Why is there no way to play an individual song without queuing up additional songs?

[CantDisableAutoplay]

This issue makes Spotify almost unusable for me. When I choose a song to play, I usually want to listen to just that one song and for playback to end when the song ends. I cannot figure out a way to do that with Spotify, even after spending an hour with support. It almost feels like the Spotify app is designed to actively prevent this usage, and I don't know why.

I found this suggestion to use the "add to queue" option:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/How-to-Stop-AutoPlay/m-p/5242984/highlight/true#M...

That would be perfect for me if it worked, but on Windows and on Android, the queue just loads up a bunch more music every time it finishes, even though I've disabled _both_ autoplay options in the settings. Playback stops the way I want it to, but the next time I try to use "add to queue," I end up listening to whatever junk got added to the queue instead of the song that I just added.

Even worse, there is no way to clear the queue. I have to individually remove each song. On desktop, I can use shift click to clear all the songs as a range, but on Android, I need to press delete for each and every song on the queue.

I just cannot understand how there is no way whatsoever to do what I am trying to do. Doesn't anybody else here prefer to play songs one at a time? Is there an alternate Spotify player that I could use that doesn't have this problem? Should I consider a different streaming service?

I am actually begging. Please, please, please. I just want to find a song that looks good, listen to it, and then enjoy a bit of silence. That's a normal way to use a media player that I pay good money for. I'm not looking to pad anybody's engagement metrics; I'm just looking to enjoy my music.

[CantDisableAutoplay]

Can this be tracked as a bug? I initially wanted to file a bug report for this behavior, but it looks like this is the only forum to report problems with Spotify's software. I'm seeing two separate serious usability bugs that should be easy to address:

1) The recommendation engine adds unwanted songs to the play queue, and there's no discoverable way to disable that behavior. (If anyone knows of a way to do that, it would be a huge help for me.)

2) The "clear queue" button is usually missing, making it very difficult to manage the play queue.

Also, it looks like the first issue does not affect iOS. I tried on my iPad, and I was able to queue up a song as desired without any unwanted song recommendations. Unfortunately, my daily listening is almost entirely on Android and Windows desktop.

As it stands, the Spotify player is borderline unusable for me with this behavior. The service and music selection are great, so I would really love if it would be possible to improve this user experience.

[Yordan]

Hi @CantDisableAutoplay!

A way to play an individual song is to play the song from the Search bar. That way the app creates a new queue that consists of just that one track, so when it finishes playing, the playback will stop (given that you've disabled Autoplay).

If the track has been released as a single (and can be found under "Singles and EPs"), you can play it from there - no other songs will be added to the queue that way.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

[CantDisableAutoplay]

@Yordan, thanks for the suggestion! That's similar to the suggestion I saw in another thread:
https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/How-to-Stop-AutoPlay/td-p/5242594

Unfortunately, using the queue to play an individual song doesn't work, because the queue always has unwanted songs in it, which end up playing after the desired song finishes, even with autoplay disabled. Even if I manually clear the queue, it just gets filled up with more songs by the recommendation engine. I can't tell if that's a bug or it if its intended behavior that I can't turn off (even though I really really want to).

Is the development team looking into ways to improve this workflow? I think that some of these behaviors should be tracked as bugs.

[CantDisableAutoplay]

I discovered an additional bug.

I tried creating an empty playlist to use as a way to empty the queue. This seemed to work well: playing that playlist canceled the music that was playing and emptied out my queue. However, now "add to queue" does not work: it displays "Added to queue," but the queue remains empty. I tried this on both desktop and mobile.

Should I create a new thread to track the new bug?

[Yordan]

Hi @CantDisableAutoplay,

Thanks for the reply.

First, ensure that the following are disabled both on your PC and your phone:

• Autoplay similar songs when your music ends in this app.
• Autoplay similar songs when your music ends on other devices.

Afterwards open the Queue and check if there's an Next in Queue tab. If there is one, clear all tracks, then head to the Search bar, enter the desired song's name and hit play. When it finishes playing, the playback should stop.

If you're still experiencing troubles, please share a short video which showcases how things look on your end so we can get a clear understanding of what's happening.

Take care.

[CantDisableAutoplay]

@Yordan, thanks for the response.

Yes, I definitely disabled autoplay on both desktop and mobile, including both the "in this app" and "on other devices" settings.

When I follow all the steps you describe, including painstakingly deleting every item from the queue, playback does indeed stop at the end of the song, but when it does, it spews a bunch of junk back into the queue. If I want to play another individual song, I have to once again clear the queue, which is not really practical, because the "clear queue" button is missing.

Here is a link to a video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2teWbga_GeDdA22x0xOnHNPsDS1n9Q7/view?usp=sharing

[AndresM]

Hey @CantDisableAutoplay,

Thanks for sharing your video with us. 

In this case, could you search for the song you want to listen to and play it directly from the results you get? In this case, you should be able to see that the queued song is the one you're playing. For that reason, you should be able to clear the queue (1 song) in order to make the player stop once your selected song is over. 

Let us know how it goes. 

[CantDisableAutoplay]

Thanks for the reply, @AndresM.

Your suggestion of using "Add to Queue" from the search results has the same behavior as using "Add to Queue" from any other source. When the song ends, it repopulates the queue, making it unreasonably difficult to choose my next song to play. You can view the video I already posted for reference.

Also, are there tickets tracking the other bugs that I described? The "Clear queue" button is usually missing, making it very inconvenient to clear the queue on desktop and completely impractical on Android.

[CantDisableAutoplay]

Oh no, I misinterpreted your recommendation! If I directly play the song from the search results instead of using the "Add to Queue" method, it does indeed play the song by itself without adding anything to the queue. Thanks for that suggestion.

That works pretty well, but I think it would be a good addition to the software if it were possible to play a song individually from more places.

Thanks again for the help, and sorry for the misunderstanding.