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.

[strerd]

That's the last straw. I don't like Smart Shuffle & Vampire (or music I didn't choose) popping up 1 out of 10 songs. I have over 5000 songs in my playlist. Can you set your algorithm to play a random song?

Recently I've found that playlists are not safe from this. I have 'Classical', 'Blues' & music by decade. Things get inserted randomly. I have no choice where they're inserted. Don't like 21 Savage & I have blocked them from playing. In the future I might like them, as of now I've blocked them & yet random lists will get them. I like some songs by Taylor Swift but not all of her songs.

I'm getting sick of music getting added randomly. Especially when they get put it with my music by decade.

edit: I've never added the music you see below. It was all added randomly.

[antho13]

Ever since smart shuffle was introduced, switching between shuffle and non shuffle has been a pain. My spot in the playlist queue is never retained, it takes ages for it to switch between modes, and I never ever use it. We need an option to remove smart shuffle.

[Fabione72]

It's a pity it does not smart-shuffling the liked songs.

I had to copy all liked songs into a playlist, activate smart-shuffle on it, and each time I like a song I have to click it back and add also to that playlist... quite annoying... 😞

[xefier]

Smart shuffle is no longer optional.  You've made it mandatory.  This is a terrible feature.  PLEASE ALLOW US TO NOT SMART SHUFFFLE OUR PLAYLISTS. 

[hello320155]

Awful, terrible feature. Annoying and not useful at all

Just let us disable it permanently

Why does Spotify insist on making life miserable for it's users? It ought to be quite simple, let your customers enjoy the music they like in the simplest and most straight forward way possible. But nooo, here's another sh*tty "feature" no one likes which we will force on you

Tech these days is an absolute joke 

[Mithrastic]

Please please please let us turn this off. Embed your "smart" features somewhere in the app where it won't be in the way of people that just want to listen to their own selection of music.

[AnarEcho]

For the love of all that is UX and async, remove this already or let us disable it in the settings, it breaks the app, breaks songs from being able to be played, makes you wait, with zero indication of how long, until it has finished the async calls it never needed to do in the first place to shuffle a playlist or un-shuffle it, it even breaks un-shuffling as you have to re-select the same song you're playing after disabling it because it refuses to play the next songs in the list.

This was coded horribly, decided on horribly, and worst of all, not asked to be a feature by anybody, if this forum posts responses are anything to go by, none of us want this, at least in the way it was implemented. please.

[johnwesleyharding]

I've just come back to Spotify in the last few days because I was unhappy with the offering on Apple Music but I will sadly also be passing on Spotify and cancelling my premium membership if they don't allow for the removal of this terrible Smart Shuffle feature. Incredibly buggy, annoying, unnecessary, please remove at once if you don't want to lose another customer (from the comments here it sounds like you've been losing plenty already).

[pastelseas]

Frankly I want Enhance Playlists back without removing Smart Shuffle. I think they both have good uses, particularly times where I just wanna have recommendations added to my playlist without actively listening to it and go over it later. I was using Enhance to curate a lot of specific sounding playlists.

[royalconquest]

I HATE this feature. At least let it be separate from regular shuffle ffs. Having to cycle through this feature every time I want to unshuffle or reshuffle my playlist is just infuriating. I am going to drop Spotify probably.

[strerd]

Here is a breakdown of my listening. I have them grouped in categories by date (1900s through 2020, Classical & Blues & Movies/TV & Japan & Cover Songs. Some of them are in multiple categories).

1900s - 3 songs
1910s - 0 songs
1920s - 6 songs
1930s - 6 songs
1940s - 16 songs
1950s - 67 songs
1960s - 248 songs
1970s - 576 songs
1980s - 565 songs
1990s - 1266 songs (the majority of my music is here)
2000s - 682 songs
2010s - 808 songs
2020s - 78 songs
Classical - 46 songs
Blues - 36 songs
Movie/TV - 302 songs
Japan - 84 songs
Cover - 420 songs
Liked Songs - 5064 songs

I've 'Liked' over 5000 songs.

I like rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, trip-hop, classical, disco, etc. I don't like Country & when a Country song comes up, I delete it (no offense if you like Country). If a Country song enters my list I notice because it doesn't belong there.

My favorite music is 1990s music. I was born in 1978 & was in Jr. high, high school & university in the 1990s. No songs from the 90s pop up in my 'Smart Shuffle'.

