Implement an actual shuffle function

[RoninTheOrigina]

Yes, you read that right.  The "shuffle" function in Spotify is nothing more than a randomizer.  There's a difference?  YES.

RANDOM - Play one song.  The next song can be ANY song in your playlist.  Including the one you just listened to.  Though I've never had this specifically happen, I literally just heard the same song that I heard 2 songs ago.  This is how Spotify's "shuffle" currently functions.

SHUFFLE - Take your entire list, shuffle them (like cards), and play the first song in the shuffle.  Once finished, move that song off the pile.  Once the pile is depleted, shuffle the deck again and start over (maybe pop a message up).

I know enough about programming (not much) to know that shuffling is probably a bit harder than random, but come on.  I may be in the minority, but I don't have a lot of little playlists.  I have one list with nearly a thousand songs in it, because I like all the music, and am rarely not in the mood for one of those songs.  But what I can't stand is hearing the same song over and over again.  I think there may even be songs in my list I haven't heard yet, while I've heard others 4-5 times.

I know it may not matter much, but I would probably lay down the money for at least a year subscription if this feature was implemented.

EDIT: Another user pointed out that I can see what all is queued up in my shuffle by clicking the Play Queue link, and that Spotify supposedly sets up a rolling shuffle of 50 songs.  It would be nice if this range could be expanded to say 50-100% of your playlist.

EDIT 4/6/12: I just dealt with the same song 16 tracks later.  The song played the first time yesterday afternoon.  I went home, listened for a bit on my home PC (just a few songs), then started listening again this morning.  If the list recycles itself after a day, or if you log in from another computer, I see that as an area for improvement.

[vesperavespera]

Found a workaround using Fidelify instead of Spotify's default desktop client.

It is a basic recreation of Spotify's desktop app with ASIO and audio driver settings in mind. More importantly, it has its own shuffle algorithm.

Note: Fidelify is beta, and requires Windows / Spotify Premium

[Rastacaptain]

Hey guys!

I recently downloaded Spotify after the removal of Grooveshark (RIP) a couple of months ago, and it's been a pretty good replacement... Until tonight. I spent the day making a playlist for an upcoming 4th of July party and capped it at 200 songs with over 13 hours of play time. I threw the playlist on shuffle to sit back, enjoy the fruits of my labor, and make small tweaks to the playlist here and there. I immediately noticed that Spotify's shuffle function would replay the same song before it had gone through the other 200 completely. To verify this I spam clicked the skip button over and over and sure enough songs were repeated before I even got close to 200 clicks. I'm aware that there is a que of 50 songs you can edit during playback, but honestly no one is going to babysit the playlist at a party and keep track of which repeated songs enter the que.

I did some research on the topic and found threads that were complaining about this very same problem back in 2013 and 2014. This has been going on for years and Spotify hasn't corrected this?! I read Spotify's article about their random algorithm which is basically a lesson on probability that defends their viewpoint of the way the shuffle feature should work, without addressing many of the claims that users have been frustrated with. At first I thought the only solution would be to manually sort each song throughout the playlist and have it play from top to bottom after I hand shuffled it.

Thankfully I didn't waste an hour of my life doing that, and I found a solution to the problem! https://www.random.org/lists/ provides a free shuffling feature for lists among other things. This means it can shuffle your playlist! To use this, open the Spotify app on your computer and go to the desired playlist. Using Cmd+A or Ctrl+A will highlight every song in the playlist, then Cmd+C or Ctrl+C will copy the list of songs. Next, go to the list generator and use Cmd+V or Ctrl+V to enter the links of every song (up to 10,000) in the generator. Click randomize and you will end up with a list of shuffled songs that you can copy and paste right back into the Spotify app under a new playlist title. Then play the playlist from top to bottom and enjoy your shuffled music! If you don't like the way it shuffled or want to reshuffle it, just repeat the steps above and voila!

Happy listening everyone!

[mries]

If this shuffle problem is not fixed soon I will definitely be switching back to iTunes!

[Artracing]

I dropped my subscription due to shuffle. If I have to hit skip all the time, they don't deserve to get paid. After all these years they don't care to fix it, then there is something deeper going on. Maybe when they start losing market share to new Apple Music they'll do something.

[chriskiley]

It's 2015 and this is still an issue.

