How Do I Control Spotify?

Cafe Society
1

This year, acting on a desire to listen to the Very Special Straight Dope Christmas Spotify playlist, I broke down and downloaded Spotify. I even got my daughter to add me to her subscription.

So for the past week, this playlist has pretty much been the soundtrack to my days. I listen to it in the car (connected to my sound system via bluetooth), and even persuaded my Echo to play it on loop mode when I go to bed, so it puts me to sleep and is still going when I wake up.

Lately, the playlist has been playing on shuffle, and this afternoon, it started sneaking in songs that aren’t even on the playlist! I presume that Spotify has some sort of predictive algorithm that selects music that I might like to hear, basing its choices on its observations of the music. This strikes me as an ingenious trick that the software designers have built into the app, and I would like for somebody to tell me how to turn it off.

TIA

2

Spotify is on my list as worst mainstream app ever. Even started a thread on it. It seems like the functionality changes between the phone app, android auto, website and computer app. But here is what you are describing.

Spotify shuffle has three options: sequential meaning plays the next song on the list linearly and shuffle meaning a random-seems-not-very-random choice for the next song as indicated by a highlighted shuffle icon or a shuffle icon with a dot under it. Lastly is the “smart shuffle” option where Spotify will insert songs it thinks fits in your list every so often into the shuffle. It is indicated by a star (more of an elongated hypocycloid) by the shuffle icon. The thing is in my experience, Spotify will turn on your smart shuffle just because with no input from you.