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.

[guidoinperu]

Yep, I also think that there is some commercial idea behind the shuffle function @AdamDo. Maybe what you say, playing only cheap songs, but I can also imagine that there are artists (or their management) paying Spotify to be played more often. A pity that something that seemed such a noble initiative (make music more accessible for consumers without illegal practices) now seems to put itself on the first place and doesn't seem to care about its users. 

[rednblu]

Applause!  It is always good to figure out why the free market does not work!

But in the meantime, there is no need to put up with NonShuffle from any product advertised as Shuffle-- Just try one of the "user programming fixes" that actually work.

Several perfect Shuffles are linked in the preceding page-- Or if those perfect shuffles are out-of-service at the moment, just use one of the >> backup perfect Shuffles-- <<  Look under [Playlist tools, Shuffle playlist] to the right on the TopRibbon . . . .

[RodrigoBelem]

 Uso o Spotify com frequencia e observo que o modo aleatório não é, estritamente, assim. O que notei foi que, quando acionamos aquela opção, o Spotify apenas embaralha a playlist uma única vez e repete esta nova sequência. Minha sugestão é que se fosse alterado o algorítmo para que a próxima música a ser tocada fosse realmente uma surpresa, e não um mero reordenamento da mesma playlist. Somente assim o modo seria realmente randômico, trazendo sempre a surpresa e não caindo em outra mesmice. 

[bytebodger]

I've still been receiving some error reports from my utility at 

http://writing.voyage/spotify

Feedback from another member indicates that my utility does work if you do not have any local tracks in your playlist.  I don't have any "local" songs in any of my playlists.  That would explain why I never experience the error myself.  It would also make sense as to why my shuffle feature doesn't work for those playlists - because I don't think the API can reorder songs in a playlist that aren't technically "there" (there, as in, within Spotify).  

At some point in the future, I'll create a playlist with some local tracks and do some troubleshooting on it.  In the meanwhile, if you've tried my utility and it hasn't worked, please try it again with a playlist that contains no local tracks.

And if Spotify's built-in "shuffle" feature bugs the **bleep** out of you and you haven't tried my utility yet, why not??  😄

[bytebodger]

Yep.  Just added a local track to a playlist and then tried to use my utility to shuffle it.  It throws an error.  The good news is that the utility should work fine - if you have no local tracks in your playlist.  The bad news is, this sends me back to the drawing board...

[bytebodger]

I've now added verbiage to the utility to make it clear that it won't work if your playlist contains local tracks.  I also fixed a small "bug" whereby the playlists weren't properly sorted in the dropdown menu alphabetically if you had some playlists that started with a lowercase letter and others that started with an uppercase letter.

[rednblu]

Thank you for your persistence!-- And attention to detail . . . .

[makeshufflework]

Hi, after the "recent" update my shuffle has gotten way worse and I only now got frustrated enough to leave some feedback. I have long playlists and sometimes I'm not in the mood for certain songs so if I check what the shuffle queued up for me and I see that there are maybe two songs in the mood to listen to, I reshuffle. Only, when I check and see what's up next it's the same songs again. Just in a different order. Sometimes not even that. Just the same songs in the same order. When I hit reshuffle I want to see some different songs because I'm, for whatever reason, not in the mood for the ones I just saw so to see a different variaton of the same songs over. And. Over. Again. Gets really frustrating and really sours the spotify experience for me, and I even pay for this service! I sincerely hope that with the next update this issue will be fixed.

(English is my second language so I do hope that I managed to explain it well.) 

[3mon]

I just cannot believe this is still broken lol.... And it gets worse every day, its like the shuffle is trying to dj or something nowadays lol

IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO MAKE A SHUFFLE ALGORYTHM, IT IS 100% INTENTIONAL. IMPLEMENT THE **bleep**ING RANDOM ALREADY YOU BUNCH OF ASSHOLES

[tommylynnlovell]

Shuffle is still a HUGE problem in my opinion. Like this user, I have 1 playlist with >3000 songs. If I go to the Up Next section and hit shuffle, it does shuffle the songs. If I turn shuffle off, it goes back. But, if I turn it on again it does shuffle, except certain songs suspiciously are in the top 5 or so. Clicking back and forth like this, the order is always different but there are a few songs that are in the top 5 about 90% of the time. With so many songs, I'm missing out on whatever is most likely in the bottom 5 songs 90% of the time. Also, my playlist often gets stuck in a loop of about 50 songs(more or less, I've never counted). I've taken to randomizing the songs' URLs with a third party application. Not even close to ideal.