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.

[9611idth]

Every single time I turn off shuffle and then turn off smart shuffle, the smart shuffle is still on the next time I change song. I have never enjoyed smart shuffle as I don't want to listen to random music I don't care about when I have chosen a playlist to listen to. 

[Cherrylolo]

Don't  like it at all.
Enhance was so much better. I want to see all the recommended songs and be able to filter what I keep and what not and not have some random songs pop up every day.  
Also super annoying to always have the weird popup on the right (desktop) that shows artist info etc... I don't want it to randomly pop up by itself and have to turn it off manually every time.

I've been using Spotify premium for years with over 90k listened minutes every year. I love the app but lately the updates are not my cup of tea and making thing cluttered and not very user friendly.

[9mark]

Hi there,

I have been a Spotify subscriber for nearly 8 years (before that on a student subscription for 3-4 years), and this is the first comment I have ever left on the community forum. I felt the need to post here to let the folks at Spotify know about my frustration.

The fact that the Smart Shuffle feature is still force-enabled without an option to turn if off completely is absolutely shocking given the amount of community feedback on this feature. I have already started using other services and am liking them more than Spotify, and a big reason was the Smart Shuffle frustrations, especially on iOS (it seriously pisses me off, pardon my French).

Why continue to use Spotify if it is just worse than other services now? Other services offer hi-res audio...Spotify doesn't as far as I know...

And then to make matters worse, I'm forced to struggle with this asinine feature that is being imposed on me for a service I have subscribed to for over a decade.

I get that the feature is probably meant to get listeners listening to more/varied music...more song plays...yada yada...more money...helps your bottom line....fine...

But as a loyal customer, I am expressing my feedback: I would appreciate the option to turn off Smart Shuffle entirely (iOS & Windows). Otherwise I will be abandoning this service...which kind of hurts as someone who has advocated for Spotify since circa 2012.

Cheers,

Mark

[K-Roc]

I'm here to vote that we get an option to completely disable smart shuffle.  I hate it so much lol.

[user-removed]

I am so excited about Smart Shuffle and the way Spotify has responded to its reception that I am cancelling my account today.

[ConnyLindquist]

2023-03-07 - Is the date the first post about this was dropped in this forum. The function still dont work. The lists just dont keep the "suggested" songs. Vanishing a few seconds after I enable it... 

And ontop of that everyone else hates it... Seriously, do something. Anything but this **bleep**. 

[Ivr]

The feature itself isn't the problem. The problem is that it is too easy to enable, often unknowingly by accident. When that happens users feel frustrated because it makes them feel they (temporarily) lost control over their own carefully curated playlist. 

Suggestion: Make the button a toggable feature in the settings menu.That way people who repeatedly end up frustrated with it, can disable it forever and never have to have a negative experience with it again. 

I am sure the majority loves the feature. But there's also a significant group of users who constantly end up annoyed and frustrated by the accidental toggle. Adding this setting toggle will keep both groups happy.

More feedback: Don't touch Discover Weekly! It's the reason that has me subscribed to Spotify. It's brilliant. I love it. Don't touch it. If anything, expand it by offering Discovery Weekly across different genres or moods. Discovery Weekly is the best thing that makes Spotify stand out against other streaming platforms.

[Bittereye]

They don't even read**bleep**

[meerow]

They definiteliy know the feature is shitty. But its obvious, that they force it upon users because they made contracts to push music into the users daily listening. I disagree that most pople like it. I am certain that the feature is knowingly implemented to increase the number of accidental activations, because that way more music is forced upon the users. It is totally intentional that the button state is hard to distinguish between smart and non smart shuffle. They want users to frequently activate it, and then they can get their dirty money for the sponsored music.

They presented themselves as people who want to enable users to define their listening experience, but ended up being greedy and manipulating users forcing music on them because some company decided they want to push it. This way they failed their initial goal and instead completely distort the world of music. 

The best thing that you can do is CANCEL in reality. Threatening in this forum does not work. 

