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.

[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.

[Jaimelieze]

I hate it.

[rednblu]

   >>  ... This is maddening.

Truly maddening.  Yes!  I am with you and applaud your hanging in there with all the bad words.

My family accounts have partly convinced me that Spotify is a video game with hidden Easter eggs that when you click the right Easter egg, finally the video game works right-- like you paid to get.

Somewhere in these Easter Eggs of the Spotify Mountains, I found different attacks that make the shuffles work like WOW! perfect-- until they break again!-- days later-- or hours later :(( .

Use a Desktop disconnected from other devices to fix any problem with shuffle-- including that monster attack of the [stuck and repeating too smart for its shuffle] that won’t go away.

Make yourself a Five-Track playlist from different colorful albums-- Then display the tracks of this new Five-Track playlist.

Double click on track Three to start it playing-- Then stop the play.  Now look at your queue.

Next in Win_11, for example, use Ctrl-S, Ctrl-S, Ctrl-S, Ctrl-S to toggle the shuffle On and Off several times-- You should see the colorful album covers move around to different forPlay positions in your queue-- as you toggle the shuffle On and Off-- (I pray for you!)

Now display the tracks of your 5000 track playlist-- Look for the [Crossed arrows] of the SpotifyShuffle just above the first track of your desired playlist-- Then!-- Click those [Crossed arrows] until they go Off, and dull gray.

Then start play on your 5000 track playlist-- Watch the queue-- and using only Ctrl-S, Ctrl-S to toggle your shuffle On and Off-- perchance, when you see the shuffle that you like-- enjoy it and thank the Easter Egg.

After you have the shuffle working right on your desktop, then do the “Connect to a device” to mobile, webPlayer, or TV running the same SpotifyId that you are using on your desktop-- after a few minutes to equilibrate, the play queue on your mobile will synchronize with the queue on your desktop.

When you have your 5000 track-- even 202,289 track-- playlist running on your mobile displaying the proper playlist-- or Folder-- name, you can sleep your desktop and control the play normally on your mobile and go for a nice long drive with the new and perfect Spotify shuffle.  Drive carefully . . . .

[3w95-ui_j43gy]

the worst part of it for me is that it's the first option when pressing shuffle!! WHY can't they just turn on NORMAL shuffle first, like how everyone knows shuffle is supposed to work? maybe long press or swipe or SOMETHING ELSE to smart shuffle 😭 I need them to fix this

[RolandSpencer]

I just recently discovered this feature; and I actually liked it at first.  It added a song every few songs, marked them appropriately so I knew which ones were added; and the additions were pretty good (I often found myself using the add button to add them to the Playlist).

Now for the bad.  It is NOT a smart shuffle.  It seems to be predetermined.  Today I was listening to a smart shuffle list for about an hour and a half.  I was planning to add one of the added songs to the playlist; but wasn't paying attention and hit the shuffle button instead of the add button.  This shifted my queue back to standard Playlist order.  So I clicked it a couple more times to engage smart shuffle again.  I was expecting a new list of intelligently shuffled songs from my Playlist...but what I got was the EXACT SAME shuffled Playlist I had started with an Hour and a half earlier.  EXACTLY the same songs from my Playlist (which has over 1000 songs so the odds are astronomical), EXACTLY the same songs added in, and all in the EXACT same order. 

I've seen this other times where I listen with smart shuffle in the morning; then later in the evening again encounter a smart shuffle list that is 90% or more the same songs.

The feature has potential; but make it what you are billing it as... A smart Shuffle, not a list of predetermined songs.

[shrty]

CMD + S to toggle shuffle. After the sMaRt ShUfFlE implementation, the toggle takes 2 seconds to complete. What the actual **bleep** is that. 

Two years, Spotify!  TWO YEARS LOL!!!!! Swedish House Mafia!!!

[TiramisuTruffle]

Can you PLEASE bring the Enhanced Playlist back? Smart shuffle isn't that great. :[ 

Also can you bring back the playlist radio? These two features were my primary way of finding new music and I loved both of these features. I'm so sad you took them both away. 

[electricwizard]

At least give us a settings toggle to permanently disable this garbage. I don't create my own playlists just to have them polluted by sh*t that I didn't add.

