Currently, Smart Shuffling is one feature, but I feel like it should be three separate checkboxes.
Currently:
Enable smart shuffling on artists and smart music playlists
Smart shuffling prefers highly rated, popular, and less recently heard tracks
My suggestion:
Smart Shuffle Options:
Prefer highly rated tracks (using local user ratings)
Prefer popular tracks (per popularity data pulled from external sources)
Prefer less recently heard tracks
To clarify, these would be checkboxes, so users would be able to select none, one, or more than one options to curate their Smart Shuffle experience.
This way users, like myself, who use the shuffle feature, can tune it to their specifications. Personally when I turn on shuffle I’d LOVE to hear more of my less recently heard tracks, for the sake of variety, but I do not care to surface highly rated or popular tracks. For example: when I listen to Nine Inch Nails on shuffle, I do not want to hear Closer and Hurt and The Hand That Feeds every single time I listen.
Additional note: Smart Shuffle should probably be a per-user setting, not per-server, but that may be a whole other can of worms so I’m not suggesting that here.
