Spotify has removed the shuffle button from all album pages following dialogue with the singer Adele. The feature, which allows songs from an album to be played in a random order, remains on Apple Music at the time of this writing.
No Shuffle on Album Pages on Spotify After Adele Request
A Spotify spokesperson told BBC News that the feature was “long requested by both users and artists,” and that we will continue to iterate our products and features to create the best experiences for both artists and their fans.” There was also a Twitter exchange between Adele and Spotify following the change:
Anything for you 🙏✨
— Spotify (@Spotify) November 21, 2021
The singer conducted an extensive interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe prior to the release of her album ’30’ on Friday. It will be interesting to see if it follows Spotify’s move in the near future.
I believe the problem was the shuffle was by default and no option to listen in order. They removed the “default” portion but you can select that option as you wish
I beg to disagree. As a matter of principle, Adele is wrong on this. If she didn’t want people to shuffle the tracks, she should have recorded all the songs as just one track like the Beatles did with Side 2 of Abbey Road. This is like a painter requiring that a series of works she painted can be displayed in a museum on the condition that patrons can only view them in a particular sequence. Adele can recommend that listeners enjoy the tracks in order but requiring it? That’s a little to self-important.
I strongly disagree. While there are many albums that do not suffer at all (from the listener’s viewpoint) from being shuffled, there are a great many that really do tell a story in song. I would absolutely abhor having, for example, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon or The Wall out of order – they’re effectively rock operas – just as I’d hate it for The Who’s Tommy or Jesus Christ Superstar.
Other entire genres:
So basically you think it is perfectly acceptable for you or anyone to impose your artistic preferences on everyone else? Do you get agitated by the thought that there are people doing things differently from what you would do?
I have no objections to you or anyone saying “this is how I like to listen to music” and you might like it too. But for you or anyone to require everyone else to have no choice but to adopt your preferences, well that’s how it was done in Stalin’s Russia.
Step back and listen to what you’re saying. Instead of music or art, put in reproductive rights or travel or place of abode or whom to associate with. Artists do not have any special rights that allow them to narrow people’s choices.
Looks like I was really in a snit when I wrote that – mostly because your comment brought me back to when I spent too much time working in a place where the owner insisted on feeding an iTunes collection on shuffle through the outfit’s PA system – with enough albums (of the type I wrote about in my first reply) in the mix to be thoroughly annoying.
You are absolutely right – taking away the shuffle control is wrong – I just find no point to it in my own listening.
Apologies for going way beyond the pale rhetorically…