Play and shuffle buttons will appear at the top of albums and playlists
When viewing albums on Spotify, the top of the interface has always had a green play button that shuffled songs by default, whether you liked it or not. That was until it didn’t and all that took was a tweet from Adele. Artists deliberately arrange tracks on most albums in a particular order and shuffling can screw up the experience they want to offer. Opinions on this decision were divided, though, so to settle things once and for all, Spotify is now splitting its play and shuffle buttons on both playlists and artist pages. But, as always, there’s a catch.
In a post on its corporate blog, the streaming service says music and how you listen to it “should be yours to control,” and having separate buttons for “play” and “shuffle and play” functions helps with that.
While not particularly a groundbreaking addition, it’s still pretty great as you’ll now be able to choose between listening to albums the way artists intended or enjoying the sense of newness that shuffling brings. You’ll also have greater control over how your own playlists play since they currently only offer a combined “play and shuffle” button at the top.
The one big catch here is that the new buttons will only appear to Premium subscribers, which is a little silly to us since the feature is rather basic. Moreover, Spotify hasn’t used such UI as a differentiator between its free and paid tiers.
If you are a subscriber, you might still have to wait a bit since Spotify says that the update will be rolled out on Android and iOS mobile devices in the coming weeks.
With the ebb and flow of controversies surrounding the company’s podcasts and its talent, it’s nice to see Spotify catching flak for once on the one thing most people know it for: music streaming.
