Spotify has quietly updated its autoplay feature with a seriously frustrating quirk. When you play music on your Spotify Connect devices, autoplay is now enabled by default and you cannot disable it. This means that after your album, playlist, or track selection has been played on a device other than your phone or computer, Spotify will continue to play the recommended tracks indefinitely.
Users have been voicing their complaints on the Spotify Community Forum for weeks, filling a running thread with their complaints. It caught the attention of a Spotify Community moderator, who provided a little more information about the issue – which is apparently a feature and definitely not a bug.
“We can confirm that Autoplay is the default for any connected device”
“We can confirm that Autoplay is the default setting for any connected device,” a Spotify spokesperson said in a statement emailed to The edge. “This means that when you play music from Spotify on a device other than your phone or computer, Autoplay will be enabled and tracks will be added to continue your listening experience.”
However, the spokesperson says that “Autoplay will not start if you play a song, album or playlists with Repeat turned on.” Of course, that doesn’t help if you want an album or playlist to stop after it’s played. The spokesperson also said Spotify has been updating the experience “in the past few weeks.”
In the aforementioned thread, the
Spotify moderator suggested that users cast their votes in a post in the Spotify Idea Exchange to show support for an option to toggle autoplay on and off, but the page the moderator links to doesn’t solve that exact problem. In the description of the message, the user asks Spotify to bring back the settings menu on the Spotify web player that was recently removed, which prevents users from changing their autoplay options when listening through the web player.Except for the post title:[AutoPlay] Option to enable/disable Autoplay on all devices/platforms,” it doesn’t have much to do with the issue users discussed initially, causing confusion throughout that thread – comments on the post refer to both the settings menu and the issue with Spotify Connect It is unclear whether bringing back the settings menu on the web player will help solve the autoplay issue on connected devices [or vice versa].
When a post on the Spotify Idea Exchange receives more than 180 votes in less than six months, the suggestion is labeled “Live Idea” and reviewed by the Spotify team. At the moment, this so-called idea is currently a “good suggestion”, meaning it has received more than 50 votes in less than three months. However, the status should be upgraded soon as it has a total of 259 votes at the time of writing.
It’s ironic that Spotify calls something that is essentially a bug report an “idea.” After all, music on connected devices was put in an infinite loop not too long ago. With Spotify expected to increase its user base from 381 million to 400 million by the end of this year, it will need to have many more users to satisfy.
“At Spotify, we are committed to delivering the best possible listening experience. We have recently updated our Autoplay settings for connected devices and are actively collecting feedback from the Spotify community,” said the Spotify spokesperson.. “As always, we will continue to develop this feature over time based on user feedback.”
Spotify has reportedly decided that its Autoplay feature should be active every time someone plays music on something other than their device's built-in speakers.
Autoplay effectively creates a never-ending playlist based on the song, album, or playlist that's playing. This can be useful—especially for people who entrust their exposure to new music to Spotify's algorithms—but it's not the kind of feature everyone wants to use all the time.
That doesn't seem to matter anymore. Spotify tells The Verge that "whenever you play music from Spotify on a device other than your phone or computer, Autoplay will be enabled, and tracks will be added to continue your listening experience.” And there's nothing users can do about it.
Spotify users have taken to the company's online forums to complain about this change. A moderator says, "As of now there's no way to choose if you want to have Autoplay enabled on a connected device. We assume most of you posting here would like an option for this. As such, it will be really helpful if you go and cast your vote for this idea." [Emphasis theirs.]
It's clear that Spotify users feel strongly about this change and aren't afraid to say so. "We understand that this change might cause frustration depending on your music listening habits," the moderator says. "It is our humble ask that we keep the conversation civil and friendly."
Spotify didn't immediately respond to our request for more information about why it decided to enable Autoplay by default on connected devices rather than maintaining the status quo, which afforded its customers more control over their listening experience.
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New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….
Original story [published on November 09, 2021] follows:
Recently, Spotify received some changes on autoplay feature that modified its behavior, and are causing annoyances to many of its users.
According to reports, many Spotify users request to revert the change that made autoplay the default option for all Spotify Connect devices [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].
What is the problem with autoplay on Spotify?
Autoplay is a Spotify option that, when activated, automatically begins to play recommended songs once the user’s current album or playlist has finished.
Enabling/disabling autoplay was always optional for all Spotify-compatible platforms. However, this was recently changed, and now some platforms have the option always enabled.
This is so infuriating! I just found a new artist I like, put on his album to sleep to and woke up 7 hours later with random suggested music playing. I have auto play suggested songs turned off on my phone settings. Is it possible to stop this with Alexa speaker? It never used to, just randomly started today.
Source
Spotify won’t stop playing suggested songs, even though Autoplay is turned off.
This has been happening to my boyfriend and yes, he has premium. It’s turned off on his phone and on the desktop version. I can’t find a solution online either, so I would love if anyone could help! It just started doing this randomly about 2-3 weeks ago, with no setting changes.
Source
Then, from those platforms, once the user’s album or playlist has finished playing, random recommended songs will start playing.
The platforms affected by the change
Apparently, the change affects all platforms and devices compatible with Spotify, except native apps.
That is, you could only disable autoplay from Spotify app for mobile and Spotify app for desktop. Meanwhile, you won’t be able to disable it on Spotify web, compatible smart speakers and others:
TLDR: A recent change has made “autoplay” the default behavior when using Spotify Connect devices [anything other than the desktop or mobile apps]. This will happen regardless of the current active “autoplay” setting. This setting affects only the playback directly on your phone or pc/mac [apps] and does not work universally. If you would like to see an option to turn it off, then vote for this idea here:
//community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/AutoPlay-Option-to-toggle-Autoplay-on-off-across-all-devices/idi-p/5283776
Source
Spotify team is aware of complaints and invites users to vote
The Spotify team confirmed the recent change. In addition, they invite users who are dissatisfied with the change to vote for reverting it [through this link].
For now, it only remains to wait for the vote to achieve sufficient participation. At that time, Spotify will consider reversing the change in autoplay behavior.
In the coming days, if there is any new development in this regard, we will update this article with the pertinent information, so stay tuned.
Update 1 [December 10]
06:33 pm [IST]: Spotify has now begun rolling out the option to turn on or off autoplay on connected devices and the Web Player via the Spotify desktop app with version 1.1.74.
While the option is currently limited to the desktop app, Spotify, in the announcement post, confirmed that it will be bringing the option to the mobile app as well with an update in the future.
Many Spotify subscribers have also taken to social platforms such as Reddit to confirm getting the new option.
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