Shuffle mode playing the same songs all the time

[Tom7777777]

I have a playlist with 10,000 songs and use shuffle to listen to them. What I realized the past weeks is that the same songs are played over and over again - and not because I listen to this playlist 24/7 but because the shuffle mode seems to not pick songs just randomly but has some kind of algorythm behind to pick certain songs all the time again and again. This is quiet annoying because the reason I use shuffle in a playlist with 10,000 is not to listen to the same songs all the time but to have variety!

[greasygaijin]

Still an issue? Cancelling my sub..

[Bumblebeee2204]

Hear from the future in 2026 and it still hasn't been updated... This is the most frustrating thing about Spotify...

[ThePodfather · Accepted solution]

Just to clarify, some of  the responses below are quite old and doesn’t reflect how Shuffle works today. Since then, we’ve made changes to improve variety and reduce repeats so playback feels more natural.

You can find the latest details on how Shuffle works now in these posts:
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-11-13/shuffle-update-fewer-repeats

/https://engineering.atspotify.com/2025/11/shuffle-making-random-feel-more-human

We’ll continue to share updates if there are further changes.

[Kanefire]

in the past day? still had the same songs playing over and over this past week (jan 16, 2026). Its shockingly bad only beat by how shockingly bad spotify's response to the community has been.

[otokoyama]

No, it's the same. It's complete **bleep**ing shite. Shuffle still uses the same bulk of songs every time you listen. Sometimes the order is slightly different with a new song here and there but ultimately I have heard the same cadre of songs play EVERY FUUUCKING DAY over a period of a month, 2 months 6 months, the last few years. You're gaming the system somehow...which we all know anyway by how little you pay artists. Pay the artists their fair dues, stop allowing ICE commercials and stop funding defense projects you worthless **bleep** **bleep**S!!!

[nichomach]

What a load of nonsense.  It's the same as it always was.  Posting rubbish is bad enough, but marking it as a "solution" is a Trumpian level of delusion or deceit.

[Undeterred]

Do you mean an update on how shuffle STILL DOESN'T WORK today? LIES don't make the problem go away. A lot of people in this forum have already moved to other providers for this very reason. That plus investing in autonomous weapon development, low artist payouts, and supporting ICE.

These problems are not going away and Spotify's continued BS completely disregards consumers and artists alike. 

I encourage everyone reading this to switch providers as soon as possible; you'll also SAVE MONEY by switching. 

Good day. 

[aaronchuck]

Plan Premium

Country USA

Device

All devices

I have just about 1,000 songs in my playlist.  When I hit random, I want to hear them randomly.  I don't care about Spotify's algorithm.  What I care about is not hearing the same 20-30 songs  from a list of 1,000 EVERY DAY!  This is infuriating and NOT what I am paying for. So yes, I'm ready to ditch Spotify altogether over this unless someone has an actual fix for this.
Thanks in advance.

[yemluvr]

Plan

Premium

Device

iPhone 13

Operating System

iOS 17

My Question or Issue

I have a playlist of 2300+ songs that I like to listen to sometimes. Now, when I do, Spotify will loop the same 50ish songs instead of playing all songs of the playlist and it's driving me crazy. It's a playlist I've had ever since I made my account and its good for rediscovering old songs but I can never do so anymore. Attached are screenshots showing my problem. The first screenshots starts with the song Anaconda, and notice the songs that are following after. in the second screenshot, I went back to my recently played, and as you can see, its the same songs that are after Anaconda that *ALREADY* played. I tried clearing my cache and updating the app but nothing changed. 

[yemluvr]

my post was moved to this thread and wow, i cant believe this has been ongoing for 5 years now, spotify fix your app. 

[Roy37]

Not the solution at all, the changes you mentioned are not noticable. It still plays the same songs in shuffle, even in the same order as a day before. This is really annoying! There are songs in my playlist that will never play.. 

Why did a 90's program like Winamp have a freaking good shuffle function, please just copy it from them.. 

[themusiclistener]

Any fix to this yet?

[savvymae23]

Mine is already set up to have fewer repeats, yet I still have to skip through many songs that I recently listened to to get to some that I haven't and then it's back to repeating the same ones. Rather annoying and has me thinking about switching to another service. 

[otokoyama]

nope shuffle is still complete shite.

[rednblu]

     >>  nope shuffle is still complete shite.

Bravo!  And well said!

For it is easy to recreate the failure from the design flaw in the Spotify shuffle-- Just carry any Spotify player on any platform in and out of different automatically or manually switched Transmission media (such as cable, WiFi, cellular, different routers with different passwords that work, ... )--  like drive down the road past ten or more phone transmission towers.

What the buggy Spotify shuffle does is stop-- and then load your queue with at least the first 81 tracks that you already heard from the last time you started the shuffle on this same playlist.

Luckily, there are several user-programming-fixes.  All six of my Spotify family accounts complain-- bitterly-- And they will move to other providers whenever they want.

Carry-on, All.  And thanks.

[jupitersup]

Your shuffle algorithm improvement doesn't work. This breaks it:
1. Leave shuffle on for the Liked Songs list, don't toggle on/off and don't use that annoying shuffle that adds new stuff to the carefully curated list.
2. Play liked songs using the play button from the home screen between phone, computers and car.

The same songs come on over and over. Maybe you should expose some settings to control how random the shuffle really is and whether or not old songs get played, which is the goal of a shuffle by the way.

[px7c0e9q-f_m]

The issue with Spotify's random shuffle seems to be related to it's recommendations and listening history. As long as it uses this, it could never be truly random. Using the Like system and liking any songs will absolutely ruin random shuffle for instance. The fewer repeat feature accomplishes nothing as it still cycles through the same songs on reset. You can try training the algorithm by clicking individual songs, but it is very slow at adapting. That is not all because it prioritizes songs based on their own recommendation algorithm. Some newly added songs to the playlist will mysteriously play right away when some others never seem to show up. The issue isn't fewer repeats and whatever "more human" is supposed to mean here. You need to simply not weigh in listening history and your own recommendation algorithm in random shuffle and offer "true random". I created a new small playlist and hitting play resulted in playing the exact same song as the very first. That is obviously not random when the first song is the exact same one. How about a simple playtest where the first song being played is actually random? Fewer repeats only after the first set of the same 100 songs is not what we want. Allow the option to not use listening history and your own damn recommendations. It has nothing to do with device limits and smaller chunks of data. It has to do with you forcing and weighing certain songs over others. Just like your limited selection of recommended tracks offering the same group of artists. Let us opt-out of your tracking years of our listening history. I think you know exactly what the problem is, but refuse to offer a true solution. 

[avroj]

Fewer repeats of artists would also make sense to implement. I'm pretty sure that versions before 1.1* didn't repeat recently played artists very soon (if the playlist contained multiple artists with several tracks each).