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.

[pbrownpb18]

 I tried randomizing my playlist as per your suggestion. When I drag the randomized list back to Spotify, instead of adding the songs it opens a new browser tab and gives me a "Sorry I could'nt find that" message. So if this used to work, they've changed it.

[rednblu]

Yes, @pbrownpb18.  There is a bug in some versions of the Spotify player-- In some buggy versions of the Spotify player, you can do the following "user programming fix"--

• Insert some "Stub track" into the empty playlist-- Any "Stub track" will fix this-- in some buggy versions of the Spotify player.
• Then, drag the randomized list back to the playlist with the "Stub track" in it.

Does that "user programming fix" work with the particular buggy Spotify player that you have?

Many praises from me for trying, @pbrownpb18-- The fantastic Spotify experience is worth all of the trouble . . . .  Maybe-- if it works, yes?

Happy New Year!  And many pleasant hours of Spotify music on and on.

[pbrownpb18]

No, I had tried that without success. The list that gets copied over is just a number of URLs starting with

https://open.spotify.com/track

so when it gets copied back (regardless of whether it was randomized or not) it tries to open a web page.

[mromans]

Hi there Spotify community, 

Would first like to say that I very much appreciate utilizing Spotify - it's great : ) 

Recently I've noticed that when I am listening to my playlists under the "random" setting, the order in which the songs are played seems to be organized by some program that places "like with like". Therefore, any playlist with a wide variety of styles and artists tends to play through only certain albums at a time rather than a truly random selection. At times I love this feature (assuming I'm not imagining it). However, at other times I wish I could have a more thoroughly random order of play thrown at me while listening.

Perhaps there is a way of having various degrees of randomness while listening to our playlists? Rather than just choosing between random & straight play, perhaps we could have a "completely random" icon to select in addition? Or it could be something that users adjust within their playlist settings?...

Thanks for offering this space for feedback!

-MR

[rednblu]

Thanks, @pbrownpb18, for helping us keep all of the critical Spotify functions debugged on some version of the Spotify player.

My developer network and music network friends suggest I offer you the following "Shuffle" steps as an alternative for some buggy Spotify players--

Spoiler

Using Spotify version 1.0.20.101 running under XP-- verified again December 29, 2016  18:36:44.  Someone please publish here any changes you have to make to get this critical Spotify function to work for the buggy Mac Spotify players.  Thanks.

Happy New Year!

- Prepare an empty Playlist that you name "Randomized" and drag into that empty Randomized playlist a "Stub track".

- Go to the WebPage http://textmechanic.com/text-tools/basic-text-tools/sort-text-lines/

- Ctrl-A, DeleteKey to clear that screen

- Copy into that nowBlankScreen your whole 9999 track playlist that you want to TrulyShuffle

- Then click the "Random" button-- which is the middle at the top of the browser screen

- Click the RadioButton on "Dos" at the bottom of that screen, in the middle

- Then, just to the left of the "Dos" radioButton, click the Blue "Save As" button-- by default the Randomized playlist will then appear in the Dos file "output.txt" in your browser.

- Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C in the file "output.txt" to copy that whole randomized playlist into the Buffer.

- Click on the "Stub track" in your otherwise empty "Randomized" playlist you made above.

- Under Edit in the top left of your Spotify player, click Paste-- Give the system two minutes to complete the processing of the Paste.

- Voilà  -- or 😞  -- which?

- There are bugs in the Spotify Copy, Cut, Delete, ... functions-- some of the replacements for the above detailed steps work in the buggy Spotify players and some don't.

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I use only the Spotify player 0.9.15.27 running under Vista to do all of my shuffle and maintenance of my 75,314 track "Your Music"-- Much simpler and unified under a sensible "Folder" that I can sort immediately across all 75K tracks by Artist / Album by one click.

Then I cut from my randomized playlist to a 9000 track SubPlaylist-- one 9000 track SubPlaylist for each device-- Thus no repeats even among mobile devices-- ever.

======
Still with me?  (I laugh.  We have to laugh, right?)

The music on Spotify is worth all that it takes to get all that music stacked into a Non-Repeating AllOfSpotify "radio" that works across all devices!

[mayazcherquoi]

At present, (I believe) Spotify just naively randomises the playlist for it's shuffle play function. This, more often than not, causes songs by the same artist to be grouped together in that random shuffling and played soon after each other (within a couple of steps).

My proposal is to introduce a new "DJ (or party) mode", or replace the current shuffle play functionality, which maximises the distance between songs for the same artist, or at least until it has a distance of at least an arbitrary number, N, like 15 or so.

Cheers.

[Nossirre]

Yeah. Still sucks. Why can't you all fix this issue some 5 years later???? 5 years bruh? I get the same 8 songs over and over. And I only have 100 songs in the list. 😳😳😳 very disappointing. 

[pwa93]

Come on Spotify... I pay for this service and Shuffle just shuffles in the same order everytime.  Starting to think its time to maybe move to Google Music or someone else if you can't fix this.. doesn't seem like this would be a huge problem to fix.

[aoklauraj]

I will add, the algorithm for what gets played should somehow be able to take into account date added and overall number of plays.  I also use playlists and a long list of "favorited" songs and it seems like the same ones come up over and over, despite lists in the 1000s.

[nurdayana]

I feel like it does do that though? I find that when I add new songs to a playlist, they tend to get played more when I shuffle. Not sure whether or I like it or not but I think it does happen.