Spotify is finally shipping out a ‘feature’ that has been around since listening to music on the go was invented. The streaming service will separate the ‘Play’ and ‘shuffle’ buttons in its mobile app. But, before you get too excited, you’ll need to be paying for Spotify before you can access such an advanced feature.
Now That’s What I Call A Feature
Spotify says it’s rolling the feature out because “[m]usic—and how you listen to it—should be yours to control.” This might sound like a small change but it does alter the way you control your listening experience. Before the update, if you tapped Play on a specific album, it would automatically shuffle the tracks for you. If you wanted to listen to the album as the artist intended, then you had to tap on the first track.
Users have Adele to thank, at least in part, for this change. When the artist dropped her latest album last year, she made the argument that artists and their teams go through a lot of effort to compile an album and Spotify automatically shuffling them pretty much undid that. Spotify must’ve taken that to heart because it’s making the feature permanent for paying subscribers.
This will be a global change that should roll out in the coming weeks. Some keen-eyed listeners might have already had the feature for a while. This update comes just a few days after the music platform released a new algorithmic playlist feature called Friends Mix. Those are both great features. We’ll be sure to make use of them while we wait patiently for Spotify Hi-Fi, please and thank you.