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.

[neoadam]

Hi, creating a 50 songs playlist out of a 1500 songs playlist and playing it in reapeat is nothing at all like shuffle.

Please setup a real shuffle, this is quite a turn off, seriously.

Some of your customers actually like music and want to experience it in proper conditions, it that too much to ask ?

Thank you

[thetallguyuk]

Please make it so that when listening to a playlist on shuffle that it never repeats a song until ALL the tracks have been played at least once.

At present it can be the same songs playing over and over, and most of the songs never ever getting played at all!

Make Shuffle have more options than just shuffle: allow us to randomize and then sort the order!

[user-removed]

Sometimes if I just listen to all songs of an artist the same song appears twice consecutively in the queue. I understand that the same song might be there twice in different albums – but why are they consecutive in the queue so often?

It is not that hard to check if two songs are the same and prevent the same song from playing twice consecutively.

Also I have attached a screenshot where the exact same song is in the queue consecutively.

Also I would point out that this is similar to removing duplicates in the queue in general (like described here) but doing that is probably not as easy and not what everyone wants.

[user-removed]

This might be similar to my idea (Same song consecutively in queue) – maybe the one idea solves the other ;).

[octodur]

So sorry but the Updated: 2016-02-05 on the shuffle is still the same. It really shouldn't be that hard to just implement a random/shuffle feature. I play spotify all day long and I hear all the same songs over and over again. The playlist is 550 songs, that's 48h of music, I should hear 1 song 1 time if I play this playlist the whole day. This is not true at the moment nor with the update.

Shuffle Winamp, you will not hear the same song 1 time, this shouldn't really be that hard, yes im saying it again. It doesn't require a Einstein to realize why this is happening and since the launch, this should already been figured out and implemented, but it's not.

I realize you wish to prioritize some artists but seriously, this is just ridiculous and annoying for the end user. It's been talked about for ages. It's time to step up to what the users want and realize this already. Thanks!

[markisha1979]

I completely agree with NextGeneration's comment. I would also specify that the random algorithm is very very poor....

[aeonden]

Your shuffle algorithm still sucks! I don't understand how come you still don't fix this. Does anyone really read this topic from the dev team?

[Claudiacukrov]

100% agree with everything said here. Shuffle doesn't actually shuffle - just plays the same darn songs. My office hates Spotify now, specifically because of this issue. 

[thetallguyuk]

it still sucks, its not a shuffle, it plays the same songs over and over. This is easily fixed, never play the same song in a playlist until all of them have been played.

[eegc]

Don't know what changes to the algorithm have been made, but now whenever I try to shuffle an artist it gives me the same exact songs twice in a row, then does the same with the next two songs. It also doesn't diversify the albums whatsoever and typically favors either one album, or plays the whole thing at once before switching to another. If I wanted to listen to a single album on shuffle I'd do that. The other day I had the same seven songs (that I'd already skipped over) show up throughout nine turns/skips. I know this isn't Pandora, but it'd be nice if the algorithm took into account what songs we'd already skipped over- especially if it was the one previous...

Overall, it's still pretty horrible and possibly worse than I remember it being? For someone paying premium, this is pretty bad.