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!

[moisaras]

It would be great if we could get some feedback from Spotify on this.

It seems we are talking to ourselves here..

[meahtenoha]

Hey guys, this new shuffle algorithm has been rolled out on rolled out across all platforms, but that we're always looking for ways to improve/ gather feedback.

Could you give us more specifics about what you're seeing? Is it all on devices? 

[moisaras]

Meredith, thank you for getting back to us.

Some inital feedback: it seems that my shuffle 'randomness' has indeed improved. A friend of mine using Spotify, reports the same.

However, I now noticed an issue that other users mentioned earlier: whilst shuffling a playlist of about 300 songs, the same song appeared twice within less than half an hour..

In my opinion, it would be much more convenient to 'recycle' songs only after the whole playlist has been exhausted.

[user-removed]

Thank you Meredith.

It's really improved. I hear so mucj great songs without same artists near.

Feedback: could it be possible to not play same songs (or keep current play queue) when I change from speaker to smartphone etc. Now I hear sometimes songs I heared on speaker 15 minutes ago...

[SR_Penny]

Mine is on the iOS app and is still pretty poor. Hearing the same songs every day, as well as the same songs during the same session - even when there are still hundreds of other unplayed songs.