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.

[rednblu]

                Corrected!-- I apologize-- The "Edit" function is broken here

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 track after you have Pasted the randomized playlist back into your Spotify player.

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

* In the upper Left, Click "Edit"-- then 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.

* Copy 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.  Thanks.

Cheers . . . .

[Scout2]

I tweeted at spotify and was told to leave a message here, I was just wondering why the shuffle function sucks on long playlists, seems to pick 25 songs and play them on repeat.....in the same order......

looks like it's been an issue for a while

[ronlepow]

I thought this problem would never be solved! I use Windows 10 and the solution from @sabbatho and rednblu above looks to be a great work around for me. Spotify still needs to fix the problem as this would be a laborious solution for anyone who adds songs all the time. I don't supplement my playlist often, so random.org worked great for me. Thanks!

[wpgjetsfan19]

Shuffle plays the exact same songs every time. Not much of a shuffle play.

[11125180726]

yeah, bring true random shullfing or at least reshuffle the queue on each repeat

[aeonden]

@user-removedsame thing happened to me recently. It shuffled through same artist's songs until I exit the application.

Hey spotify here is another idea! Why don't you make an option in settings menu for shuffle algorithm. Like:

Shuffle algorithm: 1) advanced (or whatever you wanna name your silly algorithm)

                             2) classic (which is basically what people want, like in winamp)

So we can have a better shuffle function and you can do whatever you want with your stupid shuffle function. Because you insist fisher-yates algorithm which you use is best but either it is not or you're **bleep**ing coding it the wrong way! We want just plain old school shuffle!

Also I'm a paid customer and it really bothers me. Sometimes I just don't wanna listen to music because of this.

Please fix this!

[georgecampos]

Yes, I think the same. I think the best way would be to have some types of shuffles
1 - Random shuffle, yes a real shuffle;
2 - Shuffle (+) Most played songs
3 - Shuffle (-) Less played songs;

[dgillman34]

this is by far the worst feature of this awesome product but it's also so annoying i'm considering other music platforms. Shuffle means shuffle - not replay the two most current albums for the first 2 hours.

[Cjd214]

100% agree with this and deal with this on a daily basis, if not hourly - I have my playlist of about 36hours of music playing in the background while I edit, the issue is that I can't go 1 song without listening to THE SAME ALBUM AGAIN, over and over again! It's insane! I mean trust me I love the service. But come on, this thread has been going on since 2012 and about 5 years and there has been little improvement on this.

As I said - massive fan of this service but when you shuffle a playlist of over 2000 songs and end up with the same song playing 20 minutes later (only about 4-5 songs that are 4-6 minutes long) then looping back on the last 20minutes OR your lucky enough to go an hour without looping; ie I have a playlist of only 3hours of music, in which I can only ever listen to an hour of it because the shuffle will NEVER continue shuffeling the playlist..

TLDR: So I'm not sure if it's just me (because I didn't go through all of this thread) but it looks like the problem is worse with larger playlists than it is with smaller ones, but still the issue is the same either way with the shuffle not shuffling.. 

Ps.

(I also know I could use the randomiser site workaround but I don't want to have to do that to all of my playlists.. Also I really shouldn't have to..)

[rednblu]

Bravo, @Cjd214!

From what I can tell, the Spotify Shuffle mode plays only 100 tracks before it starts repeating too many.

If you add 1000 songs to your playlist, then you have 1000 more songs than you had before that you will never hear in 1000 years of playing the Spotify Shuffle.

So you have the choice of whether you use Spotify-- Yes or No . . . .  (I laugh.)  Tell Spotify!  Twist their arm to get them to give up their "payola habit" of repeating tracks too many, will you?

But I like Spotify very much-- So I use a version of the "randomiser site" that my programming friends showed me to use outside Spotify to TrulyShuffle and I never get even one unRequested repeat that I did not put onto my Queue deliberately-- as you can see from >> this link. <<