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Smart Shuffle Breathes New Life Into Your Spotify Playlists

March 8, 2023

Our users love creating playlists to reflect key moments in their lives or soundtrack moments that matter. These often become a listener’s most-streamed playlist for the first several months after creation. But over time they stream these playlists less frequently in favor of new music or mixes.

Today at Stream On, we announced Spotify’s new play mode: Smart Shuffle. This new experience keeps listening sessions fresh with personalized recommendations that perfectly match the vibe of an original playlist. It breathes new life into carefully curated playlists, shuffling tracks and adding new, perfectly tailored suggestions. As a bonus, Smart Shuffle is also available for your Liked Songs playlist.

How Premium Subscribers can use Smart Shuffle

  • Ready for a playlist refresh? Use the Shuffle button to activate the feature. As soon as you turn it on, you’ll be able to start listening to your playlist mixed with new recommendations that match the vibe.  
  • You’re in control of what you listen to. If you want to go back to listening to the playlist as you made it, simply tap the Smart Shuffle button again. A fresh mix will be waiting for you next time. 
  • Recognize the tracks we’re recommending with a sparkle (✨) symbol next to a track. For a playlist with more than 15 songs, we’ll recommend one song for every three tracks.
  • If you love what you’re listening to, save it in your playlist! But if a recommendation missed the mark, just tap the minus button on the Now Playing View so we can take note of it for next time.

Smart Shuffle builds on the song recommendation benefits of Enhance, which we launched in 2021. Enhance allows users to discover music while keeping their own track lists fresh. With Smart Shuffle, we’ve taken those capabilities a step further by creating a new experience to keep those listening sessions evergreen. As a result, Smart Shuffle will replace Enhance and will roll out to Premium users globally across iOS and Android devices starting today.

How Free Listeners can use Smart Shuffle

Free users can start getting in on the magic too. Smart Shuffle will now be the default play mode on mobile devices for Free users in Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, and Vietnam. Smart Shuffle delivers tailored recommendations that match the vibe of what users are currently listening to—whether that’s a Spotify playlist, album, or artist page. 

Users can identify our recommendations with the sparkle (✨) next to the artist’s name, along with a banner on the Now Playing Bar that offers up more details about why we recommended a specific song or artist. With this new feature rolling out on Free, listeners are bound to discover unexpected gems based on their favorite music. 

As we continue to iterate and evolve our Free listening experience around the world, we will continue to explore bringing this feature to even more users. 

*Update as of October 19, 2023: This article was updated to include “How Free Listeners Can Use Smart Shuffle” 

*Update as of January 25, 2024: Smart Shuffle for Premium users is now available on even more playlists including Collaborative Playlists and playlists created by your squad.