Lately I've been blocking songs from entering my list. These songs came out in the last year. I don't know if you're paid to promote them but I suspect so. Recent music from the last year I get all the time in my 'Smart Shuffle' i.e. 'music they get a kickback for playing'.

I end up deleting music I might have liked if it wasn't forced down my throat. Ty Dolla Sign, Lily-Rose Depp, JENNIE, Playboy Carti, Don Toliver, Drippy, Sidhu Moose Wala, Rich Amiri, Good Neighbors, Ice Spice, Morgan Wallen, YG Marley, 21 Savage, Michael Marcagi, Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners, Jack Harlow, Berko Champ & Noah Kahan have all been entered in my 'Do Not Play This Artist' list. As has been said before - I don't like Country - Country get deleted straight away. I'll keep adding to this list until I switch over to Deezer - which may be sooner than you think the way things are going.

Songs I MIGHT like are played too much - 1 songs in 10 is 'Vampire' - Olivia Rodrigo or 'Flowers' - Miley Cyrus or 'Houdini' - Dua Lipa or -Paint the Town Red' - Doja Cat. I end up removing them because they're overplayed.

[disc_count]

Payola 😀

[strerd]

I've had it. Ty Dolla Sign & Kanye West keep coming up. I've blocked them. Repeatedly. They keep coming onto my list twice in an hour. Why do you have recomendations (Pop, Rock, Hip-hop, etc.) under the Search bar if you don't use them. I'm transferring to Deezer. For good if you don't get your sh*t together.

[jreichel]

Amazing work from the team at Spotify. Truly groundbreaking technology to help me find NEW music to list.. oh wait those are the same songs already being played. directly before hand. epic. And now, if smart shuffle toggles on, and you toggle it back off, it doesn't actually clear all the songs id added from the queue. Its bad enough shuffle isn't a true shuffle anymore, and top play songs get preference, but geez. I just want to listen to a selected playlist in a random order, without interruption. A song I didn't expect is honestly worse than the ads in your free version. 

ENABLE A TOGGLE FOR SHUTTING OFF SMART SHUFFLE. IF I WANTED SOMEONE/SOMETHING TO RECCOMEND MUSIC TO ME, I WOULD TUNE IN TO AN FM RADIO STATION. I WANT MY MUSIC, THAT I SELECTED, WHEN I SELECT IT. Get to work team. 

[goldenegg]

Seriously, how they heck can I disable Smart Shuffle for good? I gave it a chance, and it's been a miserable few weeks. It's worse than the Spotify DJ feature. You'll get the same song "smart shuffled" into your mix after like 3 songs it was last shuffled in.

No tutorials I'm trying online will shut this Smart Shuffle feature off, especially permanently. How is there no button or toggle available anywhere in the UI or Settings?

Me thinks this is on purpose so that whatever suit that thought of it can sit in the next meeting and go  "Look at how much engagement we still have with users still using Smart Shuffle?", but bruh...we can't get out of it. "Look at how many people love the hole we dug!" ....dude, we keep falling in & can't get out. We. DO NOT. love the hole. We. DO NOT. like Smart Shuffle.

The only way I can imagine the reason there's no Off Button is because it's by design. When you make a door you put a handle on both sides unless you want ppl stuck on the other side, that or you just don't know how to build a door.

Please fix this.

[gmantsang]

Hello i accidentally disliked a suggestion that I liked but I don’t remember the song name how can I get that back

[HHughes_]

Please let me completely disable smart shuffle 

[jreichel]

Me: *button smashes shuffle to turn off smart shuffle for the fifth time this morning*

Spotify: "Aw we know what you were going for! Here's the perfect setup. Only smart shuffle songs. YES!"

Also insane that these are almost all songs I've already listened to before and decided not to add to any of my playlists. Imagine being this bad at AI...

[CAIDENROX]

This garbage feature keeps reenabling itself everytime I use shuffle. I turn off smart shuffle only for it to turn itself back on 5 seconds later. 

I would literally rather use a different music streaming service than be jerked around and made to listen to songs I don't care about.

Give me the option to disable smart shuffle or I'll just disable my Spotify account.

[CAIDENROX]

This garbage feature keeps reenabling itself everytime I use shuffle. I turn off smart shuffle only for it to turn itself back on 5 seconds later. 

I would literally rather use a different music streaming service than be jerked around and made to listen to songs I don't care about.

Give me the option to disable smart shuffle or I'll just disable my Spotify account.