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.

[daunecec]

When on shuffle, Spotify picks usually the same 30-40ish songs and switches the order they're played in and then repeats...I have over 500 songs in my playlist. And if you choose one of the songs you add recently, the 30-40 songs chosen to be repeated will consist of only recently added songs.  If you want to hear songd other than those 40, you have to search for it and play it yourself

[vbeniare]

I hadn't had any problem with the shuffle feature until now, lately when I try to shuffle my whole library (about 2000 songs) the app seems to just shuffle the last 50 or so songs I saved. No matter what song I pick first and then select the shuffle feature, it only plays the last 50 songs, I did notice that when I select a song that's been saved for some time, the app creates a nice mixed queue but after some seconds it just disappears and I get the same 50 songs.

[Zinzire]

I still hear the same songs over and over. Horrible! 

[miguelarios]

I've seen a lot of old shuffling ideas but they seem to get rejected or don't get enough momentum so here I am trying again for all of us in mind.

2 things are the issue with Spotify's current shuffle all option. First, songs tend repeat themselves in an ideal situation if you had 100 songs and you put shuffle each song should only play once and stop there unless you put repeat on the whole 100 song library. It's a simple algorithm to remove the song from the pool after it's played and continue with randomly choosing another.

The second thing that is wrong with the current option and that I find most annoying, is that for those of us that just put shuffle to our entire playlist may notice that our most often played songs keep playing time and time again. It seems Spotify purposely makes it a priority to play our most recent songs added or our most oftenly played songs. This is annoying. It should truly be an unbiased random selection of a song that's it. This is the reason why I gave kudos to another idea on having a star rating. I remember when I had iTunes I could create a playlist of songs with a low play count or low rating so that I could play some songs I never played. It was joyful for me to find songs hidden in my myriad of songs.

Miguel

[Meriam40]

Shuffle worked fine for me up until the new changes were made to the web player. Not only is it not standard set to shuffle (I have to click shuffle every single time I open the player) but it also shuffles weirdly. Played one song, listened to a couple of other songs and hey, there's the first song again. Way too fast, I'd like a little more variation when I have about 300 songs instead of hearing songs over and over again.

[Rcrowley74]

I'm fairly new and noticed this almost immediately, I have to skip repeats all the time to get to the rest of my music

[afabes22]

This is still such an issue. We use this at work and we hear the same songs in the afternoon as we did in the morning, and our work playlist has over 1000 songs!!!! This is so frustrating, I'm not sure why I'm paying around $15/month just to not hear ads if the shuffle function doesn't even work. I definitely won't be a paying customer much longer...

[Meriam40]

Well... okay then. Done with Spotify. Done.
I could handle the new layout for the webplayer. Fine.
I could accept that the shuffle had to be manually turned on every time I opened the player. Deal with it, right?
What I refuse to deal with though is the shuffle turning itself off while the player is open en I'm not doing anything to it.
Window open in the background, songs playing, and the shuffle turns itself off? No, thanks.
Switched to Deezer. Bye, Spotify.

[user-removed]

Hi, after having another issue which i was doing some testing on my other thread got closed before i could give feedback on the testing.

Now shuffle does still not work properly according to me.

Yesterday i started spotify client on my win7 computer. I played songs all over the day from the same playlist. And after maybe 4-5h listening the music suddenly stopped. Now i have 2k+ songs which means several days of listening.

Why is the shuffle thinking there is no more songs to play?

I always dubbel click the name of the playlist because i get the feeling that shuffel is restarted that way instead of clicking the play button which keeps going from where i was.

Day before i had even more strange behaviour. I hade the shuffle finding two artists and going through only those songs when using shuffle. And there is about 10 songs of each artist so imagine how strange that feelt having 2k+ songs in the list.

I would love some more explanation on how the shuffle function is made, maybe we can give some thoughts on how to change it? for example i would recommend looking at random.org for hints on how a shuffle function should pick randomly.

Now i don't mind having the same artist come two in a row if it is in fact random. But as it is now i get the feeling that way more variables are in play and destroying the randomization.

Hope for some nice answers and explanations so we can understand how it works and accept, maybe what we get?

BR

//J

[rednblu]

Thanks for suggesting  random.org  as my solution!

Here is how I made it work with Spotify 1.0.20.101-- And I will check later to see if some variation of the following steps will work also on my latest Windows 10 version of Spotify--  Thanks, @user-removed!-- Do the following steps trulyShuffle your playlist for your current Windows Spotify player?

* Prepare an empty playlist that you name Randomized-- Then drag just one track into that empty playlist to get around a bug that crashes your Spotify player if the playlist is completely empty!-- You will delete this first playlist after you have Pasted the randomized playlist back into your Spotify player.

* Ctrl-A in the playlist that you want to Randomize.

* Under Edit in the upper Right, Click Copy.

* Go to the >> Advanced page <<  in that  Random.org  site that you gave us.

* Paste into the "Enter List Items" box.

* In Part 2, Check the "As a bare-bones ..." radio button.

* In Part 3, Check the "Generate ... " radio button-- (I laugh.)-- I understand that  Random.org  uses the current weather pattern outside the server location to provide the RandomSeed.

* In Part 4, Click the "Randomize" button.

* BlockCopy all the lines in the resulting panel.

* Back in your Spotify player, highlight your playlist with the one initializationTrack in it-- Then in the upper left, Click Edit and then click Paste-- Voilà!

Did that work?  If those steps work for you as well, I will suggest that my programming friends try your  Random.org  suggestion.  (I laugh.)  Thanks.

Cheers . . . .