> Spotify

> “enshittification” of streaming

I've been a happy paying Spotify user since 2010 or so. I'm still mostly happy with what I get out of it... they did try to shove podcasts down people's throats, but backed off pretty quickly. One thing that recently infuriated me though, was something they call "smart shuffle". Like, you press shuffle on your playlist, it starts shuffling. You press it again, it should turn off the shuffle, and just keep playing in order, right? Not according to Spotify's amazing designer team. With Spotify it's a tri-state switch. If you press it again, it activates a "smart shuffle" which has nothing to do with shuffling, instead it adds extra suggestions to your playlist.

There is a way to turn this "feature" off on mobile, and they've been promising a way to turn it off on desktop for many months now. As a paying user, being treated like an idiot this way definitely makes me resentful and is the most enshittified thing I've seen Spotify do.

I have been paying Spotify for 5 or 6 years now, and while I love how much amazing music it has helped me to discover, the UI is absolutely atrocious. The way it puts together artists, albums, individual songs and playlists in the same list, or the way it mixes your personal selection with their algorithmic recommendations, is extremely confusing to me. I am seriously considering going back to the high seas.