article Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements in The Blog Vault

Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

meahtenoha — Tue, 22 Sep 2015 13:01:57 GMT

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

Peter__ — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 16:36:02 GMT

Looking forward to this change happening in all of the apps!

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

shatkinson — Thu, 29 May 2014 15:12:11 GMT

The shuffle function still isn't working correctly in that it IS NOT random. I have a playlist with 400 songs and the shuffle function plays the same 50 -100 songs over and over. It seems to favor particular artists, which leads me to believe that it isn't really random and that maybe those favored artists are paying a premium to have thier songs play more often. This is a huge problem and it's extremely annoying to the many users that utilize the shuffle function.

Betreff: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

hans-jürgen — Thu, 29 May 2014 15:25:41 GMT

I wish you could do something similar to your radio algorithm picking the next songs, as it repeats the same songs of the same artists too often. So if it got to be the same artist, at least choose another song from his back catalogue than one hour ago.

By the way, how come that Spotify does not have to obey the radio streaming rules for same artist / same song that other streaming sites have to embed in their algorithms?

</rant>

What I wanted to say is that I appreciate your improved shuffle mode especially when using it on the Songs section of Your Music, thank you. 🙂

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

moisaras — Sat, 31 May 2014 13:00:48 GMT

It seems that whenever I shuffle a playlist, the shuffler's logic tends to pick some specific songs, and they always come up for play as a 'priority' compared to other songs.

(this differs from the complaint that some people have, that they get the same songs twice on a single 'shuffle my playlist' run. As long as I don't press 'shuffle' again, I won't hear the same song. But the shuffle logic will always choose a few specific songs and throw them in my face very early in the shuffle run, which is very annoying).

It's almost unbelievable to me that such a simple process is broken.

The only remaining explanation I can give is that Spotify deliberately chooses the songs that are cheaper for Spotify to pay royalties for.

Whatever the reason is, I hope Spotify cleans up its act, because it's millions of customers paying 7 euros per month for a broken product that is very easy to fix.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

mollieneff — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 15:06:57 GMT

I came to this discussion with the same exact issue. I love Spotify and the option of making my own specific playlists, but the shuffle option aggravates the heck outta me! I like to listen in my car or while I'm working, and it's really annoying to have to take time to flip through 20-30 songs that I hear EVERY TIME I play the playlist, just to get to something "new".

Bummer!

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

SR_Penny — Fri, 04 Jul 2014 09:26:19 GMT

Just a shame that 'shuffle' doesn't work at all. Same problems as other users (such as above). Infuriating.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

Peter__ — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 11:12:38 GMT

On which platform? I'm not convinced the "new" shuffle is in all of the apps.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

kjbllc — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 12:15:45 GMT

I have almost 6,000 songs on my playlist and i hear the same songe over again in a single days listening

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

Joe — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 12:19:46 GMT

We don't need algorithms. We need a real shuffle and NOT a random play function. I suspect this is more difficult to implement as only being able to queue 50 tracks is going to be a limiting factor.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

jeremygoh — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 12:30:42 GMT

@meahtenoha any updates on this rolling out on mobile? The same songs are being played over and over again.. Been a few months since this article was out.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

moisaras — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 12:39:45 GMT

It would be great if we could get some feedback from Spotify on this.

It seems we are talking to ourselves here..

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

meahtenoha — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 12:52:20 GMT

Hey guys, this new shuffle algorithm has been rolled out on rolled out across all platforms, but that we're always looking for ways to improve/ gather feedback.

Could you give us more specifics about what you're seeing? Is it all on devices?

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

moisaras — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:03:36 GMT

Meredith, thank you for getting back to us.

Some inital feedback: it seems that my shuffle 'randomness' has indeed improved. A friend of mine using Spotify, reports the same.

However, I now noticed an issue that other users mentioned earlier: whilst shuffling a playlist of about 300 songs, the same song appeared twice within less than half an hour..

In my opinion, it would be much more convenient to 'recycle' songs only after the whole playlist has been exhausted.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

user-removed — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:44:43 GMT

Thank you Meredith.

It's really improved. I hear so mucj great songs without same artists near.

Feedback: could it be possible to not play same songs (or keep current play queue) when I change from speaker to smartphone etc. Now I hear sometimes songs I heared on speaker 15 minutes ago...

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

SR_Penny — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 17:47:59 GMT

Mine is on the iOS app and is still pretty poor. Hearing the same songs every day, as well as the same songs during the same session - even when there are still hundreds of other unplayed songs.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

DAF555 — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:40:55 GMT

This is really not much better, all that happened was that the system added some other songs to play and now I´ve heard them more than i wished also. The "improvement" was only on my PC at home, on my Iphone it´s still as lousy as before.

I think it´s embarrassing that it hasn´t been solved yet, the problem has been known for years now.

I don´t think that the solution lies in more complicated algorithms, it obviously isn´t working.

Couldn´t you just add a function that hides the played songs until the list is played to the end. I believe that would solve the whole problem, even when using the first algorithm.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

kbrooksc — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:45:33 GMT

I've noticed a bit of improvement, but it's to the point with me that I deleted the songs that kept playing just because I was tired of them.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

SR_Penny — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 17:47:56 GMT

I still haven't noticed an real improvement on my iPhone. As for the desktop versions I use (Mac at home and Win at work), they've got worse - a lot worse - following recent updates.

Re: Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

Peter__ — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 16:17:21 GMT

I think it has got better on desktop for me, although this bug drives me insane!

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Bugs/iOS-Desktop-Queuing-Track-In-Playlist-Causes-a-Queue-skip-plays/td-p/689260