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

🌟 I would like to disable Smart Shuffle permanently. Can I do that?

Yes, you can! Just go to Settings and privacy and then to Playback and toggle the option Enable all play modes to off. This will mean you will only have the regular shuffle. 

Note: This option is for Premium users only.

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.

[Tarkz]

Stop turning this "smart" shuffle on by default. I don't want to listen to different songs when I'm in my playlist, otherwise they would be in my playlist. This is a terrible feature that NO ONE wanted. Give us a way to disable it. Stop turning it on by default and trying to force it on the community. And stop trying to make this happen. It's a bad feature and needs to be removed.

[thomasruns]

Please stop trying to make "smart" options. An algorithm will never, ever choose what I want to listen to better than I can choose myself. Period. As everyone here has been saying for almost a year now, this is an awful feature on it's own and the UX implementation is even worse. Add an option to turn it off completely so I'm not forced to choose every single time I switch to and from shuffle mode.

[Cakeinator3000]

The issue is not Smart Shuffle itself, but how Smart Shuffle is implemented. It completely ruins the user experience of being able to quickly re-shuffle because it is part of the regular shuffle button as well, so it takes longer to just turn off and on regular shuffle. This is a pain if you want to generate different sets of shuffled queues really quickly to add some songs from those shuffled queues to your curated queue multiple times. So, not only did they apparently make people mad with getting rid of enhanced, they messed up a whole other set of users’ experience of how they use Spotify with the regular shuffle button.

I like to discover new music too, but this completely ruins the main way I use Spotify and it’s that users have no way around it just to use regular shuffle. The Smart Shuffle button needs to be a separate button from the regular shuffle button, and why this was not done to begin with other than because of cheap tactics I don’t know (maybe they were mad that not enough people used the enhance button or something so they figured out a way to force this type of feature on users). A separate button would be a smarter option so that those who like it can easily use it, but I would be completely happy if they added a toggle to disable the Smart Shuffle totally in settings or if they just removed Smart Shuffle as a feature altogether.

[quadracycle4000]

Get rid of it.

[spotbye]

The only thing people know how to do is complain. I find this feature to be quite interesting!

[quadracycle4000]

It is interesting, but it can be interesting elsewhere.

[spotbye]

Good one! 😁🤘

[Deathbelow]

I HATE this feature. At some point smart shuffle was selected, and now every time I want a regular shuffle I have to tap the shuffle button, wait for it to smart shuffle, wait for the notification of smart shuffling to disappear, toggle shuffle off, and then shuffle it again to get regular shuffle. This was/is a terrible feature that we deserve to have a way to disable. I don’t want to have to do this EVERY time I shuffle a playlist. If I wanted to listen to music other than what I put in a playlist, I’d listen to OTHER peoples mixes. 

[Das_Terminator]

Who asked for this "feature", enhanced playlist was fine, why make it a forced button that I have to scroll through when I want to turn shuffle on or off. roll this s**t back

[Duon1992]

First of al, i get that some people might want this (i'm not one of them) 

But perhaps you should get the normal shuffle function tonwork properly.

Because it won't shuffle my playlists it will shuffle a few songs out of a playlist. 

Now i have to use a third party app to actually shuffle all the songs in my playlist. (which of course by itself is ridiculous)

So first fix the normal shuffle function, 

Then ad the smart shuffle as an option in the settings menu (not under the shuffle toggle button) 

[Tom2022]

Keep Enhanced, don’t put this rubbish on my phone. A button that toggles regular shuffle on and off is all I want my shuffle button to do.

[technibaby]

THIS FEATURE IS AWFUL!!! Spotify already ruined regular shuffle, and now this nonsense?? Seriously, wth. It was bad enough when it replaced the shuffle button with pause / play in a recent previous update (so you can’t just keep pressing shuffle from the playlist, you just have to open the song and unshuffle then reshuffle, incredibly annoying). Now, thanks to “Smart”Shuffle, when I want to reshuffle a playlist I open the song, press shuffle, it has to lag to enable the Smart Shuffle, then I press it again because I just want normal shuffle, and then it **bleep** closes the song and goes back to the playlist so then I have to reopen the song yet again to press shuffle. Oh, I don’t like this new shuffle queue? Redo all of that all over. I am literally going to switch to Apple this is so f*****g ANNOYING

[aidspdx]

I hate smart shuffle, stop trying to make us use features we don't want. If you are going to anyway, don't make it the same button as the normal shuffle button.

[MartiParty]

Hello, i am not the type of person that writes from frustration but this feature is buggy as **bleep** and it MUST have a disable button for it. HOW can you develop something new without a freaking button to disable it, unknowing how the public will react to it!?!?

Why am I so mad? Because I listen to my music on shuffle and i just want to continue from that point of my playlist (where my current shuffle location is). What it does instead is KILL MY VIBE because the stupid "smart" shuffle comes next, it messes up my playlist location AND NOT ONLY THAT, the time in between changing shuffle modes the ARTWORK and the NAME OF THE SONG is desynced and it display the song that follow but gives and AUDIO OUTPUT of the previous song.

PLEASE REMOVE IT OR ADD A BUTTON TO STOP IT, otherwise i will just change platform, have been a member since 2014 and this is getting out of hand with dumb features!!!!!

[Clarakn]

Smart shuffle is really annoying. It uses up my data every time, messes up the order of the playlist (instead of newest add to oldest add, it goes in the opposite direction) and takes 15 seconds every time to switch. I don't know why they have to force this add-on on the listeners without any off-switch. I think I'd rather switch to Deezer or some other streaming service at this point.

[SailorStupider]

Please disable this. Smart shuffle is throwing things like beyonce and t swift in my queue and im a metalhead bro like come on. Not dissin that stuff just really aint for me. 

[#18]

When i leave the app my smart shuffle songs disappear. if i go to turn it off and back on again, it says “smart shuffle songs removed” and removes songs from the queue that are actually on my playlist.

[MountainPeaks]

I’d like to report a bug with the button. When my phone is on airplane Meade or out of service I cannot disable the shuffle. Selecting the shuffle button turns into a process wheel, which then reverts back to the normal shuffle icon. 

this can be reproduced by enabling “offline mode” in the settings/playback/offline. When “offline” mode is enabled shuffle cannot be disabled. 

expected behavior:

1. Shuffle is disabled by default and songs play in linear order. 
   
   
2. Pressing shuffle button enables normal shuffle (shuffle within my music)
3. Pressing shuffle button enables smart shuffling
4. Pressing shuffle goes back to shuffle disabled. 
   
   

I would not expect the button to go from 1 -> 2 -> 2 -> 2 -> 2…. Stuck in a loop. 

the only way to “disable” shuffling once it is stuck in this state, is to go to the playlist and change the shuffle mode on the playlist rather than from within the song player. 

this is very frustrating especially for air travel or any time internet is spotty. 

technical specs:

IOS 16.4

Spotify: 8.8.22.517

[thomasruns]

When they announced this horrible feature they included a video on YouTube. It sure would be a shame if that video was flooded with downvotes and comments about how they're ignoring everyone who hates this "feature". The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGywCWpAZEA

[KyuFilvis]

Can't smart shuffle on pc/desktop 😕