Spotify won't shuffle songs

[msacks]

Hello. I created a playlist and when I click the shuffle button (it is now green) and then right click on my playlist and hit play, it plays a random song from the playlist. However, every song after this is played in alphabetical order of Artist -> Song (not random at all). How do I fix this? Thanks.

[3Torquent]

I'm having exactly the same problem - shuffle is doing absolutely nothing. I've been chucking everything into a new playlist and dragging the tracks around to "randomise" it myself, but it's very frustrating to have to do so.

[Wandering-Logic · Accepted solution]

I also had this problem.  It turns out that shuffle doesn't work if there is anything in your Play Queue.  Go to the Play Queue (in the Windows version of Spotify I am using it is in the first group of the menu on the left-hand side.  Select all (Ctrl-A) and Delete.  Then select a playlist and it should shuffle.

[Gamewriter]

Thanks Wandering! I've been confused about this for awhile.

IMHO this is a bug. I want to shuffleplay everything in my Play Queue. Shuffle is a playback mode, not a contextual command. I don't know of any other player that behaves like this.

If shuffle is not applicable in the Play Queue, then why does that button appear when I am playing stuff from the Play Queue?

UX design: an underappreciated art form.

[dehvokahn]

This doesn't seem to work correctly still.

Now that I know I can use shuffle with my play queue EMPTY, when I use shuffle and select play on a playlist that has 2000 songs in it, it only shuffles 50 or so songs.

The whole point of having something like Spotify is to stay away from a "top 40" style radio station, like on the FM dials or  even XM dials.

Randomizing a playlist should be a really simple task!  In programming terms:

1) Select count(),* from playlist where user = name and playlistname = name order by sort

2) run function, random order with input equal to the count() from select above - basically create an array of numbers from 1 to count, create a new empty array, take a random number between 1 and count (inclusive), take that number out of first array, and append it to new array, repeat until first list is empty

3) update each of the rows in step one's output so that those rows have new sort order, then run it again to get the playlist in shuffled fashion.

Done.  Would take a second, or two, if done right (and if database is configured right).

@Spotify:  Let us know if you want help with this!!

-D

[KS2Problema]

I've been trying Spotify over the summer (special 3 month deal) and Spot does many things really right. Nice little things like a quick fade on middle of song starts/stops -- that's sweet. I don't like the dark gamer look to things, but some of the attention to use detail is nice.

Which is why it is so perplexing that the play queue is just a mess. The shuffle behavior appears nonsensical. I'm usually pretty good about figuring out what a badly designed UI needs out of me and finding a way to give it. But the Spotify queue continues to vex.  For contrast, I think GPMAA gets that right (and messes up on other stuff, LOL).

[dkmorton]

i cannot get shuffle to work with a playlist I built using my Windows laptop. I am playing the music on my Onkyo receiver, wireless thru my router to the Spotify account. I tried deleting everything from my Play Queue (good idea), but still....... no matter what I try, the music played is still in the exact order of my built playlist. Help?

[KS2Problema]

Ditto that.

It's hard to undersand why, if it's broken, they don't fix it. And if it's not 'broken' -- why can't any of us figure out how to work it?

Meanwhile, Google Play Music's shuffle works quite well, both for reshuffling an existing play queue (although it now shuffles the whole queue, not just unplayed tracks but you can always delete the played tracks before reshuffling -- and 'un-shuffling' returns the queue to the way it was -- as well as in what I guess you could call 'passive' shuffle mode -- when shuffle is on, adding new tracks or playlists shuffles the new material into the existing queue. It's a nice implementation.

It would be nice to see Spotify straighten out their queue user interface. That said, now that Songza is part of GPM All Access and people seem to really like it (me, I like to pick out my own tunes, but the masses, eh?) maybe GPM will get the solid marketshare that will assure its continued existence.

Anyhow, there are some good features in Spotify -- I still totally love the mini-fade-in/fade-out on pause and stop -- and the automaic volume compression is at least some help taming the wild variegation of dynamic levels from track to track. It's just funny that the 800 pound gorilla in the room would have such problems with the queue interface.

At least, unlike the woeful Beats, Spot HAS a queue. 😃

[xamabox]

I have the same problem, 2000 song playlist will only shuffel the most recent few albums I have added, none of the older stuff ever comes up - it's quite frustrating.

[mccarths]

I got so frustrated with this that I wrote my own shuffle function that will randomly reorder all the songs in your playlists https://www.playlist.management/#/

[jijuji]

nope this doesnt work

[eduardstula]

Hello, this is possible. There is an external tool https://www.spotify-shuffle.com/.

[Jimbo16c]

I also had this exact problem but I noticed it wasn’t all the time and it turns out when I am playing through usb connection the problem exists. With aux or Bluetooth I do not.

[reece86]

legend!! 

[Iamnotarobotm8]

It is honestly so painful having to listen to the same 30 songs on repeat just because Spotify won’t fix their shuffling system. Clearly a lot of people are having this issue so Spotify pls just sort it out 🙂