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This is possibly a generational difference, but I HATE the shuffle play, and find it horribly grating when I start playing an album from the first track, and find that Spotify has decided to toggle shuffle on again, despite me always turning it off and being super-careful to not click the big 'play' button that's simply a UI trick to re-enable shuffling once again.

Equally annoying is the fact that even though I've chosen to not play 'related music' after my album has finished playing, somehow Spotify manages to ignore that user-preference each time I update the app.

Spotify is a perfect example of a tech company that gives absolutely no fucks for the preferences of their paying customers.

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> Equally annoying is the fact that even though I've chosen to not play 'related music' after my album has finished playing, somehow Spotify manages to ignore that user-preference each time I update the app.

Spotify queue management is just terrible. I don't know exactly what it is doing because I have never sat down and thoroughly experimented with it, but this is approximately what I see at least on their iPad app.

If I add individual songs to my queue, when the last one finishes playing it seems to automatically add the rest of the songs from the album that song came from. It doesn't necessarily start playing them, but if I don't go in and clear them before the next time I start queuing up individual songs they can get played.

I just want a way to easily completely empty the queue and whatever that "sort of in the queue but not quit" thingy is, and to have it only play songs or whole albums that I explicitly add to the queue.

I'd also like a mode where when something is playing from the queue and I click a song in a search result or a playlist it adds that song to the end of the queue rather than starting to play it immediately.

Spotify has every incentive to play you music that costs it less. What you want really isn’t that important to their bottom line.

This is about Spotify, bur now it has dawned to me why the hell Apple Music started insisting on shuffling to old movie soundtracks (Grease is the biggest offender) and indie singers when my playlist has thousdands of other options. Last Friday I had to skip half of the songs before I gave up and stopped it because it kept pushing the same few albums.

> Spotify queue management is just terrible. I don't know exactly what it is doing because I have never sat down and thoroughly experimented with it, but this is approximately what I see at least on their iPad app.

It changes and is incomprehensible.

> a tech company that gives absolutely no fucks for the preferences of their paying customers.

I suspect that end-user subscriptions contribute a relatively small amount to total revenue. Their most valuable customers would be ad reps.

That said, I think Spotify does a pretty good job making the end-user experience very nice. It's fast, reliable, relatively bug-free, has great integrations (it's a better sonos controller than the real sonos controller,) and the best catalog going. Criticizing the finer points is a useful exercise, but, personally, I'm not seeing any dealbreakers.

As a former Spotifier, I can say that your suspicion is incorrect. The free tier is just a really effective acquisition funnel for paid subscriptions; ad revenue is just gravy on top. Ads do pull in a decent amount of revenue, but it's tiny compared to subscriptions.

The best Spotify users are the ones that pay but don't use the service.

How would you optimize the UX for this?

Asking for a friend.

By keeping the monthly credit card payment below the two digit threshold.

Wow, surprising! Thanks for in the info.

> I suspect that end-user subscriptions contribute a relatively small amount to total revenue. Their most valuable customers would be ad reps.

It is very much the opposite. In the most recent quarter[1], Spotify had revenues of 2,178 million from premium subscriptions and 323 million from ad-supported users.

[1] Q3 2021, data from https://s22.q4cdn.com/540910603/files/doc_financials/2021/q3...

More data is available: https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx

The problem is that their growth team are legitimately evil people who are constantly thinking about "how can we force our users to do things that they don't want to do?".

They can have all the features they want but if the growth team keeps up with these tricks to extend "listen time" metrics, nobody will like the product

I love the shuffle button for many cases and use it most of my day, but I wish they’d tag albums not meant to be played in random order (eg. Pink Floyd) and enable you to switch based on that flag.

> albums not meant to be played in random order

Which albums are meant to be played in random order?

Greatest hits

other type of compilation albums

albums before the Beatles often were not composed with an idea that the order of play was important, even though they were of course in a particular order

there are probably quite a few others, I would say maybe lots of albums supposedly are meant to be played in a certain order, but only in some of them does it make a great difference - for example if you randomize The Dark Side of the Moon as mentioned it would have some tracks that were no longer functioning in relation to the others.

