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.

[edubkendo]

I didn't take digs until people came at me. I said I loved the feature and asked when it was coming to desktop. Literally all I said.

Beyond that, until fairly recently my twitter experience has largely been positive, as has my participation in the support forums for software I use. 

[edubkendo]

You can express your dislike of the feature, or ask for a way to disable it without being a **bleep** to people who do enjoy it, do want them to keep it. I certainly wouldn't mind if they gave you a way to disable the feature. Why be a **bleep** just because I like the feature? It's literally exactly what I've been looking for in a streaming service and no one else has anything comparable. I want to shuffle my liked music and have recs thrown in from all of it, without getting sent down weird music tangents (youtube), or being forced to pick a specific genre (like the daily mixes). This gives me exactly what I want! I'm sorry it's been a crappy experience for you, but no need to come at me, personally, like you did.

[felipezam14]

August 2023, and after all these months, useless smart shuffle is still a thing! I spend so much time crafting the perfect playlist with the songs I want to listen to. I want to shuffle MY SONG CHOICE and i have to wait almost 10 seconds for this useless smart shuffle to load and then press the shuffle button again to shuffle my song choice! there are discover playlists and options to search similar music. I want my playlists to play my music and easy shuffle to non shuffle 1 click instant action. NO ONE WANTS SMART SHUFFLE! taking almost 10 or more seconds to just re-shuffle my music and jump over the smart shuffle option, even while paying so much money each month just makes me more and more convinced I'll spend my money elsewhere where i can easily control my songs and song playing. USELESS

[Lletsplay4you]

People in this thread seem quite irritated lol

No need to attack someone for expressing their joy in a feature they geniunly enjoy. This is a feedback thread, and it should be possible to find a compromise to satisfy all parties

I am also very dissatisfied with this feature, but people have different music listening habits.

---

> I want to listen to recs based on all my likes, not just specific genres. 

Isn't that what the Discover Weekly and Release Radar playlists are for tho?
Also the Daily Mixes, altho those are split into multiple mixes each trying to contain similar songs

Make sure to follow artists you enjoy too, that (at least from my experience) affects your auto-generated playlists a lot.

[user-removed]

But if I want to switch between shuffle and listening to a playlist straight it forces us to wait while "smart" shuffle to load then turn it off again. It would have been smarter to have it under settings the ability to add it if we wanted to or permanently disable if we don't like it...and with it's awful recommendations why not keep the enhance feature. There is already a recommendation playlist feature for Spotify it feels intrusive to "our curated playlists"

[a972xcv7wkks4fcm8dzd]

Hi Joan,

Can you please tell me how I can change the smart shuffle for a  shuffle? Now I have only a smart shuffle and normal play. The shuffle option is not enabled anymore. I want to shuffle songs in my playlist and not have recommendations. 

[autojhonny]

Please give an option to completely disable smart shuffle across all playlists

[Maksym1000]

Bit late to the bombardment here edubkendo but I’ll keep it civil. The main reason people don’t like this isn’t the fact they can discover new music; it’s the fact the UI is cumbersome to use and took two features that worked perfectly fine and mashed them together quite tragically. Originally Smart Shuffle was an “Enhance” button that worked as a toggle button to do what smart shuffle currently does, adds new music to your playlist based off their algorithm, so people like you could discover new music when you wanted to and people like me could listen to our crafted playlists, but with the implementation of Smart Shuffle they merged the Enhance and Shuffle button together. People are primarily complaining about the waste of data, slow load times, and the unwanted algorithm added songs (they have a personally crafted playlist). My main issue with this feature is that I don’t want to add random music to my playlist as my playlist consists of music I’ve vetted and I know I like, while my discovery playlist is a separate playlist. Also, I’m currently dealing with a hard lock bug since this feature was added where I’m unable to disable Smart Shuffle because it’ll go from unshuffled > shuffle > Smart Shuffle > reloading Smart Shuffle every time I click the shuffle button to disable.