The second best thing you can do is convincing others to use alternative services so that they cancel too. I found out that I could convince quite a lot of friends that other services are the same or even suit them better. 

Third, go to social media or music media and try whst you can to get more attention on this.

[buddyryo]

This is the best answer, it's useless to keep complaining here since they won't read or do something about it because they are clearly doing it on purpose and they know nobody likes this feature but they need to force these "random" songs down users' throats since they've already signed with record labels to do it, paying costumers need to cancel their accounts until they change this to a optional button or remove completely! I know this can be a sacrifice for those who have been using Spotify for years but it's something necessary because if you don't do anything about it and keep going paying in silence then nothing will change and they will be fine, they need to know this is not right and if many people do it maybe they notice the problem and it would even be a form of protest against the company's greed, so please, switch to another streaming platform and convince your friends and family to do the same!

[user-removed]

Amen.

[Poonsl4yr]

Smart shuffle sucks. Want to know why? Here's three reasons.

1) activating smart shuffle is a pain in the **bleep**. It doesn't add reccomended songs until smart shuffle is activated/deactivated repeatedly. If you're going to implement a feature like this maybe actually have it work the first time.

2) playlist radio was better. You all replaced a perfectly functional feature with one that performs much more poorly. Playlist radio used to take into account every song on the playlist and provide different suggestions based on what was contained within the playlist. Smart shuffle has the same reccomendations regardless the content that is being shuffled. 

3) "smart" shuffle is duller than a sack of hammers. It continues to "reccommend" songs that are ALREADY ON THE **bleep** PLAYLIST. If you're going to replace features that function as intended, maybe make sure that the replacement feature actually works. 

[farberio]

Hi,

Is there some global switch to disable this feature from running? Lately it seems to be forcing its way into my shuffle which is quite frustrating when I have it setup to be a specific mix and then suddenly a recommendation I didn't ask for nor want to listen to is playing.

What I am looking for is a global option so smart shuffle cannot be activated at all.

[4l3xk1ll]

Bring back Enhance, Smart shuffle is way harder to understand wich songs are being proposed, plus if we don't want to shuffle our playlist we can't get reccommendations, just a really dumb choice to change it.

[d65ea-ch1_bev]

Spotify really messed up on this one. Smart shuffle cannot be turned off as it just turns itself back on again. This is actually the most annoying update they could have done. I'm legit done with Spotify after this. Off to Apple music I go.

[Will116]

For the love of God, let users disable this "feature".  When I want to turn on Shuffle I don't want to have to toggle through this "Smart Shuffle". I don't need it, I don't want it, and it slows everything down.  If you insist on including it, let us disable it permanently.

Oh, and let us have a completely random shuffle.  This isn't hard. Do it. We're paying you for this.

[Will116]

I tried that.  It's unusable. 

Spotify is SO CLOSE to being great.  But they refuse to make things simple and let us just access our music.

[skvipe]

I mean... I understand the idea, and it seemed like an interesting approach, which is why I turned it on when my desktop app recommended Smart Shuffle. The biggest mistake ever!

90% of recommendations are not even 'meh', but rather songs that I strongly dislike. Alright, fine, it was worth a shot - let's turn it off again... aaaaand you can't. It is impossible to turn off, the feature simply keeps switching back on despite clicking the button and the request seemingly going through. After a few songs, it's on again and sometimes the icon doesn't even show it's activated, but the songs keep on popping into my playlist. 

I'm using the music to help me focus on creative tasks and this bug has ruined my workflow today. How is it even possible that a company of this size with hundreds of developers is not able to fix a widely spread defect that significantly affects usability? In many months (or is it years already)? 

[disc_count]

Bc they want you to listen to the songs that they want you to listen to. I don't think this is a bug. At least not in the eyes of Spotify. Why else would it take so long to fix this issue? It'd be hard to believe it was lack of development resources for, as you said yourself, "a company of this size". Unfortunate but I think this is the nature of streaming services in general.

[abjecttestament]

This still sucks and enhanced playlists was better.