Shuffle seems very predictable

[Duikplank]

Plan

Premium

Country

The Netherlands

My Question or Issue

It seems as if shuffle always creates a similar playlist, regardless of whether I turn it on after starting the playlist or not. For example, I listen to the Spotify playlist "Werkdag FM" often and it very often seems to start off with the same set of songs.

Most of the time it starts with one of the two Duffy songs in the list and the other one is usually within the first five or ten songs as well. Since it is the first song it is logical that I would notice this the most but I've started to notice that the rest of the shuffle queue is always very similar which you wouldn't expect with a playlist with 250 songs.

I would guess the shuffle algorithm tries to put songs it thinks I would enjoy at the beginning of the queue. It is probably way more complicated than that but if this is similar to how it works, it would create a positive feedback loop since the only songs I hear are the ones shuffle puts high in the queue, at least with my listening behavior. Maybe it's an idea to put some more randomness in the algorithm, especially for the first ten or twenty songs in the queue. Even if this isn't how the shuffle algorithm works, it probably still would have prevented me from noticing that the generated queues are similar because they started off differently.

[Jeremy]

Hi there @Duikplank,

Thank you for your post here in the Community.

Can you perform a clean reinstall of the app? This step will clean the cache and corrupted files from previous installations that can cause issues.

If that doesn't do the trick, can you let us know if you get the same behavior while shuffling music from a different device?

We'll keep an eye out for your reply.

Cheers!

[Duikplank · Accepted solution]

I think it might have been a coincidence since it doesn't seem to happen anymore.

It might be the case that even though it's unlikely for shuffle to put a similar set of songs first a number of times in a row it will happen every once in a while and since there is a big number of users, it will happen to a lot of people over time. Just like rolling the same number with dice. If you roll enough times, you will get the same number 10 times in a row at some point.

[Mihail]

Hey @Duikplank,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

We're glad to hear that this seems to be resolved at he moment However other users have mentioned that they would also like a change in how the shuffle feature functions and posted this idea. If this is something you would like to see, we recommend that you +VOTE it to show your support. We'll share any updates on the matter there, as soon as there are any, so it's worthwhile that you also subscribe.

Hope you find this useful. Keep us posted if you have any questions.