[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.

[wdh010]

I'm not sure how it fits in to your algorithms, but my big issue has been
that, in a play list, I will hear a song(s) 2+ times before hearing another
song in the list once.

Songs should be removed from consideration in the selection process once
they've played. Once all songs have played, they are reintroduced to the
shuffle.

Additionally, the shuffle should be persistent from session to session,
such that it doesn't feel I'm hearing the same songs everytime I listen to
that list in Spotify.

[dank13]

Looks like even ChatGPT know how to fix it hahah

[ScoobyKitesurf]

@harryjames21 sorry mate, it is that type of over-thinking which has brought us to this flawed "random" shuffle we have now.
We don't want heuristics or balanced selections, we want RANDOM selection. If that means the same artist plays consecutively then that is the definition of random. Then only start repeating songs when wll of the playlist has been played.

By all means have the option of not-so-random playback, but give us the option for truly randomised playback, preferably across sessions and even devices.

[Georg9741]

There must be a reason why no music streaming platform implements a true shuffle mode. I would really like to know the reason or a platform that has it (for example, I'm reading that Tidal has the same problem).

[alex87br]

You are 100% correct. This is part of their business model. If they offer a
true shuffle, how will they put pressure on label/artists to pay more in
order to have their songs played more?

[rozeboosje]

"no music streaming platform implements a true shuffle mode"

I'll be happy to explain it again. People tend to mix up a "shuffle" with a "reorganize" option.

There is no possible solution for a "shuffle" that delivers on people's expectation of what a "random" shuffle should do. A "shuffle" would, in the simplest terms, just pick the next "random" song after playing the current one. Sure, this is not exactly what happens. The last time I bothered to look at Spotify's one, for example, it appeared to me that it pulled an 80 song "shuffle" list out of your Play List, no matter how many songs you had, and then, after playing the song in the 1st spot it would pop that one off the list, move the other 79 up one position, then pick another "random" song out of the Play List and stick it into the freed up 80th spot. It's all fine and dandy, but none of it can avoid repeats after a while, while other songs appear to "never be played". And that's when the algorithm is completely unbiased. When it's as biased as Spotify's is, it gets infinitely worse.

But you created a Play List. And stuck in (say) 1,000 songs. These are now in your Play List in whatever order you put them in, and they will stay in that order forever, unless you manually move them around (IF your provider even gives you that option). Now, wouldn't it be handy if your provider could look at your play list as if it were a giant deck of cards, and shuffle the entire list and then SAVE your play list in this new order, after which it will be fixed in this new order until you decide to repeat that action? Then you can play the list from top to bottom, no song will be repeated, until you reach the end. And then you can perform this "giant deck of cards" shuffle again.

THAT is called "randomize play list". And other providers DO have it, Amazon Music, for example.

[Georg9741]

But why can't this be implemented as a shuffle mode, what if I want to keep my playlist order? I don't want to reorganize my playlist, I just want random playback of my over 1000 song list (perhaps remembering what was already played before and don't play them until the whole playlist was played). Your example of the 80 songs is exactly the behavior I observed while playing shuffle on a artist page, but only 20-30 songs, always the same songs (even tho the artist has over a 100 and older songs) and the randomness doesn't update after those 20-30 tracks and repeats in the same order. If a spotify extension can do that, why is Spotify deciding against a reasonable shuffle?

[rozeboosje]

If you're interested in the technical reasons, I have a vague recollection of someone on YouTube providing a really good, and accessible, explanation on why it's technically not possible to just keep picking "random" songs out of a long list and getting the sort of behaviour that people would expect. I am afraid I cannot remember the url - if someone can find it, please post it here. But "I just want a random playback of my over 1000 song list" is never going to work the way you would naively expect it to.

I'm not sure why someone would want to persist a 1,000 song play list in one particular order, but if that's a requirement you could always implement an "original" order alongside a "randomized" order, and persist both separately. I do think though that if saving a *single* randomized order is already a "hard no" from Spotify, saving an "original" alongside a "randomized" order is never going to happen.

[Felyrion]

I was used to winamp... a piece of software from over 25 years ago.... that handled many playlist features better than Spotify will probably ever manage. Including having a  (not true) shuffle AND a randomize featrue.

I loved that 1 to 5 star rating system, and be able to play based on things like "least listened to". Funny how you can regress over time.

[AnyarDier]

Please add a feature to allow "random shuffling".  When playing my playlists, your shuffling algorithm almost always plays songs based on genre.  I would like to see a feature that allows you to shuffle songs randomly - not by genre.  My playlists are composed of various genres.  When entertaining, no one wants to hear all R&B, then Electronic Dance, then Blues.  They want to hear a mixture of genres.  Allow it to shuffle randomly.