Music streaming services are a convenient option for users to listen to their favorite artists without paying for songs individually. For the longest time, some services have offered a free tier that usually comes with ads and limitations. One of these limitations is Spotify’s shuffle button. The company doesn’t allow free users to play songs in their listed order. However, shuffle play would remain the default button even after you’d upgrade to premium — until now. Thanks to Adele, paid users can now play album songs in order by default.

Following the release of Adele’s new album 30, Spotify no longer shuffle plays albums by default on the premium plan. The pop star thanked the music streaming platform in a tweet yesterday, expressing how this had been her only request.

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 🍷♥️ https://t.co/XWlykhqxAy

— Adele (@Adele) November 21, 2021

This is a very welcome change, considering many artists include a chronological progression in their tracks. Users wishing to stick to shuffle playing albums can find and toggle the button on the Now Playing screen.

Spotify has always indirectly encouraged users to play songs in a random order. That’s by prioritizing shuffle play and setting it as the default button on albums and playlists. This would make sense in playlists to avoid repeating the same queue in each listening session. However, artists release plenty of albums with the songs’ listing order in mind. For example, some tracks on Lady Gaga’s Chromatica fade into each other, so shuffle play ruins this continuity.

Do you listen to album songs in their listed order or shuffled? Let us know in the comments section below.