
In "custom" playlists smart shuffle is available

[Jorra]

What is enhance?

The "Recommended"-section still exists.

[Kyzho]

I don't like smart shuffle being forced on me whenver I want to reshuffle my current queue, it also takes multiple attempts to turn off smart shuffle which is another annoying fact. give us the option to disable smart shuffle via settings

[username73762362]

Please revert this. It now takes several seconds to change from shuffle to linear since i have to go thru smart-shuffle.

User interactions should not take more than about 100 ms to be perceived as instant. Someone must have forgotten about this rule when making this, as it now takes me about 5 seconds to switch from shuffle to linear since it has to go thru smart-shuffle that takes forever to toggle for some reason. Add a toggle to turn it off, or at least move the loading to a background thread.

[lonndon]

Can we please bring back the Enhance feature? When using Smart Shuffle to find new songs it's usually music that I have already listened to, rather than new, fresh, songs. It's incredibly difficult and tedious to find new music, especially as the queue takes a few seconds to refresh after removing a Smart Shuffle song. 

[axolotl123123]

I hated """smart""" shuffle on mobile, it is FORCED on you. It could easily be something toggled in settings, but no, it HAS to happen EVERY TIME you click shuffle, and spotifys terrible and slow algorithm WILL force you to wait 10 seconds as it adds songs YOU DON'T WANT into your play list. Every Single Time you try to shuffle. Now they've added it to PC, where IT DOES THIS EXACT SAME THING. I never wanted spotify shuffle, It is incredibly trivial to make it optional, yet spotify chooses to go "You're paying us 17 dollars a month, but you don't get the freedom to use spotify how you want. You have to use it how WE want you to use it." They do this with so many other "features" as well. You want your homepage to have things in the same spot? No, It will randomize the location of everything every time, so you're manipulated into listening to songs that are the most profitable to spotify. You don't want your homepage spammed with a.i generated playlists and songs? No, you MUST look at our play lists, you have NO CHOICE. You want shuffle to be random? No, you MUST use our SOPHISTICATED algorithm which attempts to be more random than random but fails miserably.

Spotify can have these features, but they should be CHOICES. There is no REAL reason any of these can't be choices, it wouldn't take any effort at all, but they choose not to. Every update they add, they remove more and more user freedom and add more bloat. My idea is add a settings tab and let us USE IT.

[Fedemer]

I enjoyed the "Enhance" feature a lot to discover similar tracks to the ones I already liked. Being a Premium user, I don't see why I need to "Shuffle" and get through my playlist but sorted randomly to hear recommendations and similar tracks. I get it if you are a free user, since the more you stay on the platform, the more ads you get. Please, at least give "Enhance" back to premium users.