In a tweet by the international music star, Adele said;  

“We [artists] 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” 

This tweet has been liked over 306 thousand times, by musicians and music fans alike. Since the tweet on November 21st, the auto-shuffle button has been removed from all artists’ albums. According to Spotify, the change had been “long requested by both users and artists” and it seems Adele’s request was the last push they needed to “create the best experiences for both artists and their fans,” 

Most artists and bands take lots of time and care to make their albums a story, and for the track order to tell it. It can reflect the process of heartbreak, falling in love or anything in between. The track order sets the tone of the album, and lets fans know what has happened in their favourite artists’ lives, typically through the medium that gave the artist their fame. An album is, for lots of musicians, a creative outlet for what they are feeling and what they’re going through and so very personal. Songs can flow into each other, or juxtaposing ideas can crop up throughout to show all manner of emotions and feelings. Simply putting an album on shuffle and letting it play randomly takes away the feeling of listening to and appreciating an album, rather than a collection of songs. 

This is only a recent problem, though. In the age of records and even CDs, shuffle simply wasn’t an option. An album had to be listened to from start to finish, in order, with no ‘skips’. But since the age of streaming on platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, shuffle has become a welcome button. Playlists can be shuffled, compilations and multiple-song singles can be shuffled but on Spotify, albums cannot.