What Adele wants, Adele gets. The singer revealed this weekend that at her request, Spotify removed "shuffle" as the default option on album pages, because, as she explained, "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." Spotify's response: "Anything for you." The music streaming service, which requires a subscription fee for its premium tier, further explains to Variety: "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."
As Gizmodo points out, the change only means that "shuffle" is no longer the default option, although, as both that site and the Verge point out, it seems that for non-subscribers, albums will still be played in random order. But as for premium users, if they want to shuffle the songs, it's still possible to do so; Spotify says in its statement, "For those users still wishing to shuffle an album, they can go to the Now Playing View and select the ‘shuffle’ toggle." (More Adele stories.)