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.

[xxxbricksquad]

I have two albums in a playlist yet when I hit shuffle it basically plays the albums one by one. The algorithm should at minimum cause it to play at absolute max 3 songs from one album before shuffling in the other. As of now, it will play almost 8 songs from the album before I hear anything from the second one. Pretty insignifcant and easy thing to fix. Never had this problem with Apple Music.

[Wordqua]

Shuffle is terrible on spotify and seems to be getting worse!  Especially with individual artists.  Ive heard the same song more than three times in one hour!  With bands that have extensive catalogues too.  Ive had premium for over a year and this may be the reason I downgrade.  Glad I found this forum first!  I would love a true shuffle! 

[Meganhackett1]

Shuffle is still bad, Ive only had Spotify like a month and it only ever plays a mixture of about 5 artists in my playlist and nothing else. Even though I have lots of different artists on my Spotify. 

[user-removed]

Spotify's shuffle algorithm does not work. On a playlist with numerous artists and numerous songs it will bunch certain artists songs all together even when shuffle mode is turned on. It will also skip some artists completely, no matter how many times I re-shuffle. This occurs even after I have cleared the play queue, which is always the Spotify customer service reps suggestion. People have been writing on this message boards since 2013 about variations of this same problem and Spotify has done nothing to fix it.

Here is an example:

I go to a personal playlist (lets call it "Playlist 1") and played the song "Song 1" by "Artist 1" and then clicked shuffle and checked the play queue and noticed that "Artist 1" is not listed a single time in the upcoming tracks even though I have 10  songs by "Artist 1" on the playlist (more than any other artist on the playlist). This is what got me noticing the problem in the first place.

I would shuffle this playlist and "Artist 1" never came up. And if I hit shuffle enough times (all while clearing the play queue EACH time), "Artist 1" would finally come up but all 10 of their songs would play in a row.

This was all on my Windows desktop.

The problem is even worse on the iPhone/iOS Spotify application. Read a conversation I had below with the Spotify customer service rep:

You: How do you solve this problem on the iPhone then? You can't clear a play queue on the iOS app as far as I know.

XXX: Actually, you can try to clear the queue on your iPhone. You just need to head over here.
XXX: Once you've visited the link, please try to follow the instruction for the iPhone device.
XXX: I know that this doesn't satisfy your expectation about the fix.

You: I just did and I understand how to add or remove specific songs to and from a play queue but how do you completely refresh/clear the queue on the iPhone?

You: I just hit "shuffle" on "Playlist 1" and "Artist 1" is not listed at all. The "solution" on the desktop was to clear the play queue all together but I don't see that option for the phone.

XXX: You need to remove all the tracks manually.

You: That is absurd
You: When I hit shuffle I expect to hear all of the artists, not only some of them. I should not have to manually remove each song just to get the so called shuffle feature to work as it should.
You: I just manually removed 10 random songs from the queue and it added all 10 "Artist 1" songs in a row at the end even though its on shuffle

I hope Spotify can figure this out after all of these years but I won't hold my breath.

[Awjones22]

I fo not want to shuffle. How do I turn it off?

[corachopin]

I have the same complaint as everyone on this thread...shuffle doesn't work very well.  I have a playlist of maybe 300 songs and in the 2 years I've been a paying subscriber, there are a few artists that I've never even heard once, despite the fact that I had over 20 songs from those artists on my playlist!  Seems as though 1/8 of my playlist is separated from the rest of the other songs, and only that small amount is shuffled and is played every day. I get tired of hearing the same songs over and over and over so i end up deleting some songs.  

THE BIG QUESTION IS:  IS ANYONE FROM SPOTIFY LISTENING TO US??  Thanks.

[Daealis]

The last update to this from Spotify is over a year old, and there's still no sight of:

1. A Shuffle that actually does shuffle, not randomize.
2. Option to SHUFFLE the playlist entirely, since the randomize is unable to do this.

Why can't I simply click an option and mix the entire playlist up? That isn't a difficult thing to do, they obviously have the "technology" since they're able to do a randomized list. Here, I'll tell you how to do this:

• Have an empty list and the playlist we wish to shuffle
• Random(size_of_shuffled_list)
• Add song to empty list
• Remove from shuffle list
• Repeat until shuffle list is empty.
• Replace now empty shuffle list with the newly created, properly shuffled list

There, all done. That's a single while-loop with two lists and one data pull and push. Why is this so difficult to get in the program?

[Kandrew7]

Same songs 'shuffle' on when switching my playlists and songs be the same artist 'shuffle' through in bunches.  I'll get a string of songs by the same artist, and have even noticed 'shuffle' seems to prefer artists placed near each other in the alphabet.  It will 'shuffle' through some artists that start with A-D, then once it's burned through some I'll see some Es or Fs, then eventually it'll progress more.  I just notice lots of patterns and clusters, and generally a poor mix of what's in my playlist.  Is this just me?

[therondt]

Hi, not a troll. Pay for "premium" - even when I shuffle one artist, Spotify repeats the same songs. Day after day. Even when I skip the duplicate, it literally skips to the same song. 

This, along with the limitations of he number of albums I can save, is super super frustrating. 

Looking at other options although I don't wanna go. 🙂

thank you for reading this Spotify. 

[mplay]

One issue I have with Shuffle Play is how it works with Folders of Folders of Playlists.

tl;dr If I have a folder of folders of playlists, and I hit shuffle play on the root/top folder, it plays the first song from the first playlist within the first folder, and then shuffles the rest of the songs.

For context: I have folder for each genre of music I like, with playlists in each folder containing subgenres, or songs I feel go together. I put all these folders in my "everything" folder, and I usually hit "shuffle play" on that folder, so that it shuffles through all my music. If I'm not interesting in, say Blues, I move that folder outside of the everything folder, so that the shuffle does not include those songs. When I want to listen to Blues again, I'll move that folder back in to the everything folder. This used to work fine for me

I'd say sometime in the past month or so, when I would shuffle play the everything folder, it would always start with "Radioactive" by Pentatonix + Lindsey Stirling, which is the first song in my "Best of Acapella" playlist, whijch is the first playlist in my "Acapella/Beatbox" folder, which is the first folder in my everything folder. Thus, I've always been skipping this song, so that I get an actual shuffle mix. 

Fixing this would remove this mild inconvenience from my life haha.