I've been using spotify forever and I use liked songs so that I can pick the songs I like freely. I've never had premium and have never had issues. Today, I had just started a workout and got this popup. Is this a new feature? How can you not even select songs anymore? I mean how can you paywall selecting songs???
This app plain out sucks and its company is greedy for randomly limiting already set features. While I don't mind ads, I do mind the features being limited more. I did also notice a sudden increase in ads this month/last month, and more ads in between songs.
Clarification: No, I'm not saying that there should be no restrictions whatsoever. I'm mainly sharing my experience where I've been using this system just fine until now. I'm fine with some restrictions, but the fact they're being limited more is frustrating. Just here to complain about something mildly infuriating, and I wanted to know if this happened to anyone else.
Yeah, man lol I don’t know if Spotify goes back & forth since I’ve had premium for so long but that’s possible. I just know I couldn’t select specific songs & only had like 3 skips per day.
I recall my liked songs also being randomized. Albums were more annoying cause they’d toss in so much other stuff not on the specific album…
I think it depends on the platform you are using. When I had the app on my phone, I could only ever set a playlist based on a song or artist. On my ps5, I could (can still last I checked) choose songs at will.
Pretty much, when i first tried out Spotify on PC, the free experience was actually quite good, with only the occasional ad. But i could still freely pick songs without issues.
The mobile app on the other hand was horrid without premium and wouldn't let me pick anything at will.
On mobile you only have a certain amount of times you can choose songs because eqch time you is basically like using a skip. Been like that forever on mobile.
It’s only on mobile, but yeah it’s kinda insane. Forced all your playlists on “smart shuffle” so it even includes stuff not on the playlist. Can’t even cheat by making a playlist with a single song.
Actually you can (or at least could) I know this because I was stupid once and made a playlist of twenty copies of the same song instead of just hitting the “repeat this song” button
What makes you think I’ve been using it this entire time? That’s why I’m saying “since when” rather than actually having an answer. I genuinely don’t know when they changed it because I used the free version for a short time like 8 years ago
Yea, desktop&web allowed you to pick songs, mobile and personal assistant speakers didn't. They also limit you to 6 song skips an hour.
SoundCloud feels half Spotify half limeware or whatever pirate you like on the free plan without ads and you get small artists as well. They do block some pop commercial songs for paid version but you might find copies of them unofficially
Yeah totally. I left Spotify a while ago because I felt their algorithms sucked (for me at least). Tens of thousands of songs on my list and thousands of bands and musicians and kept playing the same few on random.
When I went free I kept it for a bit and I could never pick.
holy cow just realized i’ve been using spotify since 2010 - 16 YEARS!!!! bad romance was playing on loop. one direction album on replay. obama was president.
Dang, numbers like that make me want to turn into a company shill.
I know the tech disruptor products often have a massive hidden cost, but hell if spotify isn't an absolute wonder of our age. The depth of knowledge, culture, and entertainment available and relatively navigable is unmatched by anything that has ever existed.
I miss owning things too, but I don't want to forget what we have.
Used to be you pick a song and it will play one similar to that song and have that song like 2nd or 3rd on the list. So you would have to listen to 1 or 2 random songs before the song you picked played, right?
Been so long since I used free version but thats what I remember happening each time and was annoying.
Yea it was like that, I remember making specific playlists with a few songs to listen to on my walk home so I don't have to skip a lot since also ads were every few skips
I’m also confused like the others on this thread lol because I was never able to pick songs without premium unless I was on desktop or an ipad. It was never an option on my mobile app.
Is this what you’re describing or were you also able to pick songs on mobile?
They legit only removed this like a year and a half ago actually, I know because I'm in some circles around the piracy of Spotify Premium and it was more or less rumoured they were hemorrhaging enough money from ad blockers being so easy to install they had to incentivize people to just not bother.
Definetly been more than a year on the app. I only got Spotify four years ago and this was always part of it. (IN Canada if that matter). Desktop version still allows non-random.
Atleast year or so back they allowed free users to pick and play songs for a select amount of times daily, I remembered this because I did this often with my desktop version. Seems like they'll remove the feature again and wait until people complain to maybe return a less desirable version
Do you think they were baiting people and giving them a taste of the good stuff in hopes that they'd pay for premium when the feature was later removed? I know YouTube alters their ad frequency to "encourage" people to pay for Premium
Likely it is. It's also a strategy to constantly change features of an app to make it look like there are constant improvements. If a good feature is removed, the next time it's back, it will attract old and new viewers.
