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.

[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.

[Singularthey]

I hate the Smart Shuffle, please give us an option to permanently disable it. Nobody asked for this, no one wants this. 

[GattacaCH]

I completely agree. Please bring back the enhance button! The enhance button was a great feature, whereas the Smart Shuffle isn't.

[GattacaCH]

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-09-09/get-perfect-song-recommendations-in-the-playlists-you-create...

[Blackcoog]

I pay to listen to my music not the music you are paid to push on me.  Please stop forcing smart shuffle on people.  

[Rhah]

The fix I use involves rolling back the Spotify app to versions before this dumb feature was implemented. If you're on Android, all you need to do is find a Spotify APK (like from APKPure) from before everything was changed and install it, then prevent automatic app updates from the Google Play Store. My shuffle button now is just a shuffle button like it used to be. If it helps, I'm on version 8.7.90.544. Keep in mind, this also means that you wont get any new "features" they add in the future but lets face it, everything they change ends up being garbage anyway so you're not missing anything in the long run.

[GattacaCH]

https://newsroom.spotify.com/2021-09-09/get-perfect-song-recommendations-in-the-playlists-you-create...

[Camillece]

Spotify Smart Shuffle still cannot be disabled 😞

I hate this sh!t

Whoever thought it was a good idea is too deep up their own **bleep**

[dvsm]

Please add option to disable the smart shuffle! I want to quickly enable shuffle and this smart/enchanced shuffle takes sometimes up to 5 secs to toggle, and then another click for normal shuffle! Its been painful to quickly toggle ever since it was introduced!

[Abitscrewy]

As someone who very meticulously curates my playlists: Hate this entire thing. I would love to have a setting where I can permanently disable it on my entire account.

Also: I dislike the fact that I have to turn shuffle or non-shuffle or loop on for every playlist? If I'm on shuffle and I switch to another playlist, I want to keep it on Shuffle?

[Mojachi]

Please add a setting to disable smart shuffle. My phone will have shuffle off and just be going through my list and then it will randomly (without me even touching the phone) put it on smart shuffle and add songs I don't want to listen to.  It is SO ANNOYING. PLEASE add a way to disable it. 

[MrBones1]

Quite frankly, smart shuffle is inferior to enhance in every way. Enhance made it much easier to expand your playlist and music taste by adding new recommendations if you added an enhance song to your playlist, which smart shuffle doesn't allow. That's also not accounting for how nonsensical the UI is if you want to turn on smart shuffle. Why would you make it the same as the shuffle button, which has meant the same thing for as long as I can remember having spotify? Please bring back enhance

[OutOfTown]

Hi, can you please count the growing numbers of complaints about this worst UX ever? We are currently talking about this “smart” shuffle and its implementation in a three step approach into an on/off button as an example for how to NOT do customer experience, thank you for that! As user, I realized that I simply merely use spotify anymore . And I wonder why aren’t you not following your rules/promises on high voted ideas? We are paying customers, well so far!

[OutOfTown]

And when are you going to do something about it?

[Andaharoo]

Unsubscribed from Spotify a few months ago because of this stupidity. Tried a couple different ones. TIDAL has been fantastic! PSA: Transfer your playlist with soundiiz. Only downside, no standalone (non stream from phone) speaker support.

[bknsd]

How do I turn it off?

[Charrop]

There needs to be a way to disable

this feature completely. So sick of trying to unshuffle and having to wait 20 seconds to go back to listening. 

[Delirium]

Smart shuffle is trash. Why would i want to be forced into playing my playlist in shuffle mode to get recommendations. Having a new recommendation after every 3 songs in my custom ordered playlists is way better. Also, smart shuffle doesn't let you view the recommendations in your list, so I can't skim through all the suggested songs to see if I like them and add them to the playlist. Shuffling playlists became obsolete when the ipod shuffle did, back in 2006.

[kaydom]

Am I the only one that absolutely hates that it's no longer an option to have Spotify recommend songs in the middle of your playlist? I'm trying to work out and Spotify keeps jamming Taylor Swift songs into a playlist titled "Rock and Metal". I'm paying money to listen to the music I want to listen to, and it's super irritating to have to constantly pause what I'm doing to fast forward through their recommendations. It's a dumb thing to get that worked up about, but I'm considering deleting my account if this change becomes permanent.