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.

[Joan]

Hi there folks,

We're here to say that we've taken your feedback into account and you will now be able to disable Smart Shuffle from the app settings, as described in this now implemented idea! 

The steps are as follows:

1. Tap your profile picture at the top.
2. Tap Settings and privacy.
3. Select Playback.
4. Switch Enable all play modes off.

This is for Premium users only and is only available on mobile at the moment, but rest assured it will be coming to desktop in due time as well.

Cheers!

[Timon5]

Please remove smart shuffle now, it's so annoying and bugged, it's a disaster. If I disable it, it kicks me out of the current playlist I'm listening to and puts random songs into the queue instead. Or it changes the direction of the playlist alltogether, that happens aswell. You haven't patched this yet, although people criticised that option for the past months. Why not listen to the countless comments and articles on the web about that worthless "feature"? Enhance was way better, because it was a seperate button and it just worked.

[joepapendick]

Wow! 28 pages of comments, going back more than a year, virtually every single one of them negative... and yet this feature is still here. The only possible explanation is that the money Spotify is making through the insertion of random songs into playlists far exceeds any estimated loss in revenue from unhappy premium members leaving the site. I've been a premium member for ten years, but I guess it's time to take another look at Apple, as well as all the other new services I've been hearing about. 

[alediasw]

The person who had this idea should be fire. A million times worst than before.

[durastik]

Just give us an option to turn this off already, I don't use it and it makes turning shuffle off a massive chore. The fact so much of the UI is coupled to network performance makes half the UI unusable and i'm one more poorly thought out feature away from leaving forever.

[M0O0SE]

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO RESHUFFLE MY PLAYLIST WITHOUT WAITING 15s FOR SMART SHUFFLE TO LOAD. REMOVE IT, IT IS UNKNOWN. I HAVE PREMIUM SO I CAN LISTEN TO WHAT I WANT, BUT NOW IT'S ANNOYING AF.

[Lemontheone]

Oh my god I cannot explain how much I hate this feature. I never use it and the fact that it uses the same button as the shuffle but takes a solid five seconds to load is annoying every single time. Enhance was so much better; it had a different button and actually gave good recommendations. I have never had a good experience with smart shuffle and I don’t plan to use it in the future. Please get rid of it, or at least give it its own button because it gets in the way constantly. An option to disable it in settings so the option isn’t there anymore would also be fine. Everyone I’ve talked to about this is equally annoyed by smart shuffle. I’ve never heard of someone who enjoys it. Please fix this it’s so frustrating. 

[LottieOllie]

I just want to listen to new stuff without the shuffle... weirdly you had an option of mart shuffle in two steps when you had enhance and then... oh look shuffling. Why remove something that is actually helping people find new stuff while mixing up their playlists. As an autistic person who listens to things in an order but likes to introduce some new stuff with enhance, you have ruined my user experience. I don't want to listen to a new playlist, I want the familiarity of my liked songs in order with some added benefits. This sucks. Sort it. I have been using you guys for 14 years. Since you had to be given a code to access 

[Real_TyUrd]

Spotify, you're not innovating, you're aggrevating.

I hate this Smart Shuffle business so much. Everytime I want to quickly toggle shuffle in my carefully curated playlists on the iOS App I have to wait for this non-feature to do its thing before I can go on. If I lose internet connection I can't do anything, the shuffle icon just shows that it's loading and nothing happens, which is so freaking annoying. At the very least give us the option to toggle on and off this "feature" and bring back SHUFFLE - NOT SHUFFLE without the smart shuffle in between. 

This has been bothering me so much that if it wasn't for my 12 month prepaid membership I would have switched to another streaming service long ago, that's how much I hate this terrible piece of UI/UX. I will however wait for the end of those 12 months and consider leaving Spotify if this bs is still going on.

[bbbchutu]

hi, when I turn off the smart shuffle, all of my songs from the no shuffle mode is gone in the waiting list. What i mean here is that when I turn it off, I have to go back to the playlist and choose 1 song to make that no shuffle mode reactivated, if not my songs will automatically be played in smart shuffle mode and i find this annoying. What can I do to disable smart shuffle mode ? Also I'm saying that smart shuffle mode is annoying not only because of what I just mentioned, but also because that it takes too long, like I have to wait for about 15 sec for the smart shuffle mode being turned off when i deactivate it.

[ShinzJr]

What a stupid and annoying feature. Break muscle memory and full of unexpected behaviours. Your developers don't have testers or what?

[hanssandbu]

**bleep** smart shuffled, make it optional

[hanssandbu]

Spotify, please remove this feature or make it optional. I have had a subscription for close to 8 years, and never posted or contact costumer service before. This feature will make me move to a personal cloud or a Google service

[user-removed]

I am often playing music offline and the app doesn’t allow me to access my liked song’s playlist or disable smart shuffle when offline. Since smart shuffle enables automatically I cant disable it when online. I can still access my downloaded music but not my liked song’s playlist due to this feature.
I have no interest in this feature and would prefer it would remain off. Considering this has been an issue for me for close to a year it shows this company doesn’t care about making a good app for customers.

[Chericopelandatyahoo]

This feature is terrible!  If you're out of cell service Spotify just turns off / stalls / or locks up.   

[novenoid]

I'd personally love for the smart shuffle feature to be moved from the regular shuffle button. It's so clunky to have to wait for smart shuffle to load every time I want to reshuffle my playlist. Keep the feature, move it elsewhere 

[Lewkiy]

f*** smart shuffle !! it’s the worst feature spotify ever made ... People have been complaining for a while now !! Why is nothing happening ?!

MAKE IT OPTIONAL AT LEAST 

[Lemzuk]

I am not too bothered about the shuffle button being utilised as a recommendation selector, but it's be nice if o could actually see the songs it it adding to my playlist to decide on if I want to add it or not. I actually much preferred the enhanced mode. I'm unsure as to why it needed to be changed, the UX wasn't cluttered with it.

Revert the changes IMO.

[BruceGoose]

Ever since smart shuffle has been added, my mobile app will sometimes skip the current song that’s playing when I press the shuffle button. Obviously, this is incredibly annoying. Other than that, the pop-up window that prevents me from using the freatures on the bottom of the screen for a few seconds is plain irritating.

I am on an iPhone SE (second generation) and my spotify version is 8.8.48.499

[tvocal13]

smart shuffle is annoying, bring back the enhance button on mobile please.

[user-removed]

Why wasn't there an option to "accept" smart shuffle for those who didn't want this option at all? Or better yet to just remove or disable smart shuffle permanently because it never improves my playlists and in general and interrupts the queue of music I am enjoying.