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.

[ablablblab]

Hello, im using the desktop app for Spotify, and I in a recent update apparently there was a change in the shuffle feature. I really hope it is a bug, where EVERY TIME I try to shuffle anything, it becomes smart shuffle instead and keep recommending songs that are not in my playlist or anything i'm currently listening to. Every post i saw about smart shuffle just said to 'disable it by pressing the button" but it simply does not work. either it is not shuffled at all, or is this horrible feature.

I never even give feedback like this but this is some of the worst changes in features I ever had to use. Please be a bug or at least give an option to disable this.

[Aldhissla]

Stop enabling stupid new features by default!

[RandomCustomer]

I have turned off "Enhancement", I have put it in Offline mode, now there is "Smart Shuffle", that took me forever to find and turn off. You just keep adding more ways to add random songs in my private personal playlists, just stop.
If you want to make Spotify better for me, put back horizontal mode (because that is how it mounts in my car).

And make it so I can say "don't recommend this song for months" in the Recommendation area below the playlist. I honestly will go look there, but stop a few pages into the same songs you have been showing me for weeks that I keep needing to skip through to get to anything new. Just let me ignore some for a while.

And maybe don't show me songs I already have above.

And maybe don't swap out the versions I have for other versions without telling me.

And if you have to remove a song for some reason, offer me a different version then.

[feduptothebackteeth]

I HATE this stupid feature. I want to listen to the songs I've chosen. Why can't you make it easier to turn off and go back to normal shuffle? I'm thinking of cancelling my subscription and going to Apple Music instead. Can't be worse.

[fixed47]

I hate smart shuffle so much 😠 please let me disable it in the settings

[Brucemcphee37]

Please get rid of Smart Shuffle.  It sucks. And your shuffle algorythm is awful as well.  I have 300 songs in my favorite playlist and hear the same 100 songs over and over.  

[recommendationssuck]

This has been something that has been absolutely enraging me for months, i finally got premium the other day so i could download my playlists and today it started playing recommended songs and it won't get out of recommended songs???? I exited out of spotify and even restarted my phone, but it is still playing the same recommended song playlist despite me clicking on the play button on my playlist. This is extremely annoying, i don't want any recommended songs on my playlists, i turned off the "autoplay similar songs", i looked at the queue and they're ALL recommended songs on my downloaded playlist????? Spotify istg fix this because i am so tired of this. 

[mungikin]

Gonna cancel my family plan if this option isn't able to be turned off COMPLETELY

[maksgogun]

please bring back enchance. Th best thing about it was when you added one song 4 other similar songs popped up. This was the best way to add songs to your playlists. 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 please bring it back

[ryanmoeck]

Smart Shuffle is so bad that I'm considering moving to Apple Music. Give me a way to disable this permanently without having to click the shuffle icon over and over trying to disable it.

[MattCuellar]

It would be a neat little feature if I could turn it off and it would STAY off. As it exists now, it is disruptive and unwelcome due to it turning back on when unwanted. I have paid for Premium for years and this may be the first time I've been this upset with the service outside of bugs and glitches because it is actually making my personal playlists harder to listen to. This is absurd.

[senrabnaneek]

Can we please have the option to disable smart shuffle?

Adding an extra tap to go between shuffled and non-shuffled is annoying and counterintuitive.

And I just don't know who this "feature" is for, since smart shuffle is just what you get with non-premium spotify.

I'm paying specifically to not have smart shuffle

[naxxfish]

Why is this feature being enabled by default? It seems if you were previously in (normal) shuffle mode before some update recently, smart shuffle gets selected automatically.

Maybe a Product Manager wanted the feature to get a bit more attention so asked for anyone already shuffling to have this enabled by default? Or maybe there was a bug in the upgrade process that enabled it erroneously for some people?

This thread is a great example of why UX is hard - the UI does now work as some here have suggested (tapping the shuffle button cycles between off, normal, smart) - which is great for the people who suggested it. But everyone else who isn't expecting the shuffle button to do anything except shuffle things it does something surprising (which is not a desirable property - see also: principal of least surprise). 

If it were me (and I appreciate that it isn't ..) I'd be tempted to add an extra button that's only visible when shuffle is enabled that also turns on smart shuffle as an extra option - so it maps more similarly to the old Enhance function and doesn't overload a very well established symbol (with decades of providence) with unexpected functionality. But - I can see why you may not want to do that - it adds clutter to an already quite limited space on the page.

[AnnoyedSpotiffyUser]

What is this nonsense?

I can't seem to play my playlist because of a bunch of rubbish that Spotify has added to it...

How on earth did anyone think this was a good idea? 🤣

[Starmaster]

This feature does not sparkle with me. Especially since it's enabled by default and took me a while to notice the slight difference on the shuffle. While it is a cool feature in theory, it can be a real bummer when it triggers "enhanced" songs when you do not expect it. Thanks for the hard work and development, but I would have preferred a HiFi implementation, like you promised years ago.

[messiest]

After recently moving to iPhone, I'm now also considering moving to Apple Music due to changes like this. Last remaining perk of Spotify was Wrapped and I'm off socials now so that means nothing. 

The fact that smart shuffle isn't a feature separate from the standard shuffle button is an egregious UX move and an overt effort to push monetized music. Premium users shouldn't be subject to this kind of absolute trash. 

This idea presented by a user above makes perfect sense: "If it were me (and I appreciate that it isn't ..) I'd be tempted to add an extra button that's only visible when shuffle is enabled that also turns on smart shuffle as an extra option - so it maps more similarly to the old Enhance function and doesn't overload a very well established symbol (with decades of providence) with unexpected functionality."

Emphasis on A VERY WELL ESTABLISHED SYMBOL (WITH DECADES OF PROVIDENCE) WITH UNEXPECTED FUNCTIONALITY. People know what the shuffle symbol means and have an idea of what it's supposed to do. Stop trying to force people to accept that it now stands for something else. 

I understand, again, that this is an intentional move and you trust that users will stop complaining about it. That's life, I guess. But it sucks that this is a CONSTANT trend with Spotify.

[Brucemcphee37]

I’m glad I’m not alone in disliking (loathing) Smart Shuffle.  Definitely has to be a financial reason behind it.  Premium users shouldn’t have Smart shuffle forced upon them.  I subscribe to your service to listen to my choices, not suggestions.  When I want to listen to similar music, I would just choose an artists “radio” feature.  Again, that would be my choice.  

[disc_count]

The illusion of choice is their goal

[enhancedshuffleSUCKS]

I hate this feature. Abhor it. I am continually having to skip random songs in my playlists. Why you thought this was a good idea floors me. I LIKE being able to shuffle one of my carefully curated mood-based playlists. In fact, it's essential... and now you are FORCING me to break my focus umpteen times in my work day to skip some song (over and over again, clearly there's a paid aspect here....) which I do NOT wish to listen to.

PLEASE let me just shuffle what is there, like it used to.  

[enhancedshuffleSUCKS]

It occurs to me that this was part of the reason why I even pay for this service - so I wasn't subjected to noise unexpectedly which some terrible AI thought I might like...

Now I am paying for the privilege of you ruining my focus regularly (yep, you just did it again which made me come back to this stupid open tab and write this comment)

Are we going back to the days of ripping/sharing CD's and carrying around Gb of music and building directories to listen to via a media player? As that feels like the only solution here. At least modern smartphones have a lot more storage... **bleep**.

YouTubeMusic might finally be worth setting up. (I'm sure they have their own progressive enshittification going on.... way of the world)