Adele has a simple request when it comes to her new album, 30: listen to the songs in the order she presents them. The British superstar’s wish was heard by Spotify when the music streaming giant agreed to remove its default shuffle feature, which plays album tracks in random order, from her latest LP.
“This was the only request I had in our ever changing industry!” Adele tweeted Saturday night (Nov. 20). “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.”
“Anything for you,” the music streaming giant tweeted in response.
A Spotify spokesperson further elaborated on the changes in a statement to Billboard on Sunday morning (Nov. 21).
“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,” the spokesperson says, adding that users still wanting to shuffle an album can go to the “Now Playing” view and select the shuffle toggle (identified by two crisscrossing arrows). “As always, we will continue to iterate our products and features to create the best experiences for both artists and their fans.”
30 is the long-awaited follow-up to 2015’s 25, which had a record-smashing first week after selling 3.38 million copies in its debut week in the U.S. That was the biggest sales week of an album since Nielsen (now MRC Data) began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. 25 spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won Grammy Awards for album of the year and best pop vocal album of the year.
“Easy on Me,” the lead single from 30, has spent the last four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts. In mid-October, the track also Spotify’s most-streamed song within a single day. Adele performed “Easy on Me” and three more songs from 30 — “I Drink Wine,” “Hold On” and “Love is a Game” — during her CBS primetime television special Adele: One Night Only, which averaged 9.92 million viewers, per time-zone-adjusted fast national ratings from Nielsen.
See Adele’s tweet to Spotify below.
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
