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.

[Rwmoran]

The post says this has been "implemented." But, that is simply not true. When I shuffle a playlist (no matter how big it is), IT PLAYS THE SAME 10 SONGS OVER AND OVER AGAIN. WHAT. THE. HECK.

[rafandersson]

It's all about the money. They need to save/make money, so it's always some songs that will be come again and again in the so called "shuffle"-function, which should be called "make-more-money"-function. That's my only conclusion, since they haven't fixed it, and don't care about fixing it.

[3mon]

Totally agree with the post above. Also it is dirty cheap that no rep has even showed up to acknowledge this...

[DscytheX]

Or it should just shuffle your entire playlist instead of just 50 songs or less ( I can't remember what the limit is).  I really wish the Sony music app hadn't removed their Spotify integration.  I loved being able to play songs from spotify along with the local files I had on my phone and the app would shuffle every song on a 500+ playlist. No repeats.

[bmfc1]

This is still a problem.  I have a playlist with 8 hours of music but whenever I hit "Shuffle Play", the same songs are played.  For a company with sophisticated algorithims, you are really bad at shuffling our playlist.  Once a song is played, it should not be repeated until every other song in the playlist is played.

[karlmacnaughton]

I've put all my albums (and singles) in playlists in a folder. There are literally thousands of tracks in this folder and yet no matter when I play them on shuffle the same 5 or 6 appear in almost the same order over and over again! Still some work to do on this I feel.

[denyinghipster]

Still doesn't work right. I tweeted about this. I had a playlist of only 49 songs, 20 different artists, and 5 out of 7 songs played were by the same artist....and there are only 5 songs by that artist on the playlist. So it played ALL the songs by one artist before it played more than 3 other songs. Terrible. 

[samclarke666]

Doesn't seem to work well for me. Seems to shuffle through 1/2 albums by a band (and weirdly favours live albums) not good if you want to binge an artist with 10+ in their discography

[claybirdr]

Everytime I want to shuffle a playlist, the shuffling generator is horrible. It always goes to and artist stays on that artist and doesn't shuffle the entire playlist. There a songs I didn't even know were on my playlist because they never get played on shuffle, its only the same 10 songs. The idea a shuffling a playlist has been aorund long before spotify, why is it so bad? I pay for premium, but can't shuffle a playlist while driving because it plays the same songs and I can't put songs on queue. Please fix.

[SeanT]

Come on Spotify get this fixed, i don't comment on here much but this is an outrage, i have a playlist with over 200 tracks by different artists and i'm getting sick and tired of hearing only a small percentage of them when using the so called shuffle function, as a software engineer i know how easy this is using a Fisher Yates algorithm so please get it fixed ASAP.