Plan: Premium

Country: USA

Device: Google Pixel 4a

Operating System: Android 13

App version: 8.8.36.522

My Question or Issue

1. Goto "home"
2. Select "podcasts and shows" filter
3. Scroll through podcasts

Expected behavior: complete silence, because at no point have I pressed the play button

Actual behavior: preview audio begins immediately. There is no way to prevent this from happening because the mute button does not appear until the audio plays and the setting reverts to "don't mute" every time you restart the app.

It's incredibly frustrating that I can't scroll through podcasts silently. This behavior wakes up or annoys people around me. And it annoys me!  I'm scrolling past podcasts because I literally don't want to hear them and Spotify is forcing me to. Many of the podcasts are from channels I listened to once and have no further interest in!

Please make the setting to mute the podcast preview be remembered across sessions or make the icon available before I start scrolling. This "feature" feels very disrespectful to the user.