I am really enjoying Spotify since signing up a month or so ago, but one thing really* irritates me – the default play mode is “Shuffle Play”. There’s a big button at the top of every list of songs, be it a playlist, radio station, or an album. And when you click on a song to play, it seems to automatically assume that you want to shuffle the songs.
This may be OK for most albums, but it’s a bit jarring when you go from “Speak to Me” to “Any Colour You Like” when what you were expecting was the seamless transition to “Breathe” on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Which really needs to be listened to as an album, not a random mix of songs.
I don’t know how the conversation went when they set this as the default, and put that big-ass button at the top of each list of songs, but I’m going to guess it is just a reflection of how music is produced, distributed, and consumed by a large part of the music consumer base.
Maybe I’m old school, but coming from an age when you listened to albums, and not just songs, I still prefer to listen to albums straight through, the way they were put together and intended by the artists. Sure, some albums are just collections of songs, but even with those it is comforting to hear them in their proper order. Nostalgia alert 🙂
I also tend to gravitate towards and listen to albums that are meant to be listened to in a specific order, concept albums such as the aforementioned Dark Side of the Moon and concert albums in which an entire performance is captured.
Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate shuffle play. Over the holidays, for instance, shuffle play got plenty of use with the various Christmas and holiday playlists we had playing as we decorated, cooked, and celebrated. I just wish it wasn’t the default. Or that I could change that default.
tl;dr Is it possible to change the default play setting in Spotify to be not shuffle play?
* A lot of other little things just kind of irritate me
no straight lines 