Do to this hard lock bug I’ve experienced since it was added paired with the seemingly obtuse reception and actions by the devs, I  have no confidence in Spotify anymore and have decided, like others, to support other streaming services. I’m personally I’m in the process of converting my personalized playlist to another streaming service.

[user-removed]

I'm so close to doing the same thing. Luckily I haven't had this bug but I have had others pop up like playable songs skipping though I even have them downloaded them. I'm currently writing down my playlists so I can compare which streaming services I trust have access. My problem with the smart shuffle is it was mostly perfect as the enhance feature but now blocks the simple shuffle on/off button ruining its design as a shuffle button 

[RichyCook]

Awful awful awful. I pay premium to curate my own music not some shite AI. Dreadful and another "feature" that make Spotify a poor UI. If only there was an alternative mobile app?

[e114-bkork_hi]

I liked the enhanced button, but this? This is horrendous! It's a if you said to yourselves:

"I've got it,  let's irritate the living **bleep** out of our consumers by putting this enhance feature in with the shuffle function, but also, let's make sure it activates itself every time they turn on Spotify and try to play one of their own Play Lists. Ooh, and we can tie it to the like feature as well, so if they like a song while listening to their Play List, it will automatically start giving them suggestions based on the song they just liked. Yes, yes, and we can have it turn on at random every time they intentionally turn it off, and then turn their backs away from their phones! MUUAAAAA HAAA HAAA HAAA HAAAAAAAAAA!!! Oh, humans are such stupid creatures, they'll actually pay for this!"

At least, that's what I imagined was going on in my head. It's  possible didn't do the maniacal laughter. I just hate the fact that this feature turns itself on every time I breathe! It's seriously f-ed!

[SirFeatherstone]

This is one of the most poorly implemented "features" you have introduced. Make this optional in the settings. Sometimes we just want to reshuffle our playlist, not wait 5 seconds for this stupid feature to load just so we can reapply the normal shuffle.

[Jimbo_slice1]

This feature sucks so much LET US PERMANANTLY GET TOGGLE IT OFF. If I want to swap between normal shuffle and non shuffle it takes 2-5 business days to create some stupid sparkle which I NEVER use. Not only that but the feature itself isn't great. SORT IT OUT FFS

[andremourapassos]

Smart Shuffle is not similar than Enhance Playlist function, Smart Shuffle only works while playing and doesn't allow me to add the added songs definitely in my playlist like Enhance function did. I was able organize and order the songs on my playlist with the new songs added, now I can't add new songs definitely on my playlist on a easy way

[Xacris]

Every single time I want to turn off normal shuffle, "Smart Shuffle" turns on and then takes several seconds to load, then I have to press the button again to disable shuffle. This is bad UI/UX design, and it makes me angry every time I have to go through this stupid process. I would like to opt out of smart shuffle, and would like to have words with the developer (or more likely manager that doesn't do code or have any experience designing UI/UX) who made the decision to merge the enhance playlist and shuffle feature

[TNaum]

My Spotify now defaults to Smart Shuffle- which sucks but also means that I can no longer listen to music if I’m offline. If I’m offline I receive a message that Spotify can’t open bc Smart Shuffle is activated…but also it won’t let me actually open my app to turn the worst feature ever, off. 6 hr flight, no Wi-Fi- no Spotify.

[chilldude23]

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Mobile-Other-Smart-Shuffle-toggle-setting-in-settings-me...

Please complain here if you hate smart shuffle. SPOTIFY told me to complain here if I hate the feature. 

[temadison]

For the love of god, allow users to disable / enable this feature either by account, session, and/or or playlist … preferably by account. I want to turn it on when I want it, not when Spotify wants it.

[fretbuzzdude]

Smart shuffle is horrible and makes me want to drop Spotify because of the horrible choices it makes that completely ruin a playlist!!!!

[lavendermintfelix]

it's really inconvenient that I cannot disable it permanently, I don't like the feature and don't ever want to use it, having to disable it manually every time is really annoying, specially when it apparently activates itself. please remove it or at least make it possible to disactivate completely