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.

[SloeGinLizzz]

Referred here from the internet, the shuffle is HORRENDOUS. Was told posting here could fix it? 

[bytebodger]

If posting here could fix it, it would have been fixed in the first 144 pages of comments.  The closest thing we have to a "fix" is to use third-party solutions.  

Give my site a try and see if it helps:

http://writing.voyage/spotify 

[bytebodger]

On a side note, I'm not trying to kill the messenger, but...

It's kinda crazy how many people post in this forum without apparently reading ANY of the previous comments that have been posted.  I realize that you're not going to read all 144+ pages, but c'mon, man.  Example posts in this thread:

Post #501290:  The shuffle function sucks!

Post #501291:  Here's one way to work around it.

Post #501292:  Spotify is da sux!  Screw this, man!

Post #501293:  Here's a third-party tool that's been built to address this.

Post #501294:  The shuffle is really stooooopid.

Rinse, wash, repeat...

[rdburton25]

I have a workout playlist - 300 songs. When I workout it seems same 100 songs flip back and forth. How do you get 300 songs to shuffle? Keep clicking shuffly?? Anyone?

[Sortiz97]

I have 1000+ songs on my Playlist, I hit shuffle and instead of having constant music for 10hrs+ the music stops after about 2hrs and about 50 songs have played and the first song that played is back on top. I only have shuffle toggled on and repeat toggled off. Can you guys implement so that I am able to listen to my whole playlist aka have music for 10hrs straight? Thanks

[rednblu]

My friends gave me the simplest solution for shuffling my whole playlist for 20,000 tracks without a single repeat as demonstrated by playing the following perpetually refreshed playlist-- Just preShuffle the entire playlist, using any of the "user programming fixes" described in detail in the preceding pages of this enlightening discussion-- and then play the preShuffled entire playlist from the top-- making sure that you reStart your next listening session with the track After the last track that you played-- And if the last track you played is notFound, then restart play from the Top >>  https://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/4BIEfdQC3CXOa1N0mTFAEy <<

And of course, you have to make sure that that SpotifyShuffle thing is turned off-- because that SpotifyShuffle thing will do what you do not want.

[bytebodger]

@rednblu :  Well, I think I've figured out why so many of the recent/newest posts seem to have NO knowledge of the solutions that we've posted here.  The pagination in these comments shows that there are 145 pages of replies.  But if you click on the "145" link or the "NEXT" link, it doesn't seem to want to pull up the last several pages of content.  In fact, if you click on the "PREVIOUS" link, it will tell you that you're on page 25.  

So in short, not only is Spotify's shuffle feature completely useless, but this thread also seems to have been rendered darn near useless as well.  They already hosed the thread long ago by marking it as "Implemented" - which killed some of our abilities to edit previous posts.  It also seems to have swiss-cheesed the order of the existing replies.  Many of my previous posts are now listed on pages in the 20s.  But the thread was already over 100 pages of replies before I even started commenting.

I guess I can't blame too many people for not reading through the comments when they've been rendered so wonky by some bug in the forum software.  And if Spotify absolutely refuses to fix their shuffle function (or even to acknowledge that HUNDREDS of people are actually correct), I have absolutely NO hope that they'll do anything to actually fix the now-broken forum functionality.

<sigh>

[bytebodger]

To further illustrate my previous point, this post now shows up on page #27.  

Oh well...

[teollo]

spotify shuffle still sucks, bad!

thanks to @bytebodger for his help

I'll test his tool again

[user-removed]

i figuered out how to do it. click  playback on the top of the screen if ur in windows and click shuffle, make sure ur in a playlist tho