Shuffle feature seems to favor certain songs

[gtyellojacket]

On my Android, I have noticed that when using the shuffle feature, the app seems to favor certain songs.  Each of my playlists is an album (numbering about 40 albums), and all of these album playlists are filed in a folder.  Sometimes I will select this folder and select "all tracks" and listen on shuffle mode. The app will generate a queue of 51 songs chosen supposedly at random from all 40 albums.  But it seems like certain songs are favored and will get selected for the queue more often than others.  I don't think the shuffle feature is truly random.

As a quick experiment to test my theory, I generated a shuffle queue of 51 tracks from the folder containing all songs from all albums.  I chose one album with 10 songs to be the one that I would track on a notepad.  I marked down which songs from this album were chosen for the queue.  I repeated this process many times, each time making a note of which songs from that specific album were chosen for the queue.  I did this until eventually every song from that album had been chosen at least once.  I did find that one particular track was picked 7 times, whereas all the other tracks were picked only once or twice.  

I don't listen to Spotify on Windows as often as my Android, but my qualitative sense is that the shuffle is closer to truly random on the Windows application than on the Android.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

[Taylor]

Hi, and welcome to the community!

Have you tried clicking on the 'i' on the song playing screen and making sure the repeat button is grey? It sounds like you have repeat enabled.

Anthony 🙂

[gtyellojacket]

I did make sure that I didn't have repeat selected.  And just to clarify, it's not that certain songs are repeating themselves, it's just that every time I generate a new queue using the shuffle feature, certain songs will tend to get included in that queue far more often than other songs.

[Joe]

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@gtyellojacket wrote:

.... I generated a shuffle queue of 51 tracks from the folder containing all songs from all albums...

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Hey, sorry for butting in but this has really got my curiosity going 🙂 Which Spotify version are you using? When I select a folder, it lists all playlists in the folder. Selecting "All tracks" lists all tracks in those playlists in name order. Selecting any track plays that track but after that the tracks are played randomly, with shuffle enabled. I can't access anything resembling a play queue and now I'm worried that I may be missing something here.

[mutantdog]

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@gtyellojacket wrote:

I don't listen to Spotify on Windows as often as my Android, but my qualitative sense is that the shuffle is closer to truly random on the Windows application than on the Android.

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I can't speak for Android but my qualitative sense is that iOS is more random than Windows.

There really does seem like a tendency for Spotify to favour certain tunes over others, especially so on the same day. I've noticed entire shuffled sequences repeated if I, say, play one playlist for a bit then play a different one then return to the first.

[gtyellojacket]

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@jwylot wrote:

Hey, sorry for butting in but this has really got my curiosity going 🙂 Which Spotify version are you using? When I select a folder, it lists all playlists in the folder. Selecting "All tracks" lists all tracks in those playlists in name order. Selecting any track plays that track but after that the tracks are played randomly, with shuffle enabled. I can't access anything resembling a play queue and now I'm worried that I may be missing something here.

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I'm using Version 0.6.0.20.  After you start the first track in the "All tracks" list, click the bar at the bottom, which shows the name of the song.  This brings up a screen showing the album art.  In the upper right corner is a symbol that looks like 3 horizontal bars.  Touch this icon and you will see a list of songs called "Play Queue."  If you scroll down, you will see there are 51 songs in the queue.  This is what I'm talking about when I say that the shuffle generates a queue of 51 supposedly randomly selected songs.  

[Joe]

Ooh, thank you, I never knew that 🙂

[gtyellojacket]

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@mutantdog wrote:

I can't speak for Android but my qualitative sense is that iOS is more random than Windows.

There really does seem like a tendency for Spotify to favour certain tunes over others, especially so on the same day. I've noticed entire shuffled sequences repeated if I, say, play one playlist for a bit then play a different one then return to the first.

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That's interesting.  Maybe the application uses the current date as a seed for the random number generator, so if you generate a shuffled queue several times in one day, you are more likely to get the same songs in your queue.

I also have the Spotify app on my iPad, but I don't use it often enough on that platform to notice any tendencies.

[BoschCPA]

I see it too.  Mine seems to be favoirng Donavon Frankenreiter.

My playlist as over four thousand songs,

of which only twenty are from Donavan F.

But each time I hit shuffle it includes ten of his songs in the top of the que.

I tried resorting my playlist by song name

but  that did not work.

Maybe spotify is paying him less than other artist

so

they favor him

because

it cost them less money?

[markhammarj]

That’s what I’ve been thinking. If it’s true it should be possible to find info confirming it somewhere ... That’s what I’m searching for now.  

[Ivan]

Hey folks, 

Thanks for reaching out to the Community about this. 
 

Just to confirm, have you tried a clean reinstall of the Spotify app on your device? We recommend this step as it'll remove the old drivers first and then install the new ones. It'll also get you the latest version of Spotify. These changes tend to solve issues like the one you're experiencing. Give your device a quick restart as well before you open the newly installed app. 

It'd be helpful to try logging in with a different Spotify account to check if it's an account related issue. If it works with another account, you can follow the steps in this Spotify Answer next. 

Hope this helps. Keep us posted.