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!

[FlyingPole]

I don't care about the same artist playing 4 times in a row, I care about
the same SONG played back to back.

[Phail_Ninja]

My issue is it seems that the shuffle algorithm doesn't truly randomize songs. It seems to rank "favorites" to either genre song or artist and prioritize playing those every new shuffle. I have all my downloaded songs on one huge, 3.3k song playlist and I have a few select songs I swear I hear every few days if not every day. This isn't just me either, I've had this same conversation with multiple family members and friends that are all heavy Spotify users and they say they've had the same experience. My suggestion would be to have this "favorites" feature as a toggle option, and a "true shuffle" option for those who want to hear all the music. I feel like I hear the same 50-150 songs all the time and hardly hear the other 3,000 unless I queue them manually.

[Jbirch1211]

The shuffling still doesn’t work. Same 20 or so songs replay never hearing any others on playlist

[pierre1974]

The shuffle is NOT working... Playlist of around 400 songs and the shuffle command plays the same 30 or so tracks even when restarted or clicking on the shuffle button again... Disappointing as it looks to be a 4 years old issue... Oh! By the way that playlist was published following Bruce Springsteen's autobiography and contains mostly (but not only) his songs... So the crappy algorithm that prevents playing the same artist is absolutely irrelevant and in this very case totally wrong as it will select the same bunch of songs over and over again... Have your engineers heard of the word "random" as it is undestood in cryptography? Any man controlled selection algorithm interfering with the concept of randomness would lead to this... A functionality that achieves the opposite of what the users are looking for.

[jelarv]

I've subscribed to Spotify for 3-4 years and I have 3 playlists, each with over 500 songs and yet it only plays the same 30 songs on each.  I've spent hours following all of the steps in the help section and none of them work (I have the problem when using my iPhone or desktop device).