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.

[riddlemeethis]

I'm an iOs user. As far as apple it doesn't. I hate the Smart Shuffle
feature. I hope in the next update there's a way to toggle it off
completely.

[311phillies]

Can this useless feature be turned Off in the Settings?  I now need to click the same button twice to go from shuffling on to off... I swear, UI designers are the most useless people on this planet, always constantly trying to justify their jobs by taking something good and making it worse

[oneframe]

Gave them a 1-star review on the app store. I suggest you all do the same as nothing is happening here. Clearly.

[DJBlueStone]

Going to brag a bit first: I've been a premium member for probably close to a decade now (I switched to Spotify back when Zune Pass was canned), and I'm usually ra ked in the 99th percentile for listening hours in North America, according to Spotify recap. It's no exaggeration to say that Spotify is pretty much continuously playing for me, and I use their service to it's full extent. So, hopefully that helps give these next words some weight: this "smart shuffle" feature is making me seriously consider dropping Spotify all together. Leave my regular playlists alone. If I wanted song recommendations, I would use one of Spotify's many already existing features to discover new music.

[bbrady410711]

Absolutely loathe this update. The stupid smart shuffle made my app crash!! I didn’t want Enhance when it was a thing and I absolutely do not want smart shuffle! Please introduce a way to completely disable as it is incredibly inconvenient and pointless since I curate my own playlists and do not want Spotify suggestions anyway. It is also just a design failure in general, making people hit the shuffle button twice and clogging up the processing with the suggestions before being able to disable and reshuffle. For reference, I am using an iPhone 13 and have never had an issue with crashing before the introduction of this function. 

[chrisg42]

Thanks for posting this. I'm surprised (or not) that Spotify haven't already posted these instructions for desktop users. 

[Blissboy]

I hate this feature with a passion! I put all the songs I wish to hear into a playlist and then use shuffle to change up the order of THOSE SONGS. I don't want to hear any other songs and I don't want to have to sit there and wait for the little message to go away so I can try a new shuffle order. It is incredibly annoying and you need to make**bleep** go away. "Smart" shuffle should be its own **bleep** button.

[tkuminecz]

This is such an annoying “feature.” Now when I want to toggle shuffle I need to click the thing three times and there’s an annoying delay due to this smart shuffle **bleep**. I literally dumped Spotify years ago due to broken shuffle behavior. I switched back recently as it seemed to be fixed. But now you’ve created new problems. So incredibly frustrating. Please add some way to permanently disable this in the settings.

[ScurBiceps]

I prefer the way my I sort my playlist out and don't find the need to shuffle it just to find music. It was so simple before and now can't even find songs without shuffling. Truly the worst thing ever. Really makes me wanna switch to Apple Music now.

[dilliananana]

Please i am begging y’all to let us disable this feature 😭 it’s good when you want it, but waiting for the app to recommend songs i’m not gonna listen to every time i want to reshuffle my queue is genuinely agonizing 🙂

[krismaerke]

How do I just 'shuffle' the songs in my PL instead of enhancing it with the trash algo suggestions? This feature is awful.

[krismaerke]

this change sucks. the premium users pay for the music without commercials and the playlist. this feature is awful. please give us our music back the way we curated it.

[xstatick]

Hi, I'm having the opposite problem of most users it seems, I used smart shuffle and LOVED it.  But then I got a pop up and accidently hit a button to turn it off.  Now I can't figure out how to get it back.  My shuffle button only toggles from on to off. How can I get smart shuffle back?

[arkanesky]

If you find out, can you let me know what you did initially? I'd like to disable this affront to UX design as soon as possible. Thanks!

[RZA24]

I contacted Spotify about this issue and was linked to this forum and told "Spotify regularly monitors this and takes in feedback" How can you actually say that's true when 99% of feedback absolutely hates this feature and yet it's still there? What a joke

[GogolSoul]

Thanks - I hate it.

All it does is recommend songs i used to like but unliked. I unliked them for a reason....

[EGDrokS]

Completely rotten functionality, when I listen to music via my phone on my car, when I come across a title that I like and which follows another that I like by disabling random playback via the car well, necessarily that's me launches the "intelligent" mixer which literally makes everything mess up

[OliverSpain]

The fact that it's not a pop up to disable it anymore is certainly an improvement, but it's design is still a little annoying for someone like me who will never use this feature. Ideally, I'd like to just tap once to toggle shuffle, but instead it turns on smart shuffle which takes a few seconds to load before working. Although only a little delay, for something that used to be instant it's something I'd love to be able to disable somewhere in settings.

[Stepa]

I hate this feature, totally unnecessary and because its bugged i can't turn it off. Remove it or at least make it possible to disable it! 

[raijuta]

spotify rolled back the terrible UI changes, can you all finally roll this back too?