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.

[agl89xs20]

The shuffle function still sucks. I have many playlists with loads of songs and regularly it will only ever seem to give me about 20 or so to listen to. When I'm paying £10~ a month I want to at least have a proper shuffle function that doesnt seem like it was developed in the 1980s. This is annoying a lot of paying customers and I expect they will soon end up losing business/money before long unless this is sorted.

[liveforpixel]

Unfortunately still noticing the issue.

This is the first time I have actually searched about it, as just today on a playlist with 800 songs have heard a few songs a couple of times each.

Due to this, don't believe the fix has gone far enough.

Its definately not random enough, to a point I actually turned on the radio for a bit just to hear something fresh.

[laoandretj]

Here is a screenshot, so consider yourself wether something has been fixed or not. It's a 30+ artist playlist with over 280 songs. Something is obviously flawed here.

[lnunez13]

I'm not sure if this is the same issue everyone else has been experiencing, but I don't necessarily make long playlists. I usually just make playlists from 2-4 artists I'm currently into and just want to shuffle their songs or even randomize their songs. But I've noticed if I have A,B,C artists, all of As songs will shuffle, Bs songs will shuffle and so on, but ABC songs won't all shuffle together! which is so frustrating because I'm paying $10 a month for them to not have a functional shuffle feature!

[KeKsst]

I have a 1k songs playlist with 70 songs of one artist, I shuffled and of the 20 first songs 1/2, 50%, in words ten out of twenty songs where from than one artist with only 70 songs in 1k songs. I am seriously frustrated, please add a true random shuffle until your algorithm is not completely broken. Thanks

[unibrwshvr]

This is pathetic. After countless frustration with the same songs playing back to back. Getting stuck on the same artista for 5+tracks in a row. Now I come to see about a solution and find a thread that is over 2 years old still going with the same problems. I will be cancelling my spotify account and making sure everyone i know does the same. Unbelievable

[rednblu]

If you like the music here at Spotify, @unibrwshvr, there are some simple "programming fixes" that will play every single track of your up to 9,000 track playlist before making even one repeat.

I sympathize entirely with your expression of "countless frustration"-- because that is exactly how I felt before my friends showed me simple "programming fixes" to prevent those repeats.

Playing Spotify's outstanding music collection without repeats is very easy.

Here are my >> current play statistics. <<  Out of the last 2,000 plays at this postingTime, you will see that there have been only 8 repeated tracks-- where each of those 8 repeats, I inserted into my PlayQueue because I wanted to hear the "repeat".

So I sympathize completely-- because unasked "repeats" drive me nuts to where I would say with you, "This is pathetic".  But 80% of my friends love those "repeats"-- so everybody is different, I guess.

[Callum117]

I have a main playlist of about 2000 songs that I listen to very often.

It seems to me that the shuffle algorith is fine but is only using a small chunk of my songs (the 100 or so songs that have been most recently added). I filter by date added so that might be why it's the most recently added songs but I would like to listen to the songs that I added over a year ago also. I don't think I've heard the first song I added to my playlist in the past year.

[Callum117]

 I just tried playing a song halfway down my playlist and all the songs on shuffle are the ones close to the song I started with.

I don't much care if I hear a song from the same artist that just played. I don't care if I listen to a seemingly non-random distribution of songs, I just care that I'm not hearing songs that I don't hear often. Maybe you should impliment a setting that lets you choose how shuffle works with options such as a fisher-yates shuffle that I personally would preffer to any other special type of shuffe considering it randomly chooses a song that hasn't played out of the entire data set.

[rednblu]

Bingo! @Callum117!  The "Fisher-Yates rigor" is the name for what is missing from the Spotify "Shuffle".

@Callum... noted with perfect timing and perfect insight
__________________________

. . . such as a fisher-yates shuffle . . . .

__________________________

So I checked the >> Fisher-Yates shuffle <<  on Wikipedia-- And I find that all of the satisfactory "programming fixes" that I have tested on my systems do the Fisher-Yates shuffle.  Thank you, @Callum117 . Now I have a detailed technical-- OneIdea-- name for what is needed-- and what is missing-- from all current Spotify implementations of "shuffle".

Someone should open a new Idea request-- "Implement a Fisher-Yates shuffle to play any Spotify folder".

(laughing) And of course, (wink, wink) if you can shufflePlay a "folder" then you can also shufflePlay a "playlist"-- So "Implement a Fisher-Yates . . . ." then does not make one of those damnable "Two requests in one idea", right?

Request of Spotify Administrators:

Spoiler

Thanks for opening the "Post a Comment" for the follow-up on this "Implemented Idea". The user comments here are "important data", I would say.

Please!  Consider opening the *Kudos button and *Kudos count-- with statistics by user-- as the Kudos button and count appeared when this Idea was in Status = "New Idea".

We users communicate with each other using the "Kudos button" without adding the clutter from a "Post a Comment" that says nothing more than "I completely agree, and You said it perfectly".

You might consider rolling this Idea back to [Status = New Idea] just to get the "Kudos button" active on this thread again. There are many "seldom posters" making very cogent observations and technical contributions here. And my friends want me to channel to you the observation that "seldom posters" need to know when their posting elicits a reader reaction of "I completely agree, and You said it perfectly".

Would you agree, my friends?

.