I think it depends on how you are playing it on the smart speaker.
If you are playing it by saying "<trigger> play <song or album or artist or genre>" I think it will behave as you describe.
If however you are playing by having your desktop Spotify or mobile Spotify control your smart speaker using Spotify Connect, in my experience it obeys the "Autoplay similar songs when your music ends on other devices" setting under the "Autoplay" settings on the desktop or mobile device.
With Spotify Connect you should be able to select your smart speaker (and possibly other things) in the "connect to a device" menu. The button to invoke that is in the lower right on desktop between the queue button and the volume control. In iPad it is on the lower left.
Spotify Connect is good about sharing status between devices, so you can start an album playing on a smart speaker from say your desktop, pause it, and later from the couch have your tablet tell the smart speaker to pick up where it left off.
I tested whether it was consistent between iPad, desktop, and my Yamaha amp which acts as a smart speaker. It definitely did not carry the setting over, and Spotify confirmed that behaviour.
I just tested using Spotify on my iPad and my iMac, listening on an Echo Dot, Echo Show, Denon AVR-1913, and Google Home Mini.
The Echos use Spotify Connect, the Home Mini uses Google Cast, and the Denon uses Spotify Connect from the iMac.
From the iPad the Denon was not showing up in the Spotify devices list so I used the option to connect to an Airplay or Bluetooth device to connect via Airplay. Later, I noticed Spotify was asking for permission to scan my network for devices, I gave permission, and the Denon then started showing up directly in the devices list. I don't know if connecting to the Denon from the device list uses Spotify Connect or Airplay, because mobile Spotify unlike desktop Sotify doesn't say on the device list how it connects.
The test was to tell connect to the test target, start playing a one song playlist, then when it starts playing use the position slider to skip to near the end, switch to the view that shows what is playing and the queue and up next lists, and see what happens when the song ended.
Then I'd stop it (if it was playing), disconnect from the target, toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting, and do the above test again.
I'd again stop it (if necessary), disconnect, and toggle the autoplay on remote devices setting back to its normal setting (which for me is off).
For the Echo Show, Echo Dot, and Google Home Mini it obeyed the autoplay setting. When off it stopped after the playlist ended. When on it started playing a list of things it felt were related to the playlist song.
For the Denon it always stopped when the playlist finished, both when I was definitely connected with Airplay and when possibly connected with Spotify Connect.
Make sure you have an up to date version of Spotify. They added the ability to control autoplay on remote devices 2 or 3 months ago.
I use it daily connecting to an Echo Dot from an iPad or iMac, and it definitely is not autoplaying anything.
What are you connecting to?
According to this page [1], they changed it earlier this year in response to those complaints the original article talks about:
> We're happy to announce that the option to manage Autoplay has been released for the desktop and now for the mobile app too.
> Once you have the latest version installed, you will find it as "Autoplay on other devices" in the Settings menu and it will apply globally for connected devices and the web player.
> Note that you will need to log in and toggle the setting on or off on either the PC/Mac or Smartphone apps, but once done you can continue using Spotify on whichever platform you prefer and the setting you chose will be reflected accurately.
There are definitely target dependencies. I just tested on Echo Dot, Echo Show, Google Home Mini, and Denon AVR-1913. On all but the Denon it obeys the autoplay setting. On the Denon it does not autoplay regardless of the setting. So maybe there are devices where it disobeys like my Denon but defaults to autoplay?
A big source of my frustration with Spotify has been that the setting is per device, defaults to being on, and is often re-enabled during updates. I wish my account settings could be universal and permanent, considering it’s a cloud-based app.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774897/spotify-connect...