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.

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.

[strerd]

When it comes time at the end of the year, I hope they figure out an explation as to why the same 8 songs are prominent.

'You really liked XXXX song. You've played it 4318 times'. 

It's not that, you've taken away the option to change it.

[doramagnea93]

Please bring back the enhance feature!

And most importantly, for the love of god, add a setting option to DISABLE smart shuffle. We all hate it anyway.
Frankly, it seems you are not listening to this community at all. EVERYONE has been complaining about this feature for almost TWO YEARS now and you haven't made it possible yet to disable it.

I'll say like so many others, if you won't fix this I'll just get an account somewhere else.

[sailingfms]

Smart shuffle is awful. Why is there not an ability to disable? I am going to go to Apple music or Tidal soon if y'all don't fix this. Really awful.

[sunnalind123]

PLEASE for the love of god, listen to your users. I'm getting soooo tired of having to turn of smart shuffle every **bleep**ing time I want to listen to my playlists..

[strerd]

I've set Dua Lipa & other artists to not play. I like their music, but to not play over & over, ad infinitum. Every 9 songs is too much. People who're being tortured should not be forced to listen to it over & over, & yet you force it on your listener who can cancel their account anytime.

[Vyers]

Apparently some day isn't two damn years later in 2024. Every TWO TO THREE SONGS, smart shuffle TURNS ITSELF ON EVEN WHEN I DISABLE IT REPEATEDLY. If I wanted to be RECOMMENDED SONGS I wouldn't be listening to a playlist I SPECIFICALLY HAND PICKED. I PAY MONEY for SEVERAL ACCOUNTS to be PREMIUM TO AVOID RANDOM SONGS. Yet here we are, 2024 and I'm paying to have you advertise artists to me I didn't ask for.

[ambrosebierce]

Smart shuffle is extremely annoying since none of your recommendations ever came close to what I like. They seem to be purely commercially driven and frankly in my main playlist (4400 songs) which I use all the time there are practically no songs which ever bothered the charts and even musixmatch which supplies the lyrics do not have them for the majority of songs I listen to.

[strerd]

If all other thinng are working by all means mess with somethings one person out of 100 will use. My Spotify app has been crashing non-stop. I've tried rebooting my phone, closing out of Spotify & it keeps happening. I've had it crash 12 times over the last day.

[solidos]

It's 2024, and as a premium user I have no way of turning smart shuffle off and forever. Smart Shuffle uses data I did not give permission for Spotify to use. I only want to play my downloaded songs, not steam irrelevant songs I have no interest listening to. I should not have to put the app into offline only mode to avoid this; only to later have to deal with the app not working because I finally have it working the way I want it to after 30 days because I forgot it's in offline mode. I pay for this platform, to use it as intended to only have it shovel more garbage down my throat. If iTunes worked without needing to constantly update their suite of garbage apps I would have never switched. This machine learning phase that started at the end of 2023 that's bleeding into 2024 masked as artificial intelligence is a cancer for users and consumers.

I'm not interested in any updates for this article until it specifies the key words "Turn Smart Shuffle Off Permanently".

[nickdeb]

Horrible feature, please make impactful changes to your platform an option. Not something you force upon your paying users.

While testing, you did not notice how this feature could be very annoying to users?

[strerd]

Please fix your app from crashing every 2nd song (seriously - EVERY. 2ND. SONG.). 'Smart' Shuffle is not worth it when everything crashes around it.

[diverpaul]

Employee just before their annual report. Suprised their user name isn't Noto Employo Spotifyo.

[marcpm]

Absurd "feature", considering we already had the song-radio that brings up songs that are similar. If I create explicit song-list, I expect to listen songs IN THAT LIST. For example, I have rather strong dislike of rap songs, but I can tolerate songs that contain bit of it - provided rest of the song makes it worth-while (hip-hop of whatever). But getting AI chosen **bleep** into my good-mood playlist totally ruins it 😕 And figuring out what is causing this disaster, is not exactly easy - though once figured out, it is easy to turn off. Just that it should NOT have been turned on silently and random vs sequence play button should not shuffle through that option IMHO.

[shoffman87]

"Smart Shuffle" is awful.  Please bring back playlist radios instead.

[lucas9805]

Today marks the one year anniversary for this bug. I can't help but notice it's still here...

Please fix this bug

Sincerely, 

Everyone

[chilldude23]

Please listen to your user base on this, give us a settings option to diable this feature.

I saw your company is expanding this feature adding a choice to opt out cannot be difficult, I get this is just a way for you to force other tracks on to people to boost streaming on certain songs, but I do not want that. I curate my playlist, not Spotify.

I can not believe users still have to fight this battle to complete silence for you guys. Embarrassing, this is a long-term trend of tone deafness form Spotify and in the long run, it will break your control of this market.

Perfect case study for other corporations on how not to run public relations and it's a live feed.

[jlarocco]

Intensely annoying "feature".

The best way Spotify could improve the player is to bring back 3rd party clients.

I don't want lyrics, I don't want "enhanced" playlists, I don't want podcast and concert popups, I just want to listen to the music I've chosen.  3rd party developers understood that far better than Spotify seems to.

I undestand Spotify wants to add music discovery, but they should create a new app or page specifically for that.

[mattysmooth]

This feature is no good for me, it is an annoyance and it should be able to be removed, as many others have stated.

[strerd]

All I need is this screen.

Anything else is payola.

[Syntxmal]

The enhance button was actually so good compared to this smart shuffle, i hate rotating through shuffle and smart shuffle which is really laggy, i prefered the enhance button which i genuinely used more