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!

[Peter__]

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

[shatkinson]

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.

[hans-jürgen]

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. 🙂

[moisaras]

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.

[mollieneff]

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!