topic Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device in Desktop (Windows)

Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

Spongeloaf — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 20:42:03 GMT

Spotify creates oddly balanced shuffle queues when playing from an 800 song playlist, controled from another machine.

To recreate the issue, try this for yourself:

Start by listening to any song, in this example. "Lateralus" by Tool. The playlist is sorted by song. Click shuffle. Open the queue and look at the shuffled songs. You will see that all the queued songs start with the letters I, J,K,or L. None of the songs in your playlist that start with a letter beyond L will ever be in the queue.

Let's try again. The playlist is sorted by artist this time. We will listen to "Lateralus" by Tool once more. Click shuffle. Open the queue and look at the shuffled songs. You will see that all the queued songs are all from artists whose name starts with the letters R,S, or T. No song will ever appear in the queue if the artists name starts with a letter beyond T.

The really interesting part is that this behavior only occures when I try to shuffle from another device. I frequently play from my desktop which has large speakers, and control playback from my laptop. This behavior only occurs when I click shuffle on the laptop, while playing from the desktop. Shuffling songs directly from the desktop works as expected.

Both computers are running windows 7, both running the lastes version of spotify, 1.0.28.87.g8f9312a4.

Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

tommylynnlovell — Sat, 06 May 2017 13:53:38 GMT

I get the same thing!

I've been killing myself trying to take care of it.

We play from an Android device.

I'd finally gotten shuffle to actually shuffle.

But I went on my desktop to check on the playlist.

I must have sorted the songs differently because now I'm getting a queue filled with artists only that start with A!

I notice shuffle changes based on how you sort the songs in the playlist(ascending/descending by artist/song/album). BUT WHY???? THAT MAKES NO SENSE!!!!

Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

Spongeloaf — Sat, 06 May 2017 15:00:00 GMT

I'M NOT CRAZY! THEY SAID I WAS BUT I SWEAR IT'S TRUE! NOW WE CAN BEGIN THE REVOLUTION!

Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

tommylynnlovell — Sat, 06 May 2017 15:08:26 GMT

Figured it out.

Select all the songs in the playlist.

Copy them (CMD C)

Delete them all.

Go here http://textmechanic.com/text-tools/basic-text-tools/sort-text-lines/

Paste the songs in there.

Hit Random a couple times.

Copy them all again.

Go back to your playlist and paste them(CMD V).

Click to sort song or artist until the carrot(triangle) disappears.

It should sort ascending, then descending then not at all.

And that's when it should be sorted according to how you input them, which is random.

Now if you go to your "next up", it should be totally random.

I did this all without ever even hitting pause.

It completely fixed the upcoming songs.

Hope it works for you.

Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

optogy — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 23:52:34 GMT

Just figured out today that I'm having the same issue. I have a playlist that is over 1000 songs deep and I hear the same songs ALL THE TIME. When checking the queue, I noticed that all of the artists first names were in the same few letters of the alphabet.
The manual-shuffle solution suggested by tommylynnlovell does not resolve this issue.
Spotify PLEASE FIX THIS!!

Re: Shuffling results in alphabetically similar playlists when using a remote device

Spongeloaf — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 00:07:51 GMT

I'm not crazy! Huzzah!

Please help Spotify!

BTW, this is on the windows desktop client on both machines in question.