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.

[Darth_GTB]

@Dunn, I absolutely agree. They act like as if we didn't stick with them just because they are slightly more convenient than pirating

[HeyaUser]

Please get rid of the prompt for selecting Shuffle or Smart Shuffle, and please stop activation smart shuffle every time i want to disable shuffle. Just let us disable smart shuffle

[______________-]

Welp I'm **bleep**. No playlist radio, no enhanced shuffle just that B's at the bottom of 5 usually overplayed dogsh*t songs. Out of both of these features playlist radio was great. If it's not broken don't fix it. I don't understand you people. Please bring either of them back.

[kippsteph]

58 pages of people begging you to get rid of a feature that is not adding anything but aggravation to our paid listening experience. Been a Spotify user since the beginning and this "smart shuffle" absolutely ruins the experience. The shuffle button should do two things only: SHUFFLE ON, SHUFFLE OFF. Simple. Clearly none of us want your "smart" suggestions. We are capable of culling our own lists and like them just the way they are. You are not the only game in town. Frustrated people take their money elsewhere. I'll be doing the same if this kind of stuff continues to be ignored. Stop trying to fix what isn't broken.

[hans-jürgen]

Not sure if this problem has already been mentioned in the 59 pages of this thread, but it seems that using smart shuffle when scrobbling to Last.fm will add "From Smart Shuffle" to the submitted artist name, either leading or following it. Maybe this happens only for the recommended tracks and not for your own tracks, but I cannot test this as a free user in Germany. See this related thread on the Last.fm subreddit:

Misnaming artists from Spotify Smart Shuffle : r/lastfm (reddit.com)

You can delete it as a Last.fm Pro user afterwards from you scrobbles in your library, and maybe there are mobile scrobbling apps that can use regex filters to avoid scrobbling it like Pano Scrobbler. But of course it would be better if Spotify did not add this term to the artist name at all in the metadata which is submitted to Last.fm.

[Noguri]

None of the below information is required. However, the more you provide the easier it will be for us to try and help.

Plan

Premium

Country

Slovakia

Device

Samsung SM A510F

Operating System

Android 7.0

My Question or Issue

Note: I can't send You video or screenshot, I am totally blind.

Hello.

I have a strange issue. I try to explain You.

Shuffle button isn't changed, as in computer. I try to describe those parameters as follows:

Intelligent shuffle

Normal shuffle

But on computer there is:

Normal shuffle

Intelligent shuffle.

Please, could You look on It?

Thank You.

Best regards

Marco Oros

[kouturekupcake]

Please add the option to completely turn off smart shuffle. If I am wanting to shuffle my playlist, I only want to hear what’s on MY playlist, not whatever random songs spotify wants to add. It slows down my phone and it’s never truly clear when it’s been activated. It’s not a feature I ever want to use and it’s really irritating that it seems to be the default shuffle option now.

[MikeTheGuy1776]

Shuffle has turned itself on multiple times! There is also a dangerous enhanced shuffle which adds songs to your playlist! I spent a lot of time making playlist and putting them in a specific order! Fix this and stop messing with the program! Fire these coders you don't need useless changes! 

[Darth_GTB]

@MikeTheGuy1776, as a developer, I must say, only blame the devs for bugs. Never blame the devs for features. Blame the businessmen in their suits making money out of us, feeding us sponsored content in this fake shuffle feature.

It's clearly sponsored. They don't even bother choosing songs from the same genre present in the playlist. They don't even try to hide it.

One thing I noticed is that the web version of Spotify doesn't use this fake shuffle. It uses the normal shuffle (which is also not a true shuffle, but better than playing songs that are not present in the playlist), so I started using the web version in my phone as well now.

[#11]

The controversy about the smart shuffle option is very frustrating. It is hurting every music artists before I play any songs. Why? Because it lacks many people to get their favorite music in order that they want.
The problem is I want them to remove the smart shuffle. Automatically randomizing every song in every playlist. I have to tap the next song and keep the phone turned on while traveling anywhere. Always these developers who did this to Spotify is because of the shuffle and playing song in order is in the premium. What kind of stupidity is this?

[Psilocybin369]

Why it is not possible to shuffle my own created playlist without Spotify adding songs to the playlist?!
I don't want spotify to attach an unwanted enhacement feature to my playlist when I just want to shuffle my list...
Shuffle ON / Shuffle OFF - Enhance ON / Enhance OFF.
That's the only option I want, especially for a paid service.
Since I'm currently paying to be forced to listen to unwanted songs while just wanting to shuffle my list, I'm giving Spotify 1 more month. If the shuffle button is not sperated from enhancement by that time I ditch Spotify.
Don't mess with our playlists while we just want to listen our own created lists on shuffle!

The person or team who implemented this feature should be fired, STANTE PEDE!

[Taerarch]

I'm not interested in this feature and I find it annoying that it's part of the main ui, such that I have to cycle through it when I'm toggling regular shuffle. I'm considering downgrading the version of Spotify to remove this feature myself.

[Joey36]

Smart shuffle is within the top 10 worst ui design functions. Giving an option to fully disable it would make it better, but if i want a different shuffle que i have to sit through spotify lagging for a few seconds just to disable the feature anyways. It's literally pointless, and quite frankly ridiculous. BTW spotify isnt lagging due to an old system, fully built with completely new parts and it still lags. Horrible optimization, for a horrible feature.

[MartinKirk]

I HATE THIS FEATURE !

[user-removed]

hating this feature, cant even play songs that i wanted like nine circles, BUT INSTEAD, PLAYS A DIFFERENT SONG THAN NINE CIRCLES, THIS FEATURE AUTO ENABLING IS STUPID! VERY, ONE STAR, LITERALLY. WE ALL HATE THIS FEATURE, REMOVE IT, THE ORIGINAL ONE WHERE YOU CAN PLAY SONGS THAT YOU SELECTED WAS EVEN BETTER, wish i could give 0 stars.

[bobinush]

Over a year of complaints about this feature and now I saw that smart shuffle is the first option when I press the shuffle button (iOS).

Jesus Spotify.. you can do better. 

[strohi]

I hate this feature, how can I get rid of it once and for all?

Please do not "help me discover new music". You're bad at this and I will choose my music myself, I don't need the help of some stupid computer, thanks.

This is not what makes Spotify a good service.

[3w95-ui_j43gy]

I hate this feature so much. It's been years with no improvement. I am a UX designer and this has to be the worst experience I've had with an app in recent years. After years and years of negative feedback, there is still no option to completely toggle off the feature. You can always keep it around, make a separate button, or at least have a setting where users who do not find this valuable can disable Smart Shuffle. The few seconds of lag between smart shuffle and regular shuffle, and more glaringly, needing to cycle through Smart Shuffle FIRST BEFORE regular Shuffle is wholly frustrating and annoying! I am also a user who likes to shuffle through my songs a few times to get the right queue, and Smart Shuffle has really destroyed the experience and made it a poor one. Unlike others who have tens or hundreds of playlists, I tend to just add songs that I like to my few existing playlists. If I wanted to listen to something new, I would listen to Weekly Mix or something else. Please just get rid of this or make it toggleable because this is the worst.

[dianbees]

With all due respect: this is garbage. Let us turn it off!

[asogavt]

I have a premium account. I'm trying to listen to a playlist I created which currently has 18 songs and runs 1 hr 17 min. Spotify plays a song not on my play list every other song regardless of what setting the shuffle button is in. This is maddening. I have to physically shut down the unwanted song to get to the next song on my playlist. How do I get this to stop. I do not want to hear songs not on my playlist.