[lrdo96]

Hate it, everybody hates it. Let users permanently disable it! Terrible feature, people always activate it by mistake over and over again. If someone wants to listen anything that is not in their playlist they gonna go into someone's else or just listen to radios. really annoying feature 

[MartinKirk]

Here is the fix : Download the older version of Spotify !

https://spotify.en.uptodown.com/windows/download/103659700

And disable updates: 

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Windows/Stopping-Auto-update/m-p/4785163#M78549

[Darth_GTB]

Spotify, have you noticed how this announcement has been hit with mostly bad feedback since day 1? The first page, back from when this was announced has about the same feedback as the last one. 99% of people dislike this functionality. Every now and then you see somebody who actually likes it, but the way you implemented this is terrible UX.

You made it the only possible shuffle in the free tier too, so you seem to have actually made this to bully your free users into buying a subscription, so we can turn it off. But reading other replies in here, I'm convinced even the paid subscribers are having a bad time turning this feature off.

Can't you just accept this is a failure of a feature and drop it? Or at least make it reasonable? Your normal shuffle isn't great either though. I think both shuffles should be changed to actually convey what their names mean:

- Shuffle (free tier): random order from every song in the playlist

- Smart Shuffle (paid tier): random order from every song in the playlist, but prevents the same song to play again in the next 5% of playlist songs. For example, if I have 100 songs in my playlist, unless I manually choose to, smart shuffle should only let a song be eligible to show up in the order after 5 songs. If this could get too resource expensive with longer playlists, instead of %, it could be limited to x songs. So, lets say 10 songs. We have 1k songs in a playlist. As soon as we start playing on smart shuffle, the algorithm starts adding songs to the queue. The algorithm could already calculate the next 10 songs. By the time the first music ends, you will calculate the 11th. All you have to do is pick something at random, check if it's already in the queue and only add it if it's not. If it is, pick another one.

If you really want to include an option with sponsored content, don't call it "something shuffle", because that's not what shuffle means. Call it "enhanced playlist" or "include recommendations" or something like that.

Edit: about that last paragraph. It could actually be a checkbox. So you would only have 1 Shuffle option (or 2 if you are willing to commit to my smart shuffle redesign above) and 1 Ordered option. Both with a checkbox saying "Include recommendations". This would insert your sponsored content every, I don't know, 5 songs or so.

Here is a suggestion on what it could look like on the interface (nevermind the "Premium" tags. I forgot to remove it from the screenshot to better align with my suggestion above):

[Francescotto]

Smart Shuffle automatically downloads every song suggested in an already-downloaded playlist.

Even if the suggested song is removed from the playlist, the download will remain, occupying space in the device. 

Moreover, the downloaded song cannot be deleted, except from removing ALL the downloaded ones.

[pkoch5]

The single worst feature on spotify, who thought this was a good idea? I only get music I hate or things that are explicitly NOT in my playlists.  I made the playlist because I want MY SONGS. Not whatever junk ass music the algorithm wants to push on me.  If you lot have to keep this stupid feature at least make a disable button for the sane people here who want to listen to their carefully curated tunes.

[tehyadeardorff]

I've had Spotify for almost a decade. The fact that I can't turn off this feature is going to drive me to a different platform. I'm tired of it.

[robpcar80]

Keep it up Spotify, one more shitty feature that can't be disabled and I'm heading to Apple music!

[pawkor]

Yes we love to create our own playlists and we hate when something breaks them.

How to disable it so it never comes back ???

[comradechrome]

My carefully curated playlists are getting cluttered with new recommendations. Please allow a setting that prevents smart shuffling from showing up at all. It's not shuffle, it's a completely separate feature. 

i hate u too, Spotify.

[Aristurtle]

This is the most corporate sounding comment ever. If you're going to astroturf the comment thread at least do a good job.

[meerow]

I appreciate how everyone continues to keep this thread of shame active. It's a persistent reminder of Spotify's disappointing response to our concerns. No, Spotify, we haven't forgotten that you removed features we loved, raised your prices, inundated us with irrelevant recommendations driven by paid promotions, and even reintroduced classic ads for premium users. I'm glad I made the switch a year ago to a competitor that offers an ad-free shuffle button.

[rednblu]

Great news!-- the Crossed bars presetting on both the desktop and the mobile are back sometimes to permit the quick EasterEgg quick setting to the NON-bad real shuffle on both desktop and mobile-- solving that horrible morass of system stalls and bad track forces invading our playlists-- pictures to follow and then quick pictures for Double-click, Right-Click, “Play” initializing of true random shuffling on 220,000 tracks in your one TrueShuffleFolder to follow quickly.

Congratulations to the Shuffle development crews!

I know there has been a lot of pain for all of us paying customers-- But things are looking up!-- because we Spotify users pull together to force these oppositional Spotify players to play for us exactly the picked music that we each individually wants to hear.  Thank you all!