Ever need to mute a song because it kept appearing in your Spotify account’s Smart Shuffle too often and you got sick of skipping over it? It’s one of the main reasons why Smart Shuffle has been pissing off subscribers for years.
Smart Shuffle works by mixing recommended songs into your regular Shuffle of songs in your library. It’s not an awful idea, and the execution would be otherwise well done if the algorithm weren’t so insistent on sometimes pushing the same songs at you over and over.
It’s like that one friend who insists you have to listen to this one song they really like, and you’ve heard them and acknowledged them, but they just can’t understand why you’re not as into Scottish, early ’90s house music as they are. And so they keep asking. Smart Shuffle is that friend.
Now Spotify has introduced a snooze button that you can click anytime a recommended song pops up that you’re sick of seeing. The excommunication lasts for 30 days, after which your friend Smart Shuffle will politely bug you again.
making smart shuffle a little smarter
Spotify broke the news on May 7, and the feature is rolling out first to Premium subscribers who fork over cash to Spotify each month, not the free tiers. They plan to “bring it to more users,” though, so it looks like it won’t be pay-to-play forever.
It’s nice to see that Spotify seems to be listening to the gripes of its subscribers at least part of the time. That is, when they’re not yanking Apple’s chain.
Although I still hope that you’ll join me in demanding that Spotify release an option to specifically select a shuffle option that prioritizes one-hit wonders and the least-played songs in your library. I’ve got 10,000 songs. Why do I keep hearing the same 500?
Come on, Spotify. Make it happen.
The post Spotify’s Gonna Let You Block Specific Songs With a ’30-Day Snooze’ Button appeared first on VICE.
