[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.

[majogl]

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

"Standard Shuffle: still pure randomness
For listeners who prefer the classic experience, Standard Shuffle keeps things purely random — just like before."

Proving they either don't know what the heck "random" means or they made up their own definition and are hoping eventually it will become THE definition... *facepalm*

If anyone at spotify bothers to read this:

Random

adjective

1. proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

   the random selection of numbers.

2. Statistics.,  of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen.

When you play a playlist of 1000 songs, over and over, and even go to the lengths of deleting your cache and occasionaly even reinstalling the app between plays, to get at least a little randomness, but still within first 50 songs, 20 are on a list of your most listened to songs (that I wrote down beforehand as prediction), then your system isn't random. The old one sure as heck wasn't random and NEITHER IS THE NEW ONE. 

And now they're just blowing smoke up somewhere, claiming they FINALLY gave us what we wanted, when in fact they only made their awful system slightly less bad. You know what we want, Spotify, and this ain't it. You clearly have no intention of allowing true shuffle and potentially losing your promo money, so at least have the guts to say you won't do it...

[sadastronaut]

@majogl,

While I agree it's a little bit ridiculous I've never seen someone so angry to finally get the feature they want. 

[alexjobi]

Well, first day with the new random option and on a 16 hours playlist, I've heard the same song 3 times in the same hour and the artist played 5 times in the same hour. So obviously, nothing has changed. I guest we will have to wait another 5 years before they gave us another update on this one 😔

[majogl]

@sadastronaut

Pure unweighted shuffle will never be added to spotify. After 5 years that much is obvious. I have accepted that and switched to a different service that has it (youtube music), and i encourage as many people as possible to also vote with their wallets and switch. Anger is appropriate given in their last statement they act like they've not only listened to the community, but shuffle has actually always been pure randomness. Ridiculous... 

[rozeboosje]

"I have accepted that and switched to a different service" - same here. Can't help myself and I keep returning here to rubberneck and watch this train wreck but I moved to Amazon Music, oh, a few years ago now. They, too, give you a "randomize playlist" option.

Yes, it would be funny to see someone getting angry to "finally get the feature they want". Of course it would. The point is: they aren't getting the feature they want.

And I'll even accept that it's fair enough to point out that SOME of the demands here are not reasonable. "I don't want to see two songs by the same artist in a row", for example, or even worse "I don't want to hear the same artist again until I've heard from every other artist in the play list". It is evidence for a deep misunderstanding of what "random" actually means, and there are no satisfactory technical solutions to meeting such demands. I wish I could find the youtube video I watched that explained it SO well.

But something like "randomize playlist" is indeed trivial. Of course you may get small "clusters" in such a randomized playlist. You might hear the same artist twice in a row at some point. You might get two songs from the same album very close together. Yes, all of that could happen and that's what "random" is. But a "randomize playlist" option would ensure that you can play the entire list in a new, randomized order from top to bottom and only hear each song exactly once. THAT is trivial.

[restaurant_boy]

rozeboosje do you understand the difference between random and shuffle? or is there another YouTube video that explains it that you forgot. 

[majogl]

@restaurant_boy
dude... spotify themselves use those 2 interchangably and neither is true when they do it... See their recent article, from which I quote:

Spoiler

Standard Shuffle keeps things purely random — just like before.

Shuffle in this context just means you randomize the order of items in a set, like a playlist. Or a deck of cards. When you shuffle a deck of cards and 3 out of the first 10 cards you draw are the queen of spades, it's either that you're a wizard, or the deck of cards is 💩

[dank13]

Yes the of the the last year for me was the last drop, I've changed providers, cancled my Spofity membership and decided to go with Apple Music, for a few reasons:
1. I was already paying for it to use my Apple Home Pod at home, (another reason i left Spofity - lack of support for apple home pod)
2. Apple had lossless audio (i know shifify has it now)
3.Apple has better shuffle, not perfect but way better

There are a few things i miss about Spofity, but definitely not enough to make it want to sign back on.
1. radio stations based on a song are usually better on Spofity
2. recommended songs also better

But what is the point of finding new music and creating playlists when Spofity keep repeating the old songs over and over again....

[rozeboosje]

"Difference between random and shuffle"

Well that's another fine can of worms. With a deck of cards it's obvious
what a "shuffle" is. After a "shuffle", the entire deck is still there,
it's just the order of the cards that is no longer the same. With a "good"
shuffle, it's random. With a "good" algorithmic shuffle, it's humanly
indistinguishable from "true" random.

What streaming services present as a "shuffle" is more like "every next
card, just randomly reach into the deck and grab one" and, this is a
crucial part of what you need to understand, *put that card back into the
deck*. Picture it. A normal deck of cards. No jokers. You blindly reach in,
grab a card. Hey look, it's the 6 of clubs. Shove it back in. Blindly grab
a card. Remember, the 6 of clubs is back in the deck. You grab blindly. So
there is a 1 in 52 chance that you will grab the 6 of clubs again.

Spotify's sad excuse for a "shuffle" is not THAT simple. When i looked into
it a few years ago it involved a 80 song queue but the principle is the
same, I modeled it in a .NET project I shared on GITHUB and shared here,
gawd, probably 100 pages ago in this very thread. No matter how often you
run the simulation, after a certain number of songs repeats are all but
guaranteed.

And that would be based on Spotify trying to do it HONESTLY. They don't.
And that makes an already awful "shuffle" infinitely worse.

[franciscoissaly]

My two cents:
Random, true shuffle, smart shuffle, whatever; it really does not matter how well randomized the algorithm to pick the next song may be, if the base it picks from is a small biased subset!
You could have a playlist of thousands of songs, and the best randomized algorithm, but if it picks from say, the 100 songs you have played most, or the 100 most trending songs, or the 100 songs most profitable to Spotify; you will end up hearing the same songs over and over.
The only way I see this kind of working would be to pick from the 100 song you have played less recently.