[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

[jonathanleyerle]

So I’ve been noticing more and more recently that Spotify’s default shuffle feature doesn’t fully shuffle your songs. It does some sort of grouping to try to get similar songs together based off of what I’m sure is dozens of factors. Every time I shuffle a playlist (the one I noticed this with the most is ~100 songs and 6 hours of mostly full albums) it will group the songs mostly or completely together by album/artist, and given the number of times I’ve re-shuffled and checked the order there’s no way it’s just a coincidence. They also generally seem to be in the same order as well. If I hit shuffle play on a playlist it’ll generally put the same artists at the beginning every time.

With larger playlists of albums I am really not a fan of this shuffling method. If I have 6 hours of music on a playlist I will hardly ever have 6 hours to actually listen through the whole thing, but when I do listen to it I would like to hear all of the music on it equally, and not just the artist or two your algorithm likes to shuffle to first.

Anyways, I’m a reasonable man, all I’m asking for is an option to have a true shuffle (take all songs in the list, put them in a random order, and once they’re all played reshuffle them and play them again). Make it premium only if you want. I don’t think you should scrap the current shuffle algorithm because it sucks. Looking at some of the suggestions on here it seems like some people lobbied hard to have it that way. Just add an option for a true shuffle for those of us that don’t care about potentially getting the same song twice in a row.

[rednblu]

Very helpful!  Many thanks!-- Good detail.

[rozeboosje]

Yes I noticed that the apps don't work equally well on every platform, too. With Apple Music I had to give up because it took me through a process of setting up a so-called "Apple ID" and that took me through an infinite loop of choices where it kept coming back to the same pages. I don't own Apple hardware but surely they can make something as basic as setting up one's credentials work on other platforms? Maybe not.

Amazon is grand but you're right, not all functionality works on every platform. Owning an android device and a PC that's no big deal for me. I can add new songs to playlists through my phone and randomise my playlist through my PC if I wish. If you only have or prefer to use only one device though I can see how that might become a deal breaker.

[selurnomis]

I'm a shuffler of many self-made playlists and I've found myself coming back to beloved 100+ song playlists multiple times in a month, only to hear the same old songs from them coming back over and over again, with 50+ often still unplayed.

It'd be nice if there were a way to do stock rotation with shuffled playlist songs and throw up more regularly the ones that don't come up a lot every time you start your playlist again.

As it is now, I get bored of playlists easily and give up on them before I've heard the lesser-played songs as much as I'd like to.

[Slip269]

Thinking about it,  the add/remove songs option was working fine when I first installed the Amazon Xbox app,  this was on the basic free ad based subscription.

When I upgraded to the Trial "Unlimited" account the option to add/remove songs disappeared which seems a bit bizarre.

I'll post on the Amazon forums, but I'm not holding out much hope, they seem to answer every post but without an actual solution, so not much better than here 😂

[Mitre226644]

@balkankallj,

Fun fact: 

Pure randomness is also mathematically impossible. 

Also, satisfying everyone who uses Spotify is also mathematically impossible. 

[haardriel]

Normal shuffle is so broken that i would prefer to just have a purely random shuffle feature. Smart and dumb shuffle - problem solved. It seems to me that all they care about is engagement, so they will play your favorite songs twice or 3 times a day until you hate them ... so frustrating!

[UltraNihilist]

Unless I switch playlists around and do a bunch of random stuff on the app I'm getting the same order of like 40 songs out of my 100 hour "Liked Songs" playlist. Please let us have normal pseudorandom shuffle like we used to back in the day. I use both smart shuffle and normal shuffle almost equally because sometimes I like discovering new stuff, sometimes I want "my" stuff to play.

[fraktalisman]

Conclusion: Spotify is just good enough to suck less than other music services and most radio stations, so they've got their marketing priorities right: make the platform worse and annoy customers to see how much they are willing to take. Sad!

[primeminista]

Yes! Out of 300 songs on a playlist. I keep hearing the same 5 songs. Over and over

[Rafa14_Ninjago]

Suggestions based on mood or time of day.