Disable Shuffle by default on new album view

[Glitched]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone X

Operating System

iOS 13

My Question or Issue

I like the new UI update, but hate that the play button for albums defaults to shuffle play, as seen below. I don't want to shuffle albums, pretty much ever. I would also appreciate the ability to disable it for my playlists where the order of the songs matter.

 

[bigdadrecords]

In case Spotify still doesn’t understand the customer feedback. 

[c35]

I’ve been using Amazon Unlimited for years but with the three month trial thought I would try Spotify for a bit. Obviously, I’m a new user so don’t have playlists really set up yet so simply wanted to play some of my favorite albums. Well, an hour and lots of frustration later of trying to get the big green play album button to NOT shuffle the album I’ve lost the groove and will just chalk up the money I put to the trial as a loss. Yes, I now see I need to simply click the first song in the list but as I said I’ve lost the good feelings by now of trying something new and cool.

Oh well, maybe in a few years the user interface will be better for people that like going deep in a band and learning about an album (notes, credits, maybe info about the album song or band) but as it is Spotify seems more geared to really young people that just play the hits and public playlists of top songs.

I forget the service it was as it’s gone now but there used to be a music service that had info about the making of the album and info on the band and artists kind of like articles about the songs and band you were listening to.

But it’s almost 2021 and I would have thought by now if I wanted to listen to an album on a music service I could just bring up the album and hit the big green play button to hear it as the artist intended. Guess not yet ... maybe by 2022 we will have the technology to play albums correctly as the artist intended by pressing the big green play button.

[sprbnkr]

Clarification - on an iPad, click on a track to play the album, then click on the album art, then click on the three dots on *that* screen. The options list that comes up is the only place where shuffle is listed. You can toggle it on/off there.

Ridiculous that they buried this and made the default playback break the album order.

[musila]

You are absolutely right. 100% of my thoughts as well. Spotify is coming up with questionable features, but the basics are still faulty, since many many years.

If entire catalog would not be as extensive as it is, I would have switched quite a while ago. This is the only thing that holds me back.

[Wootery]

> Ridiculous that they buried this and made the default playback break the album order.

Agree. Now I have to carefully follow a ritual to play an album in the proper order. Who asked for this? Who at Spotify thought it was a good idea to not only make this the default behaviour, but make it impossible to change in the settings? Did they forget they have audiobooks in their library?

[musila]

It’s probably some business KPI that is about playing tracks more often, that are not typically being played. So to avoid just playing the first few tracks of an album before moving to the next album / artist.

So it’s not about the end user but the business side of things.

My guess.

[modiX91]

It will never disable shuffle when I start playing the first song, so I have to disable shuffle by myself. There are people who prefer shuffle + crossfade on playlists and no shuffle + no crossfade on albums. Crossfade seems to disable with no shuffle on in an album, but the shuffle seems to be on by default, no matter what.

It's annoying to always enable and disable shuffle if you switch between playlists and albums often. I would welcome a setting that allows me to toggle shuffle, automatically, depending on the type of playlist I play.

EDIT: I'm using macOS and Android

[talwgx]

I'm new to Spotify from YouTube Music. This ux design is absolute mental. You're taking the biggest call to action on the screen and literally making it random. Why would anyone who wants to listen to an artist's album would want a piece of randomized software to choose the order of the songs vs how the artist would want it - BY DEFAULT, with no way to configure this? I'm sure you have PMs that did all the analytics and it probably improves "engagement" or some other metric, but sometime making a good product is about more than that. Can you imagine Apple doing this to artists/listeners? You should make sure to keep the Duo plan at no more than $3/no, otherwise I'm back to YT or iTunes. 

[loenlee]

Can confirm that disabiling shuffle on a playlist is hard to find. Followed these instructions and the shuffle icon is still on the playlist play button. We're getting sick of it defaulting to Moana because of the shuffle and my three year old is angry. Please fix.

