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.

[rekers]

Please fix it...

[4wk_]

Hello, I'm a Spotify Premium user too for like 5 years, and I agree with that : on a 2.200 songs playlist, its always the same 100-200 ones witch are actually played. It really need to be improve ! We need a true shuffle :( Using Spotify Premium on Desktop, version 0.9.8.296, Windows Seven.

[eje]

I am a new-ish Spotify subscriber.  For the life of me, as a s/w developer, I cannot imagine why this poor shuffle/randomization behavior has been going on for sooooooo long.  This should be a very fairly straightforward fix on all client platforms.  My Android client works great except for this.

While I do like the Spotify library, I am having second thoughts about my paid subscription. 😞

[chnateag]

the worse is that i read something about the algorythm, and i can't understand why it's so sh*ty...

Seriously, it's a nightmare, it keep playin the same song, and i didn't heard a lot of them since a long while... and trust me i use it ! My average is 1200 song / per month (I use 90% of time the shuffle), my starred playlist contain 450 song, so i should have heard them 2-4 times in a month, and not in a single week !

Pleaaaaase do something !

As eje, i'm a developper too and i can't imagine a company like yours hasn't people which can make this work !

[DJAdHoc]

Yes, yes, yes! Please implement "True Shuffle"!  Don't want to hear the same song twice before an entire playlist is played through.  Having same artist songs close to one another (even back to back occasionally) is fine; but PLEASE no repeats!   

[infamous_j]

this is ridiculous, it's 2014, fix your darn shuffle.

[SmogMonkey]

Yeah, interetingly enough, I just started using shuffle on a couple playlists and encountered this issue.  I thought it was me going crazy, so I decided to look it up on the forum, how about that, not senile yet! 😉  I was thinking about posting in the add columns thread about having a column that tracks the number of times a song has been played by date range or something like that, just to see if the shuffle wasn't performing as expected.  Well, this should have enough kudos on it to get fixed soon (I hope). 🙂

[Thomasro]

Come on spotify make a better "shuffle engine"

[steveoreno]

I'd like to propose another wrinkle into the mix. While I too am frustrated with some songs repeating more often than I would prefer and hope this is remedied soon, my wish list would include a user controlled rule based function (I like the name "random rules" personally) which would allow you to pair songs together if desired - for example I might want to have a rule that requires whenever ZZ Top's "Waitin' for the Bus" is played it must be followed by "Jesus Just Left Chicago".

[moisaras]

It seems that whenever I shuffle a playlist, the shuffler's logic tends to pick some specific songs, and they always come up for play as a 'priority' compared to other songs.

(this differs from the complaint that some people have, that they get the same songs twice on a single 'shuffle my playlist' run. As long as I don't press 'shuffle' again, I won't hear the same song. But the shuffle logic will always choose a few specific songs and throw them in my face very early in the shuffle run, which is very annoying).

It's almost unbelievable to me that such a simple process is broken.

The only remaining explanation I can give is that Spotify deliberately chooses the songs that are cheaper for Spotify to pay royalties for.

Whatever the reason is, I hope Spotify cleans up its act, because it's millions of customers paying 7 euros per month for a broken product that is very easy to fix.