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.

[user-removed]

Sadly it would not seem that there will be a fix for this, just suggestions to work around.

So now i unsubscribe from this thread and consider canceling my spotify premium. Luckily there are many services to choose from. Very very sad though. 😞

[zachratchet]

I understand why Spotify might want us to use their special shuffle algorithm (perhaps it tries to help tailor the music we play to what they think we might like more?), but it would be great to choose which shuffle algorithm we want to use. It doesn't take long to program a few different shuffle algorithms - why not let the user choose which one they'd like to use?

[rednblu]

            Planning for something that we could recommend to Spotify--

How about we ask Spotify to give us-- as a first step-- a truly randomized stream of tracks-- with no repeats until every track has streamed to us-- like a "radio" stream of tracks-- from selected artists-- where the stream does not send us any track that we have ThumbedDown?

Something like that?

What do you think?  I think the Spotify players buffers are too small-- maybe something like 60 tracks.

[brandynhazelton]

I have no issue with spotifys ability to shuffle it's  the fact its only shuffling a percentage of the playlist (max 80 tunes) instead of shuffling  the whole thing. Dumb.

[gwadion]

How har is it to have a shuffle that shuffles over all songs?

Tip for Spotify:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4959975/generate-random-number-between-two-numbers-in-javascript

[corachopin]

Hallo, Thank you for your message. That is sad indeed. I may consider checking our other music apps as well. Aloha! Cora

[corachopin]

That sounds great to me! Good idea, I hope they listen.Thanks, Cora

[corachopin]

So if they only have the capacity to shuffle 80 songs max, we shouldn't save more than 80 songs on each playlist....perhaps? They should let us know these things at the start.

[ArsonistZombie]

This is.. abhorrent. How the **bleep** are they still getting away with charging people for this service? Why did I ever subscribe? They clearly don't give a darn, this thread is 4 years old and 109 pages long, and THEY STILL HAVEN'T FIXED THE SHUFFLE. People have even offered their help. How anyone could still have faith in this absolute trainwreck of a music service is beyond me, so thank you Spotify, really, for getting me worked up enough to collect music for years upon years, just to finally get the time to start listening to it, and I only get to listen to 50~ tracks, on my 2000~ track playlist. **bleep**ing hilarious.

[Amandirijilla]

Im still having problems with the "random" or "suffle" mode (I dont know its name in English because I have the Spanish version). I suspect that the song previously played prompts the next song. For example: if a rap song comes out, then three rap songs come out. after that, the genre changes. But I want a rap song playing then a salsa then a rock song... I want a real SHUFFLE, not a predeterminated one.