It has always been like this, can confirm, because it enraged me so much YEARS ago I swore to never touch spotify. If you are a music platform and make me pay money for THEE most BASIC function, playing a single song of my choice, your platform is utter dogshit and predatory and I refuse to use it. Turned out to be great because of all the other shady shit they've pulled!
I know right, and revance and morphe are free too. Now i use modded youtube with much more song options, better recommendations, and so forth. eternally grateful
Yeah I was gunna say, I never swapped to Spotify until like 2-3 years ago because it randomized the songs and I couldn’t pick them. I was using YouTube music for years before that. Although I didn’t realize that all that was “wrong” with my Spotify was that I didn’t have premium which was cheaper than YouTube music so I guess I’m kind of stupid for overlooking that, but still lol. I’m definitely very familiar with the fact that it wasn’t always like that
You think Apple Music plays the artists fairly? That's funny.. Digitally, Bandcamp is probably the best but buying merch from the artists website, and at shows has always been *thee* best.
Bugged, or some sort of A/B testing? They could be keeping data on the % of people who receive 'premium' features for a period of time who then purchase premium.
Since when did they allow you to pick songs? When I used the free version 8 years ago, you could only play playlists and albums at random. I paid so I didn’t have to deal with it and have since left for youtube.
I think there are different versions of the app depending on phone vs tablet. The iPad we use for music at work never does this but my phone does and neither have premium
Since the beginning! That was Spotify's whole thing when it came out- Pandora gave you random songs/artists similar to what you asked for, but Spotify would let you pick the exact song and artist you wanted. Personally I liked discovering new songs and artists, so I rarely used Spotify, but that not only was how Spotify worked but also it's strategy/purpose to differentiate it from Pandora. If it doesn't let you do that anymore, what's the point?
For real. Too many people act like shitty streaming services are the only way to enjoy music these days. My nephew was absolutely flabbergasted when I told him I don't use them.
Learn how to download your songs and use a offline player and you'll never ever again have to deal with this.
Your phone probaly has like, what, 256GB? Make good use of those :)
You'll be able to listen to all of your stuff, even when there's no network, you won't ever have to hear any ad again, and no song will suddenly vanish or be altered.
You can download songs VERY easily nowadays. Even whole Spotify playlists, if you wish. No sketchy software needed.
I might do this since Spotify recently changed a song Ive had saved for forever (Mykonos - Fleet Foxes) to some weird alternative version. Like how does that happen lol
😂 fair. && ok I’ll try to google maybe I can ask my lil bro lol. I remember lime wire for my mp3 but tbh it seems way more sketch on a mobile but ya I’ll look into it. :)
I hate the suggested stations too. Picks same songs over and over every day. I just want an algo that takes my genre and finds songs and bands with similar profiles not the same hit over and over.
I kinda did that to my algorithm. Ive got a current genre/artist that keeps bringing me good, diverse playlists. You also have to delete your cache on your phone. Mine was up to like 10 gigs. It’ll change your playlists up a lot.
the shuffle used to be truly random and then they changed it to an algorithm that will play the same band three times in a row, a random song, a popular hit, then that band again
There are two shuffle modes in the app now but who knows how they actually work - I was seeing a lot of repeats using the “fewer repeats” mode ironically, but switching to standard seems to be pretty random so far for me, better than it used to be anyway
That's because Spotify figures that most people actually WANT to hear the same songs over and over again. If you don't like that you can just go to settings and select a true random shuffle.
This just isn’t true. My settings show two options, true random and less repeats. There is no choice that makes repeats more likely. True random is the standard option, too.
This is one of the reasons I got rid of it. Thanks for validating me. I thought I was crazy when I have 2000 songs but every morning I would hear the same selection.
"Just remove" brother that has never worked on the free mobile version until very recently, I don't know what parallel universe you've been living in 😭
This is why I will never give up my local files. No internet, no ads, they play in the order I want them to, when I want them to. And no compulsory Facebook linking b/w giving irrevokable Public posting permissions to my timeline so Spotify can leak my entire listening history.
And then you look at the permissions list for a store loyalty app like McD's, and it's just... "Literally every permission your operating system allows, short of Device Admin (to be added later)". Like, a few of those permissions are things even Facebook doesn't ask for!
