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.

[erikarthur]

Yeah, no sh!+!? If spotify would only create a truly random shuffle. We all
have a good Idea of whats wrong. Parroting the problem is a waste of
keystrokes.

[kschles52]

Wow...nearly five years of complaints about Spotify Shuffle. Some answers would be nice. What about other music services? Apple Music, Google Play, Amazon, IHeart Radio, Slacker. Anyone have experience using shuffle with these? Are they as screwed up as Spotify? Is it just impossible or what?

[wmerson1971]

I switched to Apple music from spotify specifically because of the shuffle
function. While apple is better, it can replay some songs frequently,
however no where near the frequency as spotify does.

[kschles52]

I think I figured something out. It won't work for everyone, but if you use Spotify with Sonos speakers, it might be better. Once I started buying Sonos speakers, I switched services from Apple Music to Spotify. Why? I found using the Sonos app instead of the Apple Music app was not too good. Limited functionality. Since I could use the actual Spotify app with Sonos, I switched...and started using the Spotify app. Then there's this whole sucky shuffle thing with Spotify.

Tonight I've been trying out using the Sonos app to shuffle my Spotify playlists. It seems a whole lot better. I'm not getting the same artist three to four times in a row. I seem to be getting an actual true random selection of tracks. I'll still use the Spotify app for most things...but when I want to shuffle my playlists, I can use the Sonos app.

[Jason316]

1. shuffle needs improvement. It plays the same artist back to back sometimes

[nbiron]

I would say the Spotify Shuffle is far from random... Considering I have a play list of around 2,650 songs and I listen to Spofity a few hours on average almost ever day and regardless of the device, I still tend to hear the same handfull of songs almost everytime. I'd for someone to do analytics on my play list to see how many times specifically have been played vs. not played. I'll put money on that there are hundreds of songs on my play list with less than 5 plays and others with more than 20 or 30 plays. 

This is at thread going on for years... Please Fix, is one of the few things I really dislike about Spotify. 

[rossbalch]

So... we all know the shuffle function on spotify sucks. It's intenitonally made that way to annoy free users to subscribe as that's the only play function available to them. But there really should be a shuffle function for subscribers that actually plays every song on an album or playlist in a random order. Not one that clusters or repeats songs on the list before playing every other song on the list. The shuffle function may be mathmatically truly random now but that's not what a shuffle function should do. Shuffle should arrange every item on a list randemly and then play through the list with every item represented only once.

[mailmetothemoon]

It's the god darn truffle shuffle.

I want to hear my playlist, I want to be able to customize what songs play. And how often.

I want to be able to set if I want to hear the same artist through his entire collection, or if I just want to hear him once in a blue moon.

What I don't want it is hearing the same song pop up every couple hours.

[rednblu]

                     What I want!
     Customize what mix of songs plays for me--
        And prevent those hated repeats--

      Working prototype and demo

-------  @mailmetothemoon stated the central and crucial user requirement--

I want to be able to set if I want to hear the same artist through his entire collection, or if I just want to hear him once in a blue moon.
-------

A group of my friends put together a demo of "Customize what songs will play" for the favorite artist--

      Perpetual and NonRepeating "All of Van Morrison" in a Customized mix >> https://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/4BIEfdQC3CXOa1N0mTFAEy <<

And in the above demo my friends surround [All of Van Morrison's tracks] with a Customized mix of "opening and following tracks"-- Customized by setting with "sliders" where along the spectrum between [entire collection] and [once in a blue moon] you want to hear each artist-- In the above demo, you will see that a Van Morrison track will play about every ten tracks-- of course, occasionally there will be Van Morrison tracks back to back-- as expected in a "true shuffle"-- Don't you sometimes once in a blue moon get a string of all four aces one right after the other in a "true shuffle"?

Spotify could do this-- But we are the [One percenters] that contribute only one-percent of the Spotify profit-- Hence, we are the TooDemanding [One percenters]-- And Spotify is busy making money to pay the artists.

But we could do these programming fixes among ourselves-- First, we could draft here a very successful RequirementsDocument that several of us could then "program" as a series of fixes to Spotify to make Spotify finally usable and acceptable-- These "user programmed fixes" would completely transform Spotify from the total frustration and disappointment that Spotify is now.

My friends produce the above Working prototype of [All of Van Morrison], just as one working example, in several programming languages-- But the Working prototype that I kind-of understand is completely in Microsoft Excel-- Where the basic Excel operations are as follows--

* Set the "slider" for the desired Customized mix for each selected artist,
* DeDuplicate to avoid all kinds of severe flaws in the Spotify databases,
* Randomize the complete mix of tracks in a gigantic "actual shuffle" of over 100K tracks so that there will be no repeat of any track until each track has played once.

Also, you will see that my friends provide the above Working prototype demo for Van Morrison in a timely refresh to around 3K tracks so that my friends can set the above [All of Van Morrison] as "Available off-line" and play it for weeks without ever connecting to WiFi-- When my friends reconnect to WiFi, the [All of Van Morrison] feed automatically will update to prevent repeats and give the continuation of selected Custom mix for what will play.

There are many, many viable solutions to get the mix of artists that we want to hear-- But we users will have to organize ourselves to "Do all of the programming ourselves".

Are there any volunteers to fix these unacceptable bugs in Spotify?  We will draw up a plan . . . .

We will call this the >> Tom Sawyer Fence Painting Initiative . . . .  <<  (I laugh.)  Did you laugh? . . . .  Behold!-- We see the free market and IPO in operation before our very eyes . . . .  We pay taxes and profits-- plus we have to do all the work ourselves  . . . .  Sound familiar?

[rednblu]

Here is [All of Van Morrison]

    In a Customized mix

       We could do this for Every artist

>> https://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/0td5oLjwJt59zm1sVHbAHP   <<