Those tracks do, however, function perfectly if you stick them into a multi-disc changer with They Might Be Giants' album Apollo 18, which contains "Fingertips", a four and a half minute collection of 5-10 second songs. Going between a bunch of British guys moaning about how terrible it is to be rich while fucking with a whole bunch of the most expensive recording technology available at the time is much improved by John & John interjecting "I found a new friend... underneath my pillow!" or "What's that bluuuuuuuuuue thing doing here?".

For best effects I recommend also loading Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral" into the third slot of your CD changer.

The shuffle button has existed for decades so I imagine I’m not an exception in wanting this concept.

Techno EPs don't really care whether you play banger #1 or #2 first, as an example.

> I HATE the shuffle play, and find it horribly grating when I start playing an album from the first track, and find that Spotify has decided to toggle shuffle on again, despite me always turning it off

iPhone music player (Music.app; formerly iTunes.app) does exactly the same shit. I find Tim Cook efficient at making once great built-in iOS and maCOS apps annoying or barely useful.

I am Apple Music customer since beginning and not once has been shuffle turned on automatically.

Maybe it's only happening with local music, which I have ripped from CDs. But, since we're at it, I recently lost the ability to search for local music without my phone looking for it on the internet and offering to download what I already own.

Also, with introduction of Apple Music, Apple disallowed sharing music over LAN. I always found it useful to be able to play music that sits on just one computer on the network, from any Apple device. What once just worked, now became a subscription fee for iirc $20/mo.

Are you talking about iTunes Match which is $25/year? I used to keep everything myself in iTunes (music and movies/series) but the hostility towards local files had me move elsewhere. The not being able to search for local files is beyond annoying when using an apple tv and having a large local library in iTunes, I know they have since split iTunes into different apps.

I don't remember how much exactly they wanted or what was the service name that would resolve this freshly introduced annoyance. Some Apple stuff is more expensive where I live, than in the U.S. but it may have been $25 yearly not $20 monthly.

It pretty much looked like an extortion attempt: Apple blocked my access to owned, legal, lossless music files in their proprietary AIFF format and offered presumably the same music streamed from their servers for a fee.

IIRC this sharing functionality worked until Mojave and became problematic with the introduction of Catalina. It went from being an option in iTunes to being an option in the Sharing menu in System Preferences. It still used DAAP as an underneath technology but became problematic, with browsable but not playable library etc.

Before that, I had an IKE VPN set up from iPhone to home network which allowed accessing music residing on iMac's HDD while biking or hiking, on iPhone with much less storage than music library weight.

if by phone you mean iPhone , I just checked and it works fine for me in the music app. under search there are 2 tabs, radio, local. local searches local only for me. iOS 15.1

I do hate the apple tries to push Apple music at every opportunity even though I have zero interest.

Also, I found shuffle is broken in the music app. I switched to Foobar2000 and suddenly I'm hearing tracks on shuffle that the Music app had never played in 10years that were on my phone.

> if by phone you mean iPhone , I just checked and it works fine for me in the music app. under search there are 2 tabs, radio, local. local searches local only for me. iOS 15.1

When I use Siri and instruct it to "play xxx", where "xxx" is a locally present song, it often randomly does not play the song but instead searches for it. An example from yesterday or the day before: I have a "Reservoir Dogs" soundtrack ripped from CD. If I instruct my iPhone to "play Little Green Bag", it no longer just plays the song it lists in Music.app, as it always did when it was called iTunes. It offers me the purchase and download of George Baker Selection CD which originally lists this song included in Tarantino's movie.

I currently have iOS 15.02 installed and I do not have nor had Apple Music subscription.

there is an option in settings to turn apple music off. maybe that would help?

Settings->Music->Show Apple Music

Umm, no - shuffle isn’t even a ‘switch’ in Apple Music, it’s a separate, equally sized button next to ‘Play’, and when you use it, it has no effect on future choices.

Yes, it is annoying that this option turns itself on and I don't have it at hand. It requires me to click on a currently playing title which brings next tracks list that has additional shuffle and repeat icons.

