When listening to an album for the first time, it’s instinctual for some people to hit the shuffle button (rather than play the project all the way through from top to bottom) just as they would when listening to a random playlist, but thanks to Adele, Spotify is making an effort to combat this.
As music lovers already know, most artists spend an abundance of time carefully curating their tracklists, making sure their stories are told in the best way possible for not only them as creators, but also for us, as listeners.
Late on November 20th, @PopCrave tweeted out, “Following the release of 30 by @Adele, Spotify removed the shuffle button as the default option when playing albums. Now, listeners have to listen to every album’s tracklist in order.” Not long after, the “Chasing Pavements” artist responded, “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 tells a story and our stories should be listened to as we intended. Thank you Spotify for listening,” the mother of one wrote.
On Friday, Adele shared her highly anticipated project, 30, which has already begun receiving praise from fans all over the world. The thing about the English songstresses’ work is that it’s genre-defining and able to connect with people from all walks of life, no matter what they usually have playing in their headphones.
As Forbes reports, the album’s release amassed an impressive 60.7 million global streams in its first day out, coming in behind Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore, Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next, and Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour.
Do you shuffle albums on your first listen, or are you glad that Spotify is pushing for listening in the original order as the artist intended?