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.

[4l3xk1ll]

Bring back Enhance, Smart shuffle is way harder to understand wich songs are being proposed, plus if we don't want to shuffle our playlist we can't get reccommendations, just a really dumb choice to change it.

[d65ea-ch1_bev]

Spotify really messed up on this one. Smart shuffle cannot be turned off as it just turns itself back on again. This is actually the most annoying update they could have done. I'm legit done with Spotify after this. Off to Apple music I go.

[Will116]

For the love of God, let users disable this "feature".  When I want to turn on Shuffle I don't want to have to toggle through this "Smart Shuffle". I don't need it, I don't want it, and it slows everything down.  If you insist on including it, let us disable it permanently.

Oh, and let us have a completely random shuffle.  This isn't hard. Do it. We're paying you for this.

[Will116]

I tried that.  It's unusable. 

Spotify is SO CLOSE to being great.  But they refuse to make things simple and let us just access our music.

[skvipe]

I mean... I understand the idea, and it seemed like an interesting approach, which is why I turned it on when my desktop app recommended Smart Shuffle. The biggest mistake ever!

90% of recommendations are not even 'meh', but rather songs that I strongly dislike. Alright, fine, it was worth a shot - let's turn it off again... aaaaand you can't. It is impossible to turn off, the feature simply keeps switching back on despite clicking the button and the request seemingly going through. After a few songs, it's on again and sometimes the icon doesn't even show it's activated, but the songs keep on popping into my playlist. 

I'm using the music to help me focus on creative tasks and this bug has ruined my workflow today. How is it even possible that a company of this size with hundreds of developers is not able to fix a widely spread defect that significantly affects usability? In many months (or is it years already)? 

[disc_count]

Bc they want you to listen to the songs that they want you to listen to. I don't think this is a bug. At least not in the eyes of Spotify. Why else would it take so long to fix this issue? It'd be hard to believe it was lack of development resources for, as you said yourself, "a company of this size". Unfortunate but I think this is the nature of streaming services in general.

[abjecttestament]

This still sucks and enhanced playlists was better.

[Timstark95]

Please bring back the enhanced feature!

[Funkyplanet]

I find this and absolutely horrible feature created by a complete nitwit. The thing that makes me absolutely furious is that there seems to be no way to sort your songs to check for duplicates. Followed the faqs about it but to no avail can't seem to deacivate this **bleep** of a feature and now i think i will have to completely recreate my entire almost 400 songs playlist in a new one. Thanks a lot for this not user friendly feature **bleep**  

[RC-1290]

Sigh... so... instead of LETTING ME DISABLE SMART SHUFFLE, you figured it'd be a good idea to always reset the shuffle mode when changing playlists. No. That's not what this app needed. It just needs the smart shuffle gone. JUST REMOVE IT FROM THE SHUFFLE BUTTON.

HIRE A UX EXPERT.

[Funkyplanet]

Should start international strike of not paying sub for as long as this thing isn't removed and ability to sort returns. If they don't listen to costumers maybe losing money will make them think

[OutOfTown]

… get implemented one day… not for me anymore, good bye to Spotify because (and only because) of this intruding and annoying bug, well it is NOT a “feature”. Again thx for great listening without that and thanks for this example of bad UX. Helps to train in our company. 

[sahlaleme]

PLEASE I need at the very least an option to remove this. It takes approximately 3 business days to switch between shuffle and not shuffle. I like to flip between these and this seemingly unalterable feature is negatively affecting my day to day use. PLEASE 

[paulmayne]

This only works if Smart Shuffle works well. In my experience, Smart Shuffle rarely if ever adds new songs to a queue and is nothing close to a replacement for Radio

[sipan27]

Please make it so we can disable this feature in the settings become its such a nuisance to tap twice every time. 

[Franco901]

Please add option to deactivate smart shuffle in the settings. Thanks

[disc_count]

Need an option in settings to deactivate this feature. It's extremely disruptive when switching between modes and freezes often.

Not only is it an extra tap (annoying but not the end of the world), but it takes so much data that it crashes the whole app. That is just not acceptable.

[wasaby]

worst update ever

[8bitthing]

I have used Spotify solely for "Create similar playlist" feature. I love discovering new artists. I don't know if I will continue with the premium subscription without this feature. Do competitors have a similar feature? I am considering transferring my subscription to another service.

[arianevans]

I strongly dislike Spotify Smart Shuffle as implemented here.

Please provide me the capability to turn Smart Shuffle on, or OFF, independently of the shuffle feature, and globally. The problem with “Smart Shuffle” is that you have overloaded the UX for Shuffle with an entirely different capability. This problem is compounded when the UX is small, slow to respond, or simply does not update. I often find Smart Shuffle on when random music I do not want to hear starts playing and the Spotify UX does not show me that it is on clearly (small DAP/phone UX) or due to limited internet bandwidth, is not updating. This overloaded feature becomes worse when I try to turn it off, the the button lags updating, leaving me tapping the shuffle button dozens of times attempting to confirm whether or not it registered my tap, or is just slow or unresponsive updating the silly icon.

I love the idea of having a Discovery/New Music type feature like this that I can turn on or apply selectively on a playlist. Great idea.

10/10 one of my all-time least liked Spotify features as you have it implemented now.