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.

[disc_count]

Stop trying to trick/force users into using features. Regardless of whether a user likes or dislikes the smart shuffle/enhance feature, the feature needs to be separate from the shuffle toggle. 

The design should include:

1) Shuffle button: ON / OFF: shuffles whatever is playing or doesn't shuffle whatever is playing

2) enhance/smart shuffle: inserts tracks into whatever is playing in whatever mode is playing, or doesn't alter whatever is playing in whatever shuffle mode. This could be a button or a setting.

This one button for too many things design philosophy requires users to tap too many times and introduces user error due to too many things on the same button. Remember: people are using your app while doing other things (like driving, for example) and if you make things unclear, you'll get bad feedback and mad users.

The thing is, if you're a design professional and you don't come across that while designing, you're probably intentionally designing it that way (unless you did no testing / interviews /feedback... in which case how do you have a job doing UI/UX?).

[MikaelMaeqia]

Spotify team, pleeeeaseeee let me turn off this irritating function 🙏  

It only keeps getting in my way and provides nothing for me. 

I would like to see enhance function commimg back - this one was useful and implemented in a smart, noninvasive way!

[tmartinek]

Need the option to turn it off. It's garbage and takes FOREVER to load sometimes. 

[Tennae]

Would really appreciate the option to disable smart shuffle. It is incredibly frustrating when I am in an area with no wifi or on a flight and cannot select to turn it off unless I am connected to wifi. When will this option occur?

[MikaelMaeqia]

Workaround for the issue called "smart suffle feature".

If you lock your phone and reshuffle playlist from there, smart shuffle will not effect the shuffling!

Happy reshuffling guys 😁

Not sure if it work for you, but it's working on samsung galaxy S21.

[Seratina]

Please make it possible to completely remove smart shuffle in the options. It's awful and I like having full control of my own music.

[JaCrispy48]

Give us enhance back. Getting three more related songs when I add one I like is incredible for finding new music. Smart shuffle is like enhance, but without the three related songs. No one asked for this.

[assisted321]

When I go offline and I have regular shuffle on. I turn shuffle off, why the heck when I connect back to online you turn on smart shuffle like of thats what I wanted?? How can I remove this feature? I haven't used it at all, just a waste and uneccessary click

[g97-biszha_35]

Causes my shuffle button to lag when trying to change the queue while offline or with limited wifi or data reception. This ends up with me waiting for smart shuffle to turn on only to turn it off. Its not the worst thing on spotify but it should have a option to disable it completely. Its just bad user interface

[Prnorth]

If smart shuffle is turned on in the 'liked songs' list, and there is no internet connection, songs won't play and nothing happens.

It took me ages to figure out what the issue was but confirmed it with a couple of friends.

Now it seems I can only have smart shuffle on or have no shuffle option.

[H4rryt1]

Why on earth would you do this lol. Bring back enhance it was so much better. 0/10. 

[Guará13]

Pure nonsense. UX disaster. It lags EVERY time I click it. Very very annoying. You must add an opt-out for this "feature" asap.

Terrible decision... I can't even believe you thought it would be a good idea. So intrusive and unnecessary.

P.S.: please, add an option to truly randomize shuffle. I don't like Spotify controlling what I listen to.

[TONZAMUSIC]

Yup one of the dozens of reasons why I despite Spotify and the way everything gets even more watered down or complicated for no reason at all. They don't care about being user friendly instead they aeem to have this secret agenda against so many hidden gems of artists on the platform look at how rigged everything is why is it SO difficult to find interesting small indie artists? See they only care about promoting artists with the traditional album contracts. I want to find exciting new artists but the way it is designed so I mostly find the already gone viral artists with at least 1M monthly listeners this is not acceptable. Also I heard the Discovery Mode for artists is still on Beta and it is only exclusive for USA artists using Spotify for releasing music at the moment. Can they please stop with this exclusive experimental test features nonsense? Just make it happen everywhere simultaneously, really unfair to limit this to the US as always.

[samiy1]

saaamme i thought it was just me but ill do that alot with the shuffle then turning it off to listen to the next song that i know is there but this new shuffle thing randomly plays another song like you said 

[Chobrien01007]

It’s really annoying- I do not want what you like 

[stickbomb]

Cannot stand this feature. Trying to re-shuffle a playlist takes forever because it has to load, wait for the notification to disappear, unload and wait for that notification to disappear before I can finally reselect the shuffle. Please find somewhere else to put this

[chrome2421]

This is the WORST feature ever. terribly designed. why would you prolong a two-tap operation (shuffle/unshuffle) into a three-tap operation that makes internet connection a hard requirement?  It only annoys the users and there is no option to disable it permanently.

And its been two months since the smart shuffle, which is not smart at all, introduced by you proudly. pls roll it back

[chrome2421]

This is a terribly designed feature. at least give an option to turn it off permanently. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE A TWO-TAP OPERTAION THAT TAKES LESS THAN A SECOND (shuffle/un-shuffle) INTO A THREE-TAP OPERATION THAT MAKES INTERNET CONNECTION A HARD REQUIREMENT? Not to mention, the stupid three-tap operation can take few seconds. 

[Pmdpmd]

The huge issue with this is that if you happen to have no data, you can no longer see or play your Liked Songs. A pop up appears saying you’ll need to switch off smart shuffle in order to see them while offline. It shows a button named “Turn Off”. But this button does not work - it just kicks you back to the home page without disabling smart shuffle. This appears to be a simple bug but downloading the latest version does not fix it. 

This combined with the fact that when you restart the app it reverts to smart shuffle rather than remembering the setting you chose, make the app extremely frustrating to use when without a reliable signal. 

The reason I pay the subscription is so I can listen to songs offline and unless I pre-emptively switch off smart shuffle before I’m in an area with no signal (which I can’t predict), I cannot access my downloaded songs. 

Extremely frustrating and completely unnecessary. 

[Prnorth]

This is the story of my Spotify life. And then when the song tracks appear (this is my downloaded 'Likes' song list) you can tap them all day and nothing will happen until you either restart the app or get a signal again.