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.

[Tjabber]

The **bleep**ing thing only shuffles the first 100 songs or so, now fix that **bleep**!!!

[Tjabber]

now fix that **bleep**!!!

[Joebot44]

After reading several other comments here - many being YEARS old - it seems that Spotify has done nothing to actually improve the shuffle algorithm. I've got thousands of songs in my library, and yet I'll hear a set of maybe 50 songs on repeat for hours. I also have a playlist with a bunch of my favorite albums from this year. When I hit "Shuffle" do I really get to hear a good sampling of all of them? Absolutely not. It'll play songs from maybe the first 5 albums in the playlist. Look, I love you, Spotify. But get it together! I pay way too to have to deal with such limited functionality.

[bytebodger]

OK everyone, I have some good news.  Some of you have tried/used my online utility here:

http://writing.voyage/spotify

And it has "worked" for me and others - to a point.  But it still had some bugs.  I can't guarantee that I've fixed all the bugs, but I think the new (current) iteration of my tool is much better.  My previous approach was to take all the songs in your chosen playlist, shuffle them, and then push them to your Play Queue, without actually making any changes to the underlying playlist.  Unfortunately, I now realize that approach had some serious drawbacks due to limitations in Spotify's API.  Specifically, I found that my shuffle feature just stopped working if your playlist was bigger than some predetermined size.  When I first built my utility, most of my playlists were 300-songs-or-fewer in length.  But as I've been growing my own playlists, I've noticed that more of them stop working in my shuffling utility.

So I sat down and worked on it tonight and I'm pretty sure that this new iteration should work for most people.  The new approach doesn't push the the newly-shuffled playlist to your Play Queue.  Instead, it actually rebuilds your existing playlist in a completely new, randomized, truly-shuffled order.  

I also added some new error trapping.  So if you do see an error, you might be able to send me more detailed information that actually fixes it.  

If you tried my utility before and it didn't work for you, please give it another try.  If you haven't used it before, then please give it a spin for the first time.  I'm currently using it repeatedly to shuffle (and reshuffle) my existing lists so the song order is completely fresh-and-new every time I choose to listen to a given playlist.

Hope this helps everyone out...

[bytebodger]

"I can't seem to play more than 40 or so songs on a playlist especially when it's on shuffle. I have around 400 songs on my offline playlist and I have not once been able to listen to the whole thing once with no repeated songs. All I want it to play or shuffle the whole of my playlist and to see all of the songs are up next on queue."

@J123a456l:  Please give my (improved) utility and see if it works for you.  It should fix Spotify's crappy non-shuffle issue.

http://writing.voyage/spotify

[bytebodger]

"A Shuffle for a music track should be like a card shuffle NO CARD is in the next round in Theory at least on the same place as the last round (in theory) so no ... the Shuffle function right now deserves not the title of Shuffle "

@Baltasarr:  Please give my (improved) utility a try.  It takes all of the songs in your playlist and truly shuffles them.  So if you shuffle a playlist with my utility, and then listen to it all the way through, it will play every song in the playlist once, and only once.

http://writing.voyage/spotify

[bytebodger]

"Yes, and the deck of cards should  be the entire  playlist not restricted to an 80 song deck. 1000 song playlist shuffle = shuffling  1000 songs into  a queue... not the case with the current "shuffle.""

@brandynhazelton: Please try my new utility.  It should shuffle all the songs in your playlist.  I don't actually have a 1000-song playlist to test it on, but it should shuffle all songs in such a large list as well as it shuffles smaller lists.

http://writing.voyage/spotify

[bytebodger]

"However, I do have a question...a moderator commented on my thread saying that they made improvements to the shuffle algorithim and would love to hear our feedback.  After giving said feedback, the moderator changed the thread to "not an issue," and blocked any further comment.  That was my first post here, so I'm asking is that normal?  "

@smarris:  Unfortunately, that seems to be there M.O.  They did the exact same thing to me (and others).  They had blatany NOT fixed the issue.  They forwarded me to "solutions" that did nothing to fix the problem.  Then they marked the thread as "resolved", as if they had done anything to help.  It was beyond frustrating.  

I love to just cancel my account in protest, but I have to admit that I use the **bleep** out of Spotify all day long.  So I really didn't want to go down that path.  That's why I eventually created my own tool to "fix" the issue:

http://writing.voyage/spotify

[bytebodger]

"I can see some reason for "shuffle" if you have a small playlist but I have a large playlist with plenty of variety and add/remove tracks all the time. I will never play my way through the whole list before starting again. I definitely want a "random" function."

@marcusblock:  Please give my (improved) utility a spin.  It will truly shuffle your entire playlist every time you run it.  Cheers.

http://writing.voyage/spotify

[bytebodger]

"I keep getting the entire works of the same 4 artists when I shuffle - and again when I reshuffle so it's not a true shuffle of my whole playlist 😢"

@Buttonbee:  If you have a paid account, please try my new utility.  It will truly shuffle the whole list.

http://writing.voyage/spotify