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.

[Omarl95]

Hello, 

I’m a frequent user of the app. Everything on the app is good but I wish you would implement something like what Apple Music had, music genius shuffle, that will shuffle songs according to mood, album, style, and artist. The app can already recognize similar artists’ music and album. It would be great if the same can be done on a personal playlist. For example, I have a giant playlist with all my music of all styles. It has about 1000 songs. If you can make a shuffle program on the that can shuffle according to the 4 aforementioned parameters it would make the app perfect. 

Thank you

[Rocket2014]

Whenever I try to shuffle a playlist it takes at least three times to actually shuffle, which would be fine except for once it actually shuffles it will keep coming back to the same song over and over again without going through the entire playlist. This is not considered a shuffle. Shuffles go through the entire playlist before repeating a song instead of repeating the same song before playing another.

[bluechrism]

I have been "Upgraded" from Groove Music and getting used to things and deciding if I should pay up for Spotify or try Amazon / Deezer or others.

Anyway, right now I have a queue that includes songs by the Marmozets, that inlcudes their 13 track debut album plus 2 newer singles. Whenever I hit shuffle, the singles are ususally in the last 2 places and only the album tracks are suffled. Sometimes I get a bit more luckey and the sinlges get into the last 5 songs but i must have clicked over 20 times and not once has either of the singles shown up in the first 8 songs.

This must be some new kind of shuffle based on card game cheats who can appear to shuffling the deck, but keep the ace & king at the back. Maybe that's why it has 144 pages of comments.

[mrs_kdipi]

I'd love it if the shuffle function actually worked as well. I put all my songs on, hit the shuffle button, and then get the same artist over and over and over again.....even when I hit the next song button it goes right back to the same artist. I want to shuffle my entire song line up, not just one artist, if I wanted to do that I would just go to their page. This has happened multiple times, on my phone app, my playstation app, and the online web player. I actually had to remove artists from my songs because I heard them too much.

[jpbananaman]

I have found that the shuffle function has just been terrible for me lately. Out of a playlist of over 800 songs, I have been hearing a lot of my most recently added items shuffled in a different order, and a lot of back-to-back artist songs. After scouring the forums and finding that it had been "resolved" in 2016 was less than encouraging.

But something clicked: I always order my playlists by recently added so I can start off with new songs I like and carry on from there. Spotify caches somewhere around 50 songs down the playlist (looking at the queue) and shuffles them, meaning only my recently added songs were being added to be shuffled. Sure enough, I reversed my sorting and shuffling changed to playing my older stuff in the playlist.

I'm sure this have been worked on a TON in the past, with the shuffling algorithm being reworked over a year ago, but this implementation is terrible in utilizing an 800 song list of music. I'd like to see something like chunking the playlist into sections, for example bring my 800 songs into chunks of 200. Each of these chunks gets shuffled and a song from each gets played in order to add randomness to the queue.

[moomin_troll]

I feel like Spotify are ignoring the 144 PAGES of complaint here because it's logged under 'Implemented Ideas'. All done lads! That feature is in the can!

Er, no. This crappy feature is possibly the one reason I'm going to leave to try out Deezer. What else could your Product team possibly think is more important right now than fixing this one tiny thing?

[LuxuriousIsaiah]

The shuffle button is still super weird. It's like it shuffles between artist and not song. For instance in have 5 songs from Fall Out Boy in a playlist and another 5 songs from Panic! At The Disco, when I put it on shuffle it will first shuffle through all the Fall Out Boy songs, then it will shuffle through all Panic! At The Disco songs. It doesn't matter how I sort them either it does the same thing.

It may seem minor and I wouldn't say it's like breaking app worthy, but I don't listen to a ton of playlists much. This is really something that should be focused on the next update. The app is fantastic so far except this one popular feature that is extremely subpar.

[madelinegood]

still terrible. i keep hearing the same songs over and over again. fix this!!

[Bbyaj]

11/12/17- I literally listen to the same songs in the same order every time I open Spotify. The shuffle is terrible. I’ve memorized the songs that play and it’s beyond frustrating when I have hundreds more......ironically enough the songs that continuously played are my least favorite of the songs I have.....I’m so glad I have premium spotify for nothing....

[Vunz]

Randomized or 'shuffle' this spotify function still sucks! Take a example for Itunes shuffle function!!