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.

[hans-jürgen]

http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Implement-an-actual-shuffle-function/idc-p/705139#M429...

"The algorithm is now enabled in the Desktop clients and other clients will follow soon. We're aware that this doesn't fix all the shuffling problems but we will try to fix those as well."

That's what the latest staff comment from March 2014 says on this idea, so I guess the improved shuffle mode only works in the desktop software yet, maybe also in the web player according to my experience with shuffling Your Music -> Songs there. But on mobile phones it is probably still the old shuffle mode.

[ulrich]

If I press shuffle play on an artist, fx Korn, I only get songs from 2 albums 99% of tihe time.

Maybe once every 20-25 clicks I get 1 random song from an older album. I press shuffle again and I'm back at the 2 new albums.

I counted the Korn albums listed on Spotify and there are currently 25 albums. And yet it keeps picking songs from just 2 of them.

Shuffle much? Not so much.

[PyroDirk]

I didn't saw this post so i mentioned my idea to solve this in an other thread. My solution works the following way:

Please put all songs in a lsit (in my example a list of 20 songs). create a random number between 1 and 20 - lets say 10. Play song 10 and remove song 10 from the (temporary list). The next random number should now be in the range from 1..19 lets say 5 . Play song 5 and remove it from teh list. generate now a random number from 1..18 and so on. If there is no song to play, generate a new templist with the 20 songs and begin the gamae again.

Dirk

[nikhil_spv]

One other problem I notice (maybe this has already been mentioned) - when I search for a particular artist and play his/her songs, it appears that the shuffle function does not consider that the same song might appear on different albums from the same artists. Therefore there are often different instances of the same song appearing close to each other, just because they were on different albums. It seems like it should be simple to group the same songs together (even if they are slightly different versions, or from different albums) and have the shuffle algorithm take this into consideration.

[hobbesthetiger]

So in my frustration, I am proposing another theory that may have been mentioned. (I'm just another spotify user who is not happy with the shuffle feature, but hear me out.) So, I've noticed that my playlist shuffles through the same songs almost every time, completely ignoring many other songs. Now my shuffle sessions last about 10-12 songs per day out of a 160ish song playlist on mobile only. So, I recently cleaned out this playlist, removing those songs that played endlessly. But, at the same time I predicted which songs leftover in my playlist would now start playing over and over. End result: I predicted close to 100% what songs would play. Very ironic in a feature called "shuffle". The one thing that these songs shared was that they were all not played very often on my desktop version of spotify and they usually weren't in the top 123 list. So it seems that Spotify's shuffle analyzes how often you play certain songs on your desktop, and plays the songs you listen to least. At least in my case. I'm wondering if others get the same impression. And with the recent fix of shuffle to only the desktop version, it only makes me more susoicious that mobile shuffle is completely broken.

[mvnivcvl]

I wanted to report the same problem.  I always select "shuffle" but I literally hear the same songs all the time while there are other songs that I have not heard at all and forgot I even added them to my playlists.  Spotify team, please create a better randomizer/shuffler and make it so that even when you restart Spotify/computer Spotify doesn't include what was played the last time until eveything in your playlist was played.  Other than that Spotify is an awesome creation and you guys are great!

Thanks! 

[Thecaptain115]

Agreed. Every time I press the "shuffle play" button it defaults to the same "random" order. This isn't really a shuffle if the same songs play in the same order every time, it just chooses a different starting point. 

[evincent207]

I have had much better shuffle function on my desktop than my android. In fact, with my android, i will usually get a 7 or 10 song list that repeats over and over, in almost the exact same oder.

I also use the radio function to discover music, but I keep getting the same songs for that too. And the android version works much worse than desktop.

I would love to be able to adjust the RNG or whatever sets up the random lists. Some times I would like to hear songs that are frequently played, while other times I want to listen to songs that I rarely listen to. If I could add weight based on times played or some other parameter, that would be great. And shuffle should repeat a song that I've already listened to since my last reshuffle.

[sgreene822]

Has this issue been fixed yet? I'm thinking it hasn't because I just heard the same songs today that I did yesterday and I have 700 songs. So frustrating!!!!

[dmholtzer]

It should be able to play at least 75% of your playlist before it starts repeating. I dont want to hear the same songs I heard this morning on my drive to work. I have thousands of songs, lets change it up people!