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.

[Patche]

Hate the smart shuffle. Its awful, i hate that it's a default that you have to turn off. It's Already an option in the settings to have Spotify Add new similar songs to your playlist why add this too? I find comfort in what know i like, not a fan pf Random New music Playing when i don't want it.

[jjf46n2]

Spotify's business model has never become profitable and free silicon
valley money has gone the way of the dinosaur. It seems likely they will
only find more annoying ways to 'help' their customers find music that cost
less for them to stream. Also Tencent is their largest shareholder now. I'm
going to have to try out Tidal, despite having been here since they started.

[Vladikot]

It also came to my PC app and it's buggy. Once it's on it won't turn off until I play another playlist. I just press button to cycle it, see it turning off and then after alt+tab'bing I see it automatically swapping to "on".

I have never used this feature and never wanted to. It only annoys me, and, as I can see, a lot of people, actually.

If you introduce such a feature and it's definitely not good-seen by users, but you are still willing to develop it, just add ANOTHER button, not the button, which users regularly press. Or add a setting to remove it from shuffle-button cycle, to turn it off completely.

Just like, you're facing such user complaints regularly, for like a year or so, since you've introduced this feature into the main app version. If we still after the year write that this function is... ahem... uncomfortable... maybe that is a sign that you're doing something wrong???

[Verascus]

Randomly my music will all of a sudden start playing random songs ive never heard and ill check to see smart shuffle has turned itself on. Ive never once wanted or actually used it, ive only been forced to for some ungodly reason. Very annoying.

[eoinparkinson]

Such a waste of time with this reply. It’s pretty clear that many in the Spotify community dislike this feature. For me personally I absolutely hate it. It’s a disaster. Borderline considering to move to Apple Music or Deezer. Don’t add **bleep** like this to your mobile apps and expect your users to put up with it. 

Please someone in support actually forward this information to your project management and tell them it needs a toggle to enable or disable it in settings. I’m tired of waiting 10-15 seconds for the smart shuffle to enable just so I can quickly disable it and get back to regular inline playback. 

Again, absolutely atrocious decision from Spotify. I get you guys probably want to gather hoards of data from users about playback to see if the feature is worth keeping, but in the meantime maybe the best solution is to just make it optional. 

Many thanks.

[russki516]

My number one desired upgrade in Spotify for android is a way to permanently disable Smart Shuffle. If it would at least actually turn off when I click the button to go back to normal order it wouldn't be as egregious, but almost every time I find myself having to go back and deselect it again, sometimes 2 or 3 times. It takes a long time to remove the unwanted tracks and I never wanted this feature.

[dichterfall]

Yesterday I was listening with the enhance Playlist feature enabled.

I know they removed it a few month ago? But it was still there till yesterday?

And I want it back.

Was it so hard to keep it and add smart shuffle, because the feautes are essentially the same, butr with smart shuffle you have to listen on shuffle, what I dont want to do at some times.

Please give me my enhance playlist option back, I litteraly had it yesterday.

[GoodSoundMan]

I liked the old "Enhance" feature better because you could see at a glance what has been added to your playlist, and jump right to songs that catch your attention, rather than waiting for every third song to get something new to pop up.

[kmanda123]

Absolutely awful implementation. Please for the love of god give us a setting to turn it off forever. I want to be able to toggle shuffle without the button turning into a loading wheel until i restart the app. I use a big playlist and will either play from the recently added section or shuffle the whole thing, so I switch frequently from shuffle to unshuffled, and it takes anywhere between 20 seconds and 10 minutes (I let it run for that long before giving up) until it actually works.

And now you've added it to desktop, reducing the functionality of an incredibly simple and important button by making it a popup with NO option to turn it off. Who the **bleep** signed off on that? 

[astrellabeen]

actually ridiculous how this feature keeps turning itself back on. i'm on desktop and idk if it's just buggy or what but i'll be playing a playlist, turn off smart shuffle, come back literally 1 minute later, and it's back on. also hate that it stops my shuffle setting (on the now playing bar at the bottom) from carrying over between playlists and artist lists. i keep regular shuffle on 99% of the time and now when i click on liked songs by _____ it turns itself off. 

if yall don't remove this completely unnecessary feature, at least give us a setting to turn it off permanently??

[DeviousMalcontent]

Absolutely devastated emotional and very frustrated that they introduced this just want to turn off permanently, tonight was the first night in a long time that I've gone back to Windows Media Player as my default desktop player, the music playlists in there were quite the time capsule, I clicked the shuffle button on Windows Media Player with joy because it didn't have any of that recommendation**bleep**, I don't understand why the company would become so malicious and forces this on its users, it's just as bad as me telling it I don't care for podcasts, soon it will start adding podcasts to the playlist just you watch, I don't know what I'll do for my gym sessions now maybe I'll bring a CD player in or something go old school, it was a good run but now I need to seek out an alternative media player, probably YouTube Music I'll give that a go? I'm quite emotional at the moment if you can't tell should be relaxing with some familiar music that I like rather than getting mad at bands of that I've never heard of, Spotify please fix this just give us an option to disable it.

[Kelso0207]

I'm just here to say that I would like to vote for being able to permanently disable the Smart Shuffle feature. I actually fully take advantage of Spotify's recommendations but I do not need that inserted into my personal playlists and it is an inconvenience to toggle it off. Not to mention that mine seems to be switching automatically to Smart Shuffle if I simply view the playlist that I'm listening to, which is definitely ticking me off.

[me193]

I cannot use smart shuffle on Mac desktop (the Spotify app). Anyone else having the same problem? 

[Servagio]

totally agree

all these useless features while basics are lacking (decent scrollbar with arrows comes to **bleep**in mind)

[Orestesrecio]

How can this horrible feature be disabled ? Whenever you switch between it and the regular shuffle it does not actually turn back to it, just brings some undesired songs in or leaves you on a very different place in your regular already sorted playlist. 

[buddyryo]

Since they refuse to get rid of this awful feature in new updates of the app and I can see that some users are suffering a lot from stress, I recommend that you guys download the version 8.8.12.545 a̶p̶k̶ (the last version that came out before 'smart shuffle' introducion on late February) on safe online websites obviously, no problem if you are a premium user cause I am and I've been using it for almost 2 months without problem! 

After spending months talking to a wall in this community since apparently Spotify doesn't care about the opinions of their paying customers I can finally have some peace and listen to my playlists the way I want to, so if you're looking for another alternative beside switching to another streaming platform, do it until they have some shame and listen to us.

[Souncloud]

Nahhh I be switching to SoundCloud now 💀💀💀💀💀

[RC-1290]

This straight up breaks the shuffle button. It needs to be a toggle between shuffle on, and shuffle off. If you really need to have something to add suggestions to a playlist, use a separate button.

And even IF this was a good idea in some alternate universe, you shouldn't rely on text to make the distinction between shuffle, and "we added a bunch of stuff" and it happens to be shuffled. They both use the same icon, and you have to click it to find out shuffle didn't disable, and then you have to read to find out smart shuffle was ENABLED instead.

Learn how a toggle button works, Spotify.

[pellaeon23]

For the love of god, give us an option to permanently disable this.

[Setherz6104]

I honestly don't mind that this feature exists, but it's annoying when it turns itself on randomly.