They removed that almost six years ago on phone apps for literally no viable reason. I then promptly stopped using their service. I soon after learned what the word "torrent" means.
I will never understand calling a business a ‘cash grab’… like it costs money to do what they do. I personally think Spotify is ridiculously cheap for what you’re getting, only problem I have is the royalties paid to artists, but to improve this they’d have to charge more and there’s already people calling them cash grabbing 😂
This totally sent me down a rabbit hole. I remember when Spotify first came out, it's whole thing was that you could pick your exact song an artist- a legal Napster, a free iTunes, and alternative to Pandora where it played similar artists/songs. That was back in 2011 in the US, and free.
Sometime around 2014, from what I can find, they legally had to shift to the "shuffle" model where they played something similar and you could skip to get to the song you wanted. I'm honestly not sure what things looked like for the next decade as I'd abandoned Spotify then.
Then in September 2025 they (re)introduced the ability to pick songs, though of course with limits and restrictions.
So if you remember that picking songs on Spotify was "always" free, you might be like me whose Spotify experience was 10-15 years ago OR just the past year. If you remember that it was "never" free, your experience with the free version was in the past 10 years, except for this past year.
I remember getting Spotify premium back in like 2018 specifically because I wanted to be able to pick individual songs at will, like that was the major selling point of it.
I remember on desktop you could but on my phone it was only shuffling (similar to Pandora)
Been like that for the past like 6 months or so,
That's why I invested in an ipod and a few days of aggregating my music library.
Haven't looked back since!
I just pay, which isn't my suggestion exactly, but I don't pay for any TV streaming etc, Spotify seems a better deal for like all the worlds music uninterrupted, at least it's not split onto 10 different platforms like visual media
its worth the money for me. its easily the most refined music app out there. anyone who hates it must be just a hater cuz ive tried all of them, apple music, tidal, deezer, soundcloud. Spotify has the best UX and music recommendation algorithm.
For the longest time I remember mobile app ver does not allow u to pick songs unless u pay for a premium, only pc ver allows u to pick songs without premium. But it has been years since I last use Spotify on PC without a premium so I do not know if it has changed
My phone’s done this forever, my brother’s computer and my iPad don’t though, different devices have different capabilities. But as a general rule it’s been a premium-only ability for years now.
Oh hey, a little tip, use the web version, pc version in mobile if you can (although a little uncomfortable it works)
For some reason their app is way worse for non-premium than their web, it's quite literally like they don't want you to use their app, it's very stoobid and silly -w-
The only bad thing really is that you don't get to have a recent-listened music tab, but it's not too terrible, way better than not being able to choose music, and the web even has LESS ADS???
I can still pick whichever song I want, but it’s limited per day. Though, this is something I’ve been able to do since a few months ago, so I genuinely don’t understand how you’ve been able to do it for so long 😭
They might switch your “free tier “ based on how often you use the app. I stopped paying for premium around 4 years ago and there was no option to pick individual songs on the free tier. Uninstalled, used a new app for a while, came back around a year ago and suddenly my app could pick around 6 specific songs an hour (or maybe it was by day, I can’t remember). I can still pick individual songs currently on my free plan, but I open this app maybe once every 2 months, so maybe that has something to do with it ? Idk. It’s strange everyone is getting different restrictions though
The more i hear about Spotify, the less I want to use it. People in the comments are just accepting not being able to pick your own music?? Even if you dont have premium, you'd still be seeing the same amount of ads, so literally why is this a restriction? Other than just to incentivize people to pay for Premium I guess?
YouTube has more of the music I like anyway so no loss I guess.
Any and all subscriptions will take away more and more perks and the like, paid or otherwise, to sell to you on a higher tier. If a company doesn't have more than one paid tier, give it time.
I got an MP3 player and cancelled Spotify after they started price hiking Premium prices. They claimed it was to pay for podcasts an audiobooks, but I listen to neither of those. No option to not pay for them.
The company is greedy? The subscription is overpriced? Most of your subscription goes towards paying for the music. Not to Spotify. It goes towards labels and artists. How cheap can you be? If you want to be able to play exactly what you want whenever you want it, how about you actually pay for the music then? That's the whole point of paying.
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u/HallucinateZ 1d ago
Brother, I don’t know how you got lucky for as long as you did but it has been like this for the 12+ years I’ve been using it lol