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.

[vish_handa]

This issue annoys me as I have around 1500 songs on my main playlist and the shuffle algorithm seems to play 50ish songs fine but then will begin to repeat, this would be fine for a small playlist, but for 1500 songs there are songs I nearly never hear. In fact had to resort to an external randomiser that puts tracks in a random order just to get some variation. This seems to be a topic that has been addressed before but still needs more work.

[maspotda]

1. Hit shuffle on playlist
2. Plays an artist
3. Plays the same freakin' artist for the next 6 songs despite them being only 10/150 songs of the playlist

This is far from random, do we have a fix or something? I need it actually random, not trying to hold my hand by playing the same artist for 3 songs at a time. This happens all the time on any playlist, it's really not just a coincidence.

[maspotda]

Another example just happened: It burned through ALL 6 songs from an artist in the first half hour of my 10.5 hour playlist. Now I wont hear them for the rest of the 10 hours. That's not shuffled, people!

[BenRees21]

Still no good. Why not just have random for 100% of my playlist? It can't be hard to tell the app to just pick a song at random from my playlist?

[therondt]

Thank you Spotify! We appreciate you're looking into this. However, the issue is definitely not resolved. Even within one artist's catalog, the same songs play even 3 consecutive times. By that time I give up on shuffle but don't want to give up on Spotify! Please help. 

[Yuilly888]

Shuffle is terrible, I get the same artist and songs, I get the same songs selected and some never get played.  I have been sent the Spotify algorithm and it really doesn't mean much to me, I understand how it works but it doesn't work; thats the point. Once a song is played, ditch it from the selection. This has been a problem from day one but nothing has been done as yet. I say stay ahead of the game Spotify and fix it before a competitor uses some 'known' Spotify shortfalls to edge into your business.

[majorbonghits42]

Shuffle is still really bad. I want songs to be random across all the songs in my library. But often I find myself listening to the same band 3-5 times out of 15 songs when starting with one of their songs. But I have 30 of their songs out of 1000+. This shouldn't occur. For some reason, even though I shuffle all the time when I am listening, if I scroll to the bottom of my library, there are artists I haven't heard in weeks.

It isn't hard to do a simple random aglorithm, please just do that. Or let me easily write my own.

[spiritnitro]

Hello, I have a playlist of 900 songs however when I activate the mode shuffle it plays only part of the playlist, but mostly are the same songs. Can you make it mix the playlist in shuffle mode? Or change the algorithms? Not play all tracks but just not same tracks. Thx

[Jonnysplitz]

Dang, Spotify, first off you cannot even spell THANKS so that does worry me about the quality of your employees, and might explain why you cannot, or will not fix this issues that people have been begging be fixed for over 5 YEARS!. You have implemented NOTHING because NOTHING HAS CHANGED...I think I am no longer going to pay for Premium and just find some other way to listen to music. Useless company, workers who cannot spell, and customer service that not only lies but fails to address problems. Your engineers must be from ITT Tech, over 60 years old, blind, and well, a little slow. You show enough ads and charge enough for premium to hire some top gear employees, so I guess you are cheap as well. A company that does not listen to their customers for such a long period are begging for a company to come from behind, recreate your design and simply add this function and advertise the fact that they have this function and most will flee your service for the better option, so take a lesson from Myspace...Idiots.

[Jonnysplitz]

 Meredith you are a liar and should be fired.