Is this behavior on a particular platform? I've never encountered this behavior and don't particularly pay attention to what I click. I sometimes tried using shuffle on some playlists, but that's extremely rare, and when I go to another playlist or album shuffle seems disabled.

On the desktop I don't have the big "play shuffled" button at all. I only see it on the iphone for playlists. I've checked a few albums, and they had the regular play button.

Shuffle is great for playlists, but terrible for albums

I just wish shuffle was truly random, but it seems to favor tracks with the (edit- got this mixed up) lowest payout. I had the same track repeated several times to me in a few hours, in a playlist of several hundred tracks

What you actually want is a true shuffle, where the entire set of songs is shuffled like a deck of cards, so you don’t get repeats. This is what iTunes does, to the best of my knowledge.

When you listen to 60 songs from a shuffled playlist of 300 songs, the likelihood of hearing the same song 3 or more times is approximately 29%. (Quick simulation: https://play.golang.org/p/2RNADWRQx4h)

This is related to the Birthday Paradox.

EDIT: Disregard this. I was thinking of shuffling as repeatedly choosing songs uniformly at random with replacement from the playlist, but commenters reminded me that shuffling shouldn't work that way. I found an open issue about this: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Mac/Shuffle-should-...: "In a playlist of mine that is more than 6 hours long, shuffle often plays songs twice or three times within 30 minutes."

Sure, hearing one track a few extra times I could accept.

But it happens a lot. And it seems to favor certain artists. I am well acquainted with the properties of randomness and what I've seen suggests some kind of weighting system.

shuffle != random

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/28/how-to-shuffle-...

This is from 2014.

> it seems to favor tracks with the highest payout

Why would it do that? Wouldn't it optimize for the lowest per-stream rate?

You're right, I had my wires crossed.

Can confirm. I usually shuffle play my "liked songs" (which has nearly 1000 songs) and lately the same group of 40 or so songs play over and over. It's terrible.

That's exactly what I witnessed: a subset of the playlist receiving nearly all the attention

Perfect example of using a(n expensive) service even when it's annoying. Just stop using it, they'll hear your voice better.

Honest question: is there a better service with a similarly broad catalog? When I first signed up for a streaming service several years ago I went with Deezer since it seemed competitive and I knew Spotify was the evil empire. But bugs and a smaller catalog forced me to jump ship.

I really wish it were possible to pay for a separate player/discovery app, in addition to my Spotify subscription, that had access to the Spotify catalog.

YouTube Music? I made a switch to them after finding that their recommendation engine worked better compared to Spotify...plus i get YouTube ads free as a side effect. Your mileage might vary on the recommendations engine though...

I actually had Youtube Premium with Music before I gave spotify a try. I just cancelled Spotify's trial a few days ago. I just don't see what I get (for myself specifically) that I don't get with Youtube Music.

> is there a better service with a similarly broad catalog?

There is not.

> I really wish it were possible to pay for a separate player/discovery app, in addition to my Spotify subscription, that had access to the Spotify catalog.

This is possible. The Spotify SDK allows you to do practically anything, the only caveat is that Spotify is in control of playback state, you merely request the desired state. In practice this means you can do whatever you want -- no shuffle, better discovery, write your own radio or suggestion algorithms, etc.

By "app" I meant to suggest on mobile. My understanding is that Spotify no longer allows 3rd party apps on mobile. Is that not correct?

(And to be clear, I'm looking to pay for an existing app, not write my own.)

The default Samsung music player has a Spotify tab. I've never used it though so cannot comment on how it works.

Yes, this is one of the things that keeps me using Spotify - Concertmaster is a great UI for listening to classical music, and it has access to a huge catalogue.

Just keeping our own MP3 library, no need to listen to the whole universe.

> is there a better service with a similarly broad catalog?

No, but try https://bandcamp.com.

Yeah, private bittorrent trackers.

