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.

[meahtenoha]

Hey everyone. We've now implemented a better shuffling algorithm that avoids playing a couple songs from an artist too close to each other. See the blog post here if you want to learn more. The algorithm is now enabled in the Desktop clients and other clients will follow soon. We're aware that this doesn't fix all the shuffling problems but we will try to fix those as well. Thanks for your feedback!

[RoninTheOrigina]

Meredith,

Thank you for this update.  We definitely appreciate this feature, but as you said, it doesn't fix all our woes.  Any progress is good progress.

[user-removed]

Hey Meredith.

Many thanks for work with this.

[CL1CKS]

I have been complaining about this for years. There isn't a music player I have found yet with a properly programmed shuffle function. And I always suggest it to operate how you just did. It would not be hard to code either. Something along the lines of this.

Unlistened songs tagged with a "1"

Listened Songs tagged with a "0"

Randomly play a song tagged with "1"

At song end, repeat that step.

No songs found with tag "1"

Reset all songs tagged with a "0" to "1"

Randomly play a song tagged with "1"

TADDAAAHHHH!!!!

[biencrudo]

I just created an account to post about this! thanks for whoever pointed me here, this has got to stop!

[erroredout]

Rdio does it much better but their apps are not as polished.

[lukasP]

Hi all,

I am the one who improved our shuffling algorithm and wrote a blog post about it. We know that there are some issues left to solve. It would be great if you could help us with one issue in particular. 

Some users say that the client plays songs very close to each other and some not at all, even if the users play one playlist all day -- they leave the client on shuffle the whole day with a 1000-song playlist, but hear some songs many times before they hear the whole playlist. This is a bug and if you experience that, please tell us which device you use and if there is any way you interact with the client (double-clicking songs, searching etc.).

You can send me a private message on this forum.

[frostdemon]

Wow,

the same here! I created a pretty decent playlist where I have a tons of songs and I also included some new stuff so I can develop my mood when it starts RANDONLY muhahah

Eversince, I hate these songs because somehow the suffle mode killed the tender feeling of being happy about a new song as in a car trip it plays them round and round. I mean playing the same 5-10 songs randomly is not what I expect from 100 list, am I?

Anyways, it is great to hear that it is a well known issue and that spotify is working on it. I just hope that development will end before my summer vacation because then I will travel a lot and will hopefully listen to more than 10 songs 🙂

cheers

[chnateag]

Hello,

I'm using spotify premium since a while now, and I am so pissed off by the random / shuffle mode that I looked for a thread like this one.

I read a lot of others users comments, and i'm asking myself, did you consider to keep a little history on previous random listening sequences ?

I don't always keep my application open on the phone, never actually, so I have to start again the random listening at every path to work or everywhere (I don't resume the previous session). Personnaly, I can take 6 times a day my car to move, even for 5 minutes path, and I guess the shuffle mode isn't looking into song it already played on these other random listening sessions. Isn't it possible to increment an index of song to not repeat them in a relative time interval ?

I also use spotify at work, and its the same, I have to pass on a lot of song I always hear at the begining of  sessions...

It seems quite different than others users problems who talks about same song / artist in one listening session, and I understood you worked on that problem.

Is there anybody else who noticed this ?

thanks for reading this

[lukasP]

@chnateag

You are right, we don't take into account the listening history. It's definitely something we would like to improve!