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.

[hagenfa1]

What I actually experience is that the queue is still filled with only 50 tracks. I created playlists for 80ies 90ies whatever. And I have the same issue that only 50 songs are played out of a playslist with lets say 500 tracks.

Do you still have the issue that only 50 tracks are visible at queue with shuffle?

When I just play the playlist without shuffling each track is put up on the queue.

[Coolin82]

Wow this thread has been going on for over 4 years and Spotify still hasn't done to improve this or any of the radio options to make things less repative.

I thought the point of this forum was to get ideas implemented but I haven't seen Spotify implement many ideas at all. I guess Spotify doesn't care about gaining subscriber or being competitive.

[djbg77]

Right now the shuffling of large playlists is incredibly bad. This needs to improve. If I am shuffling a playlist with about 1200 songs, there is no way I should hear 3 songs from the same album within about 20 songs being shuffled off the playlist. This is a widespread problem that many users have reported to me. This problem exists, regardless if I am playing off desktop, iphone, ipad, kindle fire, androids, etc. (all platforms). 

[mullentk]

Mine is doing the same thing. It seems to always play the same songs. I have a 170 song playlist and it seems to play the same 30-40 songs in heavy rotation.

[user-removed]

Hey folks, we have made some improvements to our shuffle algorithm that we are turning on as a default for all users. We'd love your feedback on how your shuffle experience changes after today (Feb 5, 2016). Thanks for your feedback, your comments are essential to helping us improve Spotify. 

Hey - No it hasn't noticably improved on my Android app, still get the same songs regularly. Would be good if the shuffle ago had an idea of history and would favour unplayed music from the playlist over songs recently played (earlier that day or couple of days). 

[klebel]

Why do I get the feeling that the real challenge here is the cost per play of the songs?  I get a dirty feeling that the "shuffle" feature is actually prioritizing songs that cost them less to play based on licensing agreements for the artist royalty payout rate.  If artists with a significantly higher payout rate get played to often they stand to actually lose money on the deal I would think.  Who knows.  Regardless this is ridiculous that this is still not fixed.  It is SUPER simple to fix.  I was listening to a 500 song playlist this morning and heard the same song 3 times in 2 hours.  Totally out of control.

[laurowyn]

So I've done some experimenting with this and have found that the randomisation appears to be based on the original order of the playlist being shuffled.

What I've found is the first song to be played is vaguely random, although always chosen from towards the top of the ~100 ish songs. Then, the next 50 songs are chosen from ±100 songs around this first one, leading to the same songs/artists being chosen far too often.

I found this by playing the same playlist of ~900 songs several times. Whenever the playlist is sorted by artist, the first song was always in the range of A-D, with all subsequent songs in that same range. Toggling the randomisation during playback only shuffled songs within the same range. I then tested by changing the ordering - reverse alphabetical on artist, ascendeing/descending duration, album, song name etc. All followed this same pattern.

Now, I can only assume that the testing done on this was with an already randomly sorted playlist, causing the randomisation to appear random. IMO, truly random would be fine (randomly pick from every song in playlist); why is this not available? randomisation that isn't random makes no sense!

[ab63587]

The reality is that there are 35 pages of posts for this one topic.  Spotify stands behind the fact that they have implemented changes.  I think it's safe to assume that we are seeing the best it's going to get, which is sad.

[laoandretj]

Posting underneath an "implemented" idea does not seem to work, so I started a new idea about this in the hopes that this issue will get out there. Please leave your kudos in order to make Spotify recognize this problem. Thanks.

Please fix the shuffle function

[lasonovich]

The new algortihm since feb seems to have broken my playlists.  I have a number of large playlists (5000 songs) and now it just takes a selection of the first few artists starting with 'a' and plays them over and over.   It doesn't actually shuffle songs from the whole list at all anymore.