Spotify Grants Adele’s Request, Removes Shuffle Button on Album Pages
Adele has persuaded Spotify to remove the automatic shuffle button on all album pages to allow tracks to play in the artist’s order.
The singer-songwriter noted on Saturday that she had requested the change for her fourth studio album, 30, which arrived on streaming services on Friday.
Many musicians, like story-telling superstar Adele, pay close attention to the order of songs on an album as it affects how a narrative is presented, how listeners react, and ultimately how many albums are sold.
Hence, Swedish streaming company Spotify agreed, putting up “play” as the album default option, allowing songs to be heard in the order they appear on an album — though users can still select the “shuffle” option.
Taking to Twitter to express her thanks, the Grammy-award singer wrote “We don’t create albums with so much care and thought into our tracklisting for no reason.”
“Our art tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you, Spotify for listening.”
The streaming service replied, “anything for you”. A statement later hailed their “new premium feature… to make play the default button on all albums.”
Speaking on the new feature, a Spotify spokesperson revealed that they were “excited” to roll out the feature which was “long requested by both users and artists”.
The spokesperson also noted that while Spotify users could choose to shuffle an album, the system would default to playing tracks in the order chosen by the artist.
“As Adele mentioned, we are excited to share that we have begun rolling out a new Premium feature that has been long requested by both users and artists to make ‘play’ the default button on all albums,” a Spotify rep told Variety in a statement. “For those users still wishing to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing view and select the ‘shuffle’ toggle.”
“As always, we will continue to iterate our products and features to create the best experiences for both artists and their fans,” the statement concluded.
Adele released her fourth studio album 30 on Friday. The album, which is her first album in six years, is out on streaming platforms including Spotify.
30’s availability on streaming platforms marks a change from her last album 25 which could only be bought physically or downloaded when it was released in November 2015.
Soon after its release, the album became the fastest-selling album in British history, shifting more than 800,000 copies in its first week. However, the album did not become available on streaming sites such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal until June 2016.
Previously, listeners can press the play button for an album on Spotify auto-shuffled songs rather than playing them in the order an artist intended. Listeners can find the shuffle feature when playing an individual track from an album, however, the main play button no longer defaults to playing an album’s songs out of order.