Originally published at: Spotify takes away shuffle button for Adele's albums at the artist's request | Boing Boing
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I was never going to use spotify, so the point is moot — but i would never sign up for a service that did this. it’s fine if Adele or whoever wants to encourage people to listen to albums instead of shuffling. i’ve even done that, several times recently.
but actually not allowing people to shuffle? that’s user-hostile egomania — hard pass.
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cool, if people want to shuffle, they can just add the tracks to a playlist. there are some albums that are more like an opera, in that they don’t really work outside of a specific order of sequences.
and if people really want to shuffle that desperately? buy the album, instead of paying a rentseeking exploitative “streaming service” that pays ludicrously low amounts to artists.
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This is a relatively harmless PR launch stunt, and will likely be very temporary. As long as they made it crystal clear why shuffle is unavailable and didn’t cause user confusion with the platform in general this is a pretty big meh. If it were me, I would make it so that each user had to listen to it through once without shuffle, then could shuffle again, but then again if it were me, I wouldn’t be Spotify.
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From the looks of things, they removed shuffle as the default option, which is a weird thing to do to paid subscribers in the first place. Must’ve been a recent-ish switch anyways, had a trial version a few months back and albums played in their intended sequence by default.
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Be that as it may, it highlights the ever-increasing erosion of the concept of ownership in modern commerce. Not only does it serve to highlight the fact that you no longer own physical access to the media, you’re no longer even able to exert dominion over the user-agent that’s providing access to the media. It’s in the same Venn bubble as a tractor not being repairable by its owner or getting charged criminally for hitting F12 on your browser.
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Some context is being missed here. There is still a shuffle functionality and you could still play songs in order easily. The issue was that the big, fat Play button on the album’s page was shuffle by default. That’s what they removed. It was really annoying, but users weren’t exactly locked out of standard album play, it was just not intuitive.
That big green button was also a shuffle button.
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Maybe she’s like to come over and adjust my stereo system just right, so I can absorb her art the way she intended it to be.
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My wife loves Adele I just showed her the story, she said, and I quote, “fuck Adele”.
And this is why misleading articles can cause real harm. See comments above for the real story.
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Having the main play button as shuffle by default was driving me crazy. I thought it was device-specific, though, since my phone had it and my computer did not (it might have been the other way around). I’m glad the replaced it with play as default.
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It didn’t help that she shared a tweet that included…
Now, listeners have to listen to every album’s tracklist in order.
I didn’t know that. That’s crazy! Why would that be the default?
So if Pop Crave’s tweet is correct, Spotify have fixed this for every album, not just Adele’s - is that right?
(Agreed that this article is misleading.)
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Nobody takes Papasan’s shuffle away, I’m “shuffling” Right Now!
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It appears it’s for all albums.
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Aaaalso, if the artist really wants to ensure the “integrity” of listening to the album in order, why not just make it one un-broken-up track?
Oh. Per-play royalties. That’s why, I bet.
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Yeah. You can play the album, then click shuffle and it will shuffle it just fine. I suppose you will always start with the first track.
Most of my kids don’t listen to albums anyway. They take the songs the like (including whole albums if need be) and throw them into a big ol’ playlist.
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I had a former co-worker laugh when I told him I had all my CDs ripped to FLAC. He was like, why do all that if Spotify exists? I don’t think I’m wrong. Besides a lot of my hardware is not online and streaming compatible, so FLAC or MP3 it is.
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No way.
Ripping spotify off can’t be as simple as producing an album of 3000 1-second tracks, can it?
You can still shuffle. Just extra steps are required.
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