Exactly, just download off high-quality torrent trackers and buy/give to musicians you like, talk about them to your friends and cultivate fan communities. Buy stuff off bandcamp and support search for your local scene. And as a counter argument to "but you're starving the artist and music industry", see [1], which explains in great details how streaming services don't benefit the vast majority of artists (tldr: paying per stream, paired with decontextualized highest view-count first search, starves most musicians instead of fairly sharing the revenue based on actual needs).

[1]: https://pitchfork.com/features/oped/how-to-be-a-responsible-...

Given the royalties that streaming pays the 'starving artist' argument doesn't make a lot of sense. In fact you could even argue that Spotify has done far more damage to artists' revenue streams than piracy ever did

You've hit on my main argument against artist's trying to "own" their work, and against DRM. There are a million other ways to monetize your work instead of trying to control how it is consumed.

As the great, wise Yogurt once said, "MOICHENDISING!"

> Spotify is a perfect example of a tech company that gives absolutely no fucks for the preferences of their paying customers.

Or maybe it does? At least the things you are complaining about (minus the auto reset) are exactly what I desire to happen.

I barely ever listen to a specific album (in a specific order), but often listen to an artists entire catslog.

Same. On mobile, most of the time I want my playlists to be shuffled. And Spotify recognises that in the UI. I know how to have it play in order which also works.

It's entirely a matter of preference.

I like Spotify's behavior, because I don't listen to albums, I fill my spacetime with music. I want to press Play once, and not have to micromanage the player. It's actually the reason why I use Spotify. Apple Music plays one song I select, and then falls silent.

>Spotify is a perfect example of a tech company that gives absolutely no fucks for the preferences of their paying customers.

I think that is a larger problem across the industry. And here is an unpopular opinion especially on HN. Tech is dominating every field. Tech is dictating trends. And Tech company are making consumer products but doesn't understand consumers. It is exactly the same on Apple Music at launch when they decide to not include a Loop button because it was all about the "Next Song".

I felt Spotify, or arguably Apple has made the business case for Streaming Music ( or not since they dont make much money ). But in terms of product or UX they are not any better.

Having said that I still think Spotify is far better than Apple Music. And Shuffle works for long playlist and not on Album so I am perfectly fine with the decision.

Mike Oldfield[1] (and probably many others) solved this by releasing one of his albums as a single ~hour-long track. Try shuffling that! That seems to be a pretty decent compromise to me. If you, as an artist, don't want listeners to play your work in random order, release it as a single track.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amarok_(Mike_Oldfield_album)

The WORST is when you play on a a smart speaker. I asked to play "Despicable Me 2" sound track while my kids and I were cleaning the kitchen. Its starts off a song by a song by Ceelo Green that is on on the album, then another song from the album, then goes into the Fuck You song By Mr. Green. WTF spotify.

The Smart Speaker experience is pure Shite. Play the ENTIRE album I requested.

AND let me choose "Explicit" filtering based on what device I am on.

> This is possibly a generational difference, but I HATE the shuffle play

I'm in my late 40s and very rarely do NOT use shuffle play.

> Spotify is a perfect example of a tech company that gives absolutely no fucks for the preferences of their paying customers.

Oh please.

You have no evidence for that. You don't like one thing & then decided your preferences represent the mass user base. Get over yourself.

Since we're ranting about shuffle...

I have a favorites playlist with over 3k songs and if i just press shuffle to start playing - it keeps playing the same freaking songs. It's a mix of most recently added + 20 of my most played song. I have to scroll all the way down, pick a random song, and then it will start picking more random songs from the playlist.

So frustrating.

Depends on what I’m listening to. If it is a playlist then I love shuffle because it keeps the playlist fresh.

However for albums I completely agree with you. You’d think it would be smart enough to detect when an album is on an default to not shuffling.

Yup absolutely hate when companies do that. God damn jira tickets, story points, medium blog articles, user tracking pixels and not a lick of good taste to be found

It is most annoying to listen to progressive rock on Spotify, removing shuffle will be great for me.

I mean ... it is relatively clear why this is happening isn't it? Artists pay to promote their material, so Spotify needs an excuse to play "random/related" music to it's costumers.

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