[BeaversAndDucks]

As others have mentioned, this is a UI/UX issue. Why would 'Shuffle' be the default option for playing through an album? The default play action from the album view should be to play the album straight through. Spotify, the current implementation is poor. I doubt it is the majority of users preference to shuffle their favorite album. And I cant imagine it would be the artist's either. Please pass this on to the correct team for feedback. 

[CarlosE · Accepted solution]

Hey folks,

Thanks for posting on this thread.

Just to clarify, the green Play button is indeed for shuffle play an album or playlist, as it shows the shuffle icon on its bottom right side. You can find more info in this article.

However, this doesn't mean that you must or are forced to hear the album in shuffle. As previously mentioned, to listen to an album in the order it's listed, you only need to tap on the first song of the album instead of the green Play button and make sure that the Shuffle option  is disabled (white).

You can easily find the Shuffle icon on the Now Playing view and just need to tap on it to enable/disable it.

We hope this clears things up.

Cheers!

[BeaversAndDucks]

Hi Carlos,

Thank you for the quick reply. I think everyone understands how it works today. The problem is that the way it works is not a good implementation. The green play button is the primary call to action on this screen. I believe the expected behavior here - as you can see from the comments - is to play an album straight through. At the very least, there should be an option to change this default behavior in settings. Spotify is the only music service I have used that uses the play button to auto shuffle an album. Its....strange, and not user friendly.

[fecaleagle]

@BeaversAndDucks has it right. I think most of the commenters here understand how to play an album in album order, it's just that the UX/UI implementation is not intuitive. Defaulting to shuffle play via the most apparent playback button would be bad enough if it were configurable in settings or via long-hold, but the big green playback button is neither configurable, nor consistent with the last used playback mechanism, nor a reasonable default for album playback. Thanks for getting involved in the discussion though!

[FrustratedInCo]

The problem is that there is no way to pick up where you left off in an album or playlist when going between them. If I close Spotify and then reopen it and want to keep playing the album I was last listening to, I can just press Play and it continues on (and either goes with or without shuffle, depending on what mode I was in when I closed Spotify). But, a common scenario is that I want to play one playlist in the morning and then another when I workout. When I do this, I can't go back to the morning playlist and pick up where I left off. 

[Hisserbee]

Everyone please vote for fixing this [snip - Community Moderator edit] here, apparently that’s the only way they’ll change anything. I’m probably going to cancel my family account and move us all over to Apple Music because this is making me so furious.

[ep_qv7-p5qwpo]

yes! this timesx1000

it is extremely frustrating. Why can't we have an option "disable shuffle by default" NOT this silly behaviour. I want to make sure my playlists all stay in sequence where I left them

[chrisyanda]

---

@Emilia_8 wrote...

Note: The play button on top of a playlist will always activate shuffle. To play in order, you have to choose the first song of an album/playlist/artist. 

Thanks for telling me that, but that seems an incredibly stupid feature, particularly when you are telling it to play an album rather than a playlist.

[Leefc]

It's an infuriating UX because Play means Play.
The little Shuffle icon is deceptive because it seems like something you can toggle.
If Spotify wants to direct people to a Shuffle experience, create a separate Shuffle button.

The closest idea I've found in the Idea section is linked below. Go upvote it to get an official response.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Mobile-Configurable-shuffle-play-button/idi-p/4939151#co...

[Jeremy]

Hey there folks,

Thank you for your posts and feedback.

We constantly aiming to improve our features. We’re sorry that this means you’re not able to use Spotify like you wish to do at the moment.

You can read more about how your feedback reaches Spotify here.

Once again - thanks for the feedback, we appreciate it. Let us know if we can help with anything else. We're always one reply away.

[JohnsTunes]

Hi Jeremy   -

Thanks for your comments.  Are you indicating that our comments Re: Disable Shuffle have already been passed thru to the Spotify team as feedback?       Or do we have to do it again by restarting the process by submitting via the "Idea Exchange" as per the link you provided.   

At the very least Spotify should respond and state why they want SHUFFLE is on by default when folks click on the PLAY button.   It's not a big ask.  Why?    This conversation has been going on now for a year.