Your Ideas At Work: Shuffle Improvements

[meahtenoha]

The Community Ideas Board isn’t just about requesting new features. It’s also about improving the features already in Spotify.

Take our shuffle algorithm for instance.

The Idea “Implement an actual shuffle function” by Community user @RoninTheOrigina  gathered over 850 votes.  Users were vocal in their comments about what they wanted (and didn’t want) when it came to shuffling playlists.

We then passed this knowledge on and our teams got to work.

The result: an improved shuffling algorithm that avoids playing a couple songs from an artist too close together.

If you’re thinking, “that sounds kind of vague, what are these improvements” then fret no more.

Spotify’s @lukasP  has written an extensive blog post on how we gathered user feedback on Shuffle, analyzed their comments, took a hard look at our previous algorithm and found the best way to bring the improvements users wanted.

We’re aware this doesn’t fix all shuffling issues forever. Rest assured we are still working on this though.  You’ll also see the new algorithm in other clients other than desktop soon.

Now go hit shuffle on your favorite playlist and reap the benefits of your hard work clicking that Kudos button.

Enjoy!

[WaxwingSlain]

In the past weeks, I've read absolutely EVERYTHING that's been written in
the Spotify community regarding shuffle. In the Spotify PC application,
shuffle has NOT been fixed. It is still weighted toward certain songs, and
instead of shuffling my playlist of 1000+ songs, it seems to pick about 50
and shuffles those.

So that is why "someone" should reply to me. Now what have you added to
this conversation?

[_daniel_]

I was replying to JayLB's message (...On the desktop app if you look to the lower right hand corner to the two symbols, one of which is two arrows criss crossed that is the shuffle icon, just click it until it returns to grey in color if it is green in color. Grey shuffle mode off, green color it is turned on...) --> great help, JayLB, that's the solution we were all looking for.

Sorry Jimnitti, didn't know your real name is Jay as well.

Anyway, I added to this conversation that I took hours of my valuable time to conduct an experiment and eventually found out, what exactly causes the shuffle to fail ("...I created a playlist of 50 songs and conducted a little experiment:  I shuffle played all 50x songs and to my surprise each song was only played ONCE until each single song of the playlist was played. After that the shuffle function started all over again and shuffle played the 50x songs all over again. In total I repeated this experiment four times and to my surprise it worked perfectly. No song was played twice within a 50x-song-cycle (...) Eventually I found the problem (...) I listened to 25 songs out of my 50 song playlist and switched off Spotify. When I switched it back on again Spotify would still remember which song I played when I switched it off. However, Spotify forgot which 25 songs I played before so the whole shuffle play started all over again, also playing the 25 songs it had already played.  The same happened when I played a song from another playlist, artist or album. Spotify simply doesn’t remember the songs it had already played...) --> see full message on page 3.

Anyway, don't you think I got a response from a Spotify member after doing their work. They have never reacted and even ignore PMs.

So you better get used to the current shuffle experience or keep your device on at all times and never listen to anything else but that one single playlist...

[WaxwingSlain]

I apologize, I thought you were replying to me.

You've tested shuffle with 50 songs, but what about 200, or 1000? I'm sure
a lot of users have created massive playlists and would like to get an
experience different from Hits Radio where the same 50 songs play over and
over.

And I appreciate your willingness to test Spotify's shuffle even if the
devs don't.

Jim (not Jay)

[_daniel_]

Hey Jim, no worries.

I chose 50 songs to speed up the process and get results quickly. And after I realised that shuffle worked perfectly, I tried other combinations until I found the real problem. It's all about Spotify's missing ability to remember those songs you played. And I would assume there is no difference for playlists with 50, 100, or 1,000 songs (I have those too).

There's different solutions to this problem but I'm afraid no one at Spotify cares. I wrote Meredith a PM months ago, no reply to this date. And here no one writes anything helpful, right Jay 😉

Take care

Daniel

[WaxwingSlain]

I see.  You're saying that Spotify cannot remember which songs have been played across separate plays of the playlist).  But would that explain why each morning, when I start a playlist shuffling (by clicking on the playlist in my list of playlists), 5 of the first 20 songs I hear are going to be the same every single day?  As I said, there are a little more than 1000 songs in my playlist, but every morning I start the shuffle and here come those same 5 songs.

This cannot be happening randomly.  Why THOSE songs every single time?  And why are certain songs in my playlist NEVER played (even though they are not greyed out in the playlist)?

I have noticed one thing:  I can get a somewhat more random shuffle by "fast forwarding" through all 1000 songs to clear the "queue".  Maybe the entire problem can be solved simply by having the queue cleared completely every time Spotify is closed?  It appears that when you start a shuffled playlist, Spotify creates a queue (maybe of all 1000 songs in the playlist) and then if you don't play through the entire queue, Spotify starts the next morning by shuffling the first 50 songs of the already shuffled playlist.  That would explain why I'm hearing a lot of the same songs eveyr day, no?

I'm sorry if I'm not making sense.  I haven't had enough coffee yet today.  But thank you for your kind replies.