Adele asked if she could get it, and Spotify obliged: the singer-songwriter convinced the streaming giant to remove shuffle as the default option when pressing play on an album page so listeners can appreciate her new album 30 as she intended — in order.
The @PopCrave entertainment news Twitter account broke the story over the weekend, tweeting on Saturday (November 20): "Following the release of '30' by @Adele, Spotify removed the shuffle button as the default option when playing albums. Now, listeners now have to listen to every album's tracklist in order."
Adele retweeted the post, adding: "This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry! We don't create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art has a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening."
"Anything for you," Spotify tweeted in response.
The @PopCrave entertainment news Twitter account broke the story over the weekend, tweeting on Saturday (November 20): "Following the release of '30' by @Adele, Spotify removed the shuffle button as the default option when playing albums. Now, listeners now have to listen to every album's tracklist in order."
Adele retweeted the post, adding: "This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry! We don't create albums with so much care and thought into our track listing for no reason. Our art has a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening."
"Anything for you," Spotify tweeted in response.
The Spotify play button on album pages used to have a little shuffle symbol embedded in it. By default, it would play the songs from an album in a random succession, with users having to deselect shuffle from the Now Playing view to hear the record play out from front to back.
"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," Spotify head of communications Chris Macowski confirmed [via The Verge]. "For those users still wishing to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing view and select the shuffle toggle."
While many have responded with high praise for the pressure the superstar put on the streaming service to keep the album format alive, members of the indie music community aren't happy with Spotify's decision to cater to Adele's every whim when they've long been campaigning for fair compensation.
See some of the tweets in response to the pop star standing up for her artistic vision below.
It's a good thing Adele has streaming on her side, since a large rush-order to stock her new record 30 has put major pressure on vinyl pressing plants.theory that the Adele Spotify shuffle button thing is just a PR response to the Adele vinyl thing
— Billy Mays III (@infinitethird) November 21, 2021
