Can't play a playlist of podcasts without shuffle??

[JoshL31]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

Pixel 3

My Question or Issue

I saw a post from spotify recently about creating playlists of podcast episodes and thought "that's a good idea I'll try that."  So I started a playlist of a bunch of episodes I wanted to listen to in the order that I wanted to list to them.  Here's the problem . . . it will ONLY play in shuffle mode!  There seems to be no way that I can find to turn off shuffle because when the app is playing a podcast it removes the shuffle on/off toggle button!  Is there any way to turn off shuffle in this situation?

[Guido]

Hello @JoshL31,

Thanks for getting in touch!

Could you try to go to a regular song and see if you can disable (or enable and then disable) shuffle. This might reset Shuffle and enable you to play in a regular order.

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling the app. You can read here how.

Hope it works! Let us know how it goes.

Have a nice day.

[she-zara]

Hi,

I have the same problem.  I have no troubble with playlists of songs, just playlists with podcasts. I've tried to reinstal Spotify, but it didn't help.

Connecting with Sonos showed a similar problem - songs play but for podcasts I get an error-message that podcasts cannot be played (spotify app, linked to sonos) and in the sonos app, through my spotify account I cannot find any podcast, just songs.

I'm member of a family account - can there be a problem linking the premium-status to podcasts?

Thanks!

[J-Go]

I am having the same issue.  I reinstalled the app, that did nothing. I also tried switching shuffle play off in a regular song but it did not help.  Also, I have both an Apple and Android phone.  It does not work with either.  Surely this cannot be how it is suppose to work.  Podcasts need to be listened to in a certain in order.   Why would shuffle play only be able to be turned off with songs?  Makes no sense.

[VanillaSan]

I tried reinstalling and it went back to normal for a while, but when I opened the app again it went back into permanent shuffle mode.

The way the list is displayed is also different. When I installed the app again the playlists looked like other playlists do, after restart they went back to displaying a large play button that has a small shuffle symbol attached to it, but you cannot deactivate.

Going to an individual episode doesn't give you repeat, shuffle, go to list options as it does with music playlists.

[oladunk]

Temporary fix for me is using "add to queue" and administering the queue instead of using a podcast playlist. So e.g. for a longer workout I can play several podcasts sequentially.
But this issue really should be fixed.

[mkaydumbasshoe]

I went to a playlist with songs only, no podcasts. I turned off shuffle mode from there by unclicking the green shuffle icon. Then I went back to the playlist with podcasts and it was all in order.

Instructions (What I did)

Results (How I desired it to look)

[Noemie1312]

I registered premium in order to listen to podcasts and it appears there still isn't a convenient way to use a playlist without shuffle.

Seems like a sad joke, I can't believe this app is so poorly designed.

Still no answer to this though simple problem before I switch to Apple music ?

[rhetoriccamel]

I know this is an old post, but I came across it because I'm trying to listen to two different podcasts (going back and forth between the two) in order of their release. I put them in a playlist so I could listen in the order I put them in (oldest to newest), and I can't believe that this issue still isn't fixed. Fortunately switching over to a song and unchecking the shuffle button and then going back to the podcast did help on my Android Phone and now they're in order.

This seems like an issue that should be fixed by a company that plans on buying out and making many podcasts exclusive to their platform. You'd think they'd iron out the basic needs of podcast listeners that all decent podcast players have as a standard feature. I won't get into the other features that Spotify lacks. I'd really like to make Spotify my all around player for both music and podcasts, but missing simple things like this really makes it hard to make the switch permanently. 

[Eni]

Hi folks! 

We apologize for the delayed reply, we've just come across this thread.

Currently, the playlists containing podcasts will start on Shuffle when clicking on the Play button on the top of the playlist. When this happens, the Shuffle button will not show up in the Now Playing view or the context menu.

In this case, as a workaround you can try to press play on the play button on the episode card in the playlist.

We always aim to improve, so we suggest that you make sure to enable automatic updates to avoid missing the latest improvements and fixes!

If you have any questions, just let us know 🙂

[JoshL31]

Hi Eni,

I appreciate you responding here but your workaround doesn't even work.  That only works if you last listened to music without it being on shuffle.  If you listen to a music playlist on shuffle and then switch over to a podcast playlist and do what you suggested it still will be on shuffle.  The app seems to hold the shuffle setting even though it isn't visible while playing podcasts. 

With Spotify clearly putting so much energy into being a podcast leader it's mind boggling that simple issues like this STILL haven't been corrected.  I posted this originally back in January.  Since then Spotify has come out with it's "your episodes" feature which is essentially worthless to most podcast listeners... You can't change the order of the your episodes and it adds episodes to the top of the list... Who would listen to podcasts like that?  Furthermore it keeps episodes on the list after you have completed listening to them... Why?  People don't listen to podcasts episodes over and over or something.  So Spotify has done that but not corrected these other basic podcast player issues.  Spotify needs to learn that the way people listen to podcasts and music are completely different and stop trying to treat them the same.

I've been sticking with Spotify for podcasts because you have such good exclusive content and I like having everything in one app.... But if Spotify can't get very simple things figured out about how a podcast player should work that's going to eventually wear thin and myself and many other listeners are going to start going back to traditional podcast apps.

[Noemie1312]

In my opinion, the real reason why Spotify is not solving a simple problem like that is simply that they do NOT want to solve it, because it goes against their politics.

The aim of all the Spotify app (simply take a look at how it was designed) is to force customers to listen to what Spotify decides us to listen. For this purpose they do not want to let us listen to, for example, podcasts in the order we decide, the same way that it is impossible for one to organise his/her favorite music in a logic way. Everything was designed so that we will mostly listen to what the company decides to promote, through THEIR playlists. Spotify imitates the overbearing DJ that grabs the turntables and will not let you play your favorite songs.

Letting us believe it is a technical issue, which it is obviously not, while it is a political and commercial issue due to their absence of respect of the freedom of their customers.

[Relio]

This worked for me!

[ImpossibleHorse]

This advice is utterly wrong.  No matter where you push "play" from, it will ALWAYS shuffle your playlist, and there is no way to prevent it from shuffling.

Spotify, fix your program

[Relio]

This was the solution for me as well.

[valeriemj]

2021 and this problem still exists (I'm on desktop). Trying to listen to a new podcast with 2 pt episodes was obnoxious because episodes would play randomly. Shuffle wasn't obviously enabled, because the podcast interface doesn't show that icon. I went to the menu and disabled Shuffle under Playback>Shuffle and the episodes re-organized into chronological order.

It should be more obvious that the shuffle setting affects music and podcasts and it should be easy to disable shuffle for podcasts on the interface. 

[ImpossibleHorse]

Would really appreciate an actual solution to this problem.  Stop telling people to reinstall or use some half-baked workaround in the music player.  All you need to do is give people the exact same controls for podcasts as they have in normal playlists. COME ON!!!

[Dwights_way]

This kind of works but it's not very convenient especially if someone is trying to drive. 

[Jory3]

August 2021 and the issue is still there. It makes no sense to listen podcasts in shuffle mode! Spotify should really fix that now. 

[StefanvV93]

February 2022 and I am still facing this issue as well.  I have read through multiple threads and have done a clean reinstall, checked the ... that it is not on suffle, played music not on shuffel and it is still playing my Podcasts in shuffel.  I don't know what to say, cause this issue is clearly very old. 

Premium user on Windows and iOS.