[jindapee]

Shuffle or Random. Whatever you wanna call it, Spotify users simple don't want to hear the same 20 songs over and over. I'm currently building up my Apple Music library just because the Spotify Shuffle function is so bad. Yes, Apple Music is horribly designed and has many of its own flaws but it's worth it because I can hit play on a playlist of 100 songs and I know it's not gonna repeat a set of 20 songs over and over. Yes, I can sit back and let shuffle/random do its thing. Spotify needs to listen to its community here because it's such a silly reason to lose customers over.

[sodaboy581]

I don't understand why it doesn't just shuffle the songs like iTunes does.

iTunes actually just shuffles whatever playlist you've selected without repeating any track, making sure every track gets a play.

For example, if you have songs 1-10 and you hit shuffle, the order might be:

5, 3, 7, 1, 9, 10, 2, 4, 6, 8

If you hit shuffle again, it'd be:

7, 6, 3, 8, 1, 2, 4, 9, 5, 10

Spotify seems to do stupid stuff like:

1, 9, 4, 9, 2, 1, 7, 1, 5, 10

Looking at it at a programming way, whenever you've got a play list, just make an array the size of x*4 (x = # of songs, 4 = size of 32-bit integer)  and populate that with random numbers that range from 1 to # of songs and never repeat the value when the shuffle button is pressed, then just play the songs in the order they fall in the array.

Your next and previous buttons will work and the shuffle order can either be repeated once the end of the array is reached or it can shuffle them again.

This problem takes, literally, less than 10 minutes to solve coding wise.

Now I realize this may not be possible with "Radio" playlists, but at least the static playlists that are created on your own account or playlists you follow should be able to do this, since there are a set # of songs that come in specific order and easily randomized.

FIX IT!  Shuffle should be a true shuffle, not something completely random which isn't a true shuffle at all.  (Just shuffle a deck of cards, you will never get the same card twice in a row or even after a couple of other cards.  Counting the cards after you've shuffled the deck, you'll get a unique card until you reach the end of the deck.  THAT is how Spotify's shuffle should work.)

[Artracing]

Looks like a good resume. Your hired..... How I forgot, I don't own Spotify just borrow it.

[dennis_k]

I agree that the shuffle doesn't work well. I have not read all the posts in this thread.

I was trained in programming back in the 1980-ies. I am not a professional programmer.
However, I remember there were numerous ways to shuffle data. Maybe it can be of use.

Consider the case that you have a list with N entries (position in list, track name, artist, whatever...).

Simplest implementation would be:
Take ((pos in list)*randomnr) MOD N to generate a new order of tracks.
>> This operation will generate the same order over an over since the random number is always the same.

To add more randomness we were taught to use the time stamp when the the random button was clicked.
For example if the user click at the time 13:31:26 you can use any of these numbers to generate the new order.

So Take ((pos in list)*randomnr*26) MOD N to generate the new order of tracks.
>> This will not repeat until the user presses random at 26 seconds past any minute. One chance in 60. On average the user will get the same order every 60 times the random button is pressed (if the list comprises at least 5 entries).

If this still does not satisfy the customers more complexity can easilty be added.

Take ((pos in list)*randomnr*26*31^2) MOD N to generate the new order of tracks.
>> This will not repeat until the user presses random at 31m26s past any hour. One chance in 1440. On average the user will get the same order every 1440 times.

If this still does not satisfy the customer there is more to add.
Take the ascii code of the first character in the track name. Lets say the Track name starts with A (ASCII code 65)
Take ((pos in list)*randomnr*26*31^2*65^3) MOD N to generate the new order of tracks.
>> This will not repeat until the user presses random at 31m26s past any hour and has exactly same entries in the list.

If this still doesn't work for the customer, add the current week number, store and use the number of random lists generated, the second letter in the track name, or possibly the first character of the artist name, whatever. Soon enough a sufficiently good algorithm will be established.

If the time stamp is not availble, think of another availble number that varies with time . (For example accessible disk space, number of spotify users, first letter of most recent search, second letter of most recent played playlist name...)

Remember, if the list has only one entry, the random list will alway be the same. Segments of the list may repeat.

[unilodgecp]

Hi there, we have just recently upgraded to premium as we now require music to play for extended periods of time in our lobby. We're really not happy with the shuffle feature, and it now seems I'm not the only one. It's not good to see though this issue has been ongoing since 2012, we may consider cancelling the service.

We're just getting sick of hearing the same songs when there are over 500 songs in the playlist.

It took a lot to convince the boss to pay for this service, just not good enough.

Just thought I would also share my frustration as a newly converted premium member. I'm not sure if anyone from Spotify reads this, but there seems to be no other way to let them know.