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.

[Chameron]

My shuffle still isnt working. When i put multiple albums in a playlist it shuffles them as a whole. So it pretty much doesnt shuffle at all

[aprettyman]

Have a similar issue, it seems that when I shuffle all of my songs, I somehow only have 3 artists that will be played? Every now and then I will get something else from another artist but the number of artists I have saved shouldn't ever be narrowed down to only 3 or so

[rednblu]

My friends convinced me that the Spotify shuffle is much better than I thought-- And they showed me how to get reasonable results from the native Spotify shuffle, the Ctrl-S function in the Windows player.

It seems that there is a complex nest of advertising bugs when you restart Spotify-- And to get past all of those Spotify advertising bugs, all I have to do is examine the actual "Next up" section that the Spotify shuffle produces in my Play queue-- And toggle the Spotify shuffle onAndOff several times until the "Next up" section looks reasonable.

As long as I Ctrl-S toggle the Spotify shuffle offAndOn until I can see for myself from the "Next Up" section of my Play queue that the Spotify shuffle has given up trying to push unwanted advertising sections into my queue, I no longer experience the following frustrating complaints about the Spotify shuffle:

    >> shuffle just got worse in the last few days. why?

    >>  spotify is a fraud about this,,,,,,,, shame

    >> It appears Spotify “shuffle” works best 50-100 songs or so.

    >> ... but after 148 pages and almost two years, the Spotify team may need to start something on this issue afresh.

    >> So it pretty much doesnt shuffle at all.

    >> I somehow only have 3 artists that will be played?

    >> ...

Detailed instructions from my friends to make the Spotify shuffle work-- good enough for one listening session.

* Create a playlist of at least 5K tracks-- You can copy a generic diagnostic 5K playlist from the AllOfSpotify_Radio >>  http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/4BIEfdQC3CXOa1N0mTFAEy. << 

* For simplicity, sort your 5K playlist by ArtistName-- By clicking ColumnName of the Artist column of your 5K playlist-- Then play some selected track from your 5K playlist.  You have to check to see what the Spotify shuffle is inserting to your Play queue-- you cannot tell from the sometimesGreen Spotify shuffle icon and you cannot tell what the Spotify shuffle is doing from the sometimesChecked "Shuffle" line under the "Playlist" menu in the upperLeft.

* That is, if you start with your 5K playlist sorted by ArtistName, then when your shuffle is actually Off, the "Next Up" section will be sorted by ArtistName-- And conversely when your shuffle is actually On, the "Next Up" section will look random, right?

* Observe your Play queue-- Delete all the inserted advertising tracks from the middle "Next in Queue" section of your Play queue-- so that in your Play queue you have only the two sections named "Now Playing" and "Next Up".

* Slowly do Ctrl-S a few times, watching the OnAgain_OffAgain of what tracks show in your "Next Up" section-- Ctrl-S toggles your Spotify shuffle off and on-- When the Spotify shuffle is truly Off, you will see a recurring trackList under the "Next Up" section; this recurring trackList is the next set of Unshuffled tracks from your 5K playlist-- Conversely, when your Spotify shuffle is truly On, you will see some random mix of tracks in your "Next Up" section of your Play queue-- Furthermore, once you have toggled Ctrl-S enough times to Clear the advertising and Initialize your Spotify shuffle, you will see that the "Shuffle" line is checked under the "Playlist" dropDown menu in the UpperLeft-- And you will see that the Green_Shuffle icon shows Green-- You can keep toggling Ctrl-S until you see a "random mix" that you like . . . .

* By monitoring the actual tracks inserted to the "Next Up" section of your Play queue, you will see that your "green" shuffle icon at StartUp is 50% unreliable in indicating when the tracks in your "Next Up" section are actually shuffled.

* Furthermore, you can check that your Spotify shuffle is jumping at random to various positions in your 5K track playlist by doing the following-- Sort your 5K track playlist by ArtistName-- Then it is easy to see when your Ctrl-S toggle has actually turned on your Spotify shuffle-- because when your Spotify shuffle is Off, the "Next Up" section of your Play queue will show the tracks sorted by ArtistName, right?

* When you have done Ctrl-S enough times to get a "Next Up" area that looks random, then click the lowerLeft corner of the albumArt, so that the player highlights the track position in your 5K track playlist-- Record the track position by estimating the track position from 0 to 10 as indicated by the BlackOnBlack slider on the very right of the display of tracks in your playlist-- Then do NextTrack, and repeat the operation [Click the lowerLeft corner of the AlbumArt to highlight the track position and record your estimation of the track position from 0 to 10 where 0 is the top of your playlist, 5 is the middle of your playlist, and 10 is the last track in your 5K playlist].

* The Spotify shuffle should jump around over the entire numberRange on the 5K track playlist, from 0 to 10 if it is truly shuffling when you do NextTrack, right?

Enjoy the Spotify music forever . . . .

(There is an additional fatal flaw in the Spotify shuffle when you ReStart your Spotify app-- but that bug requires a completely different "user programming fix", would you agree?)

[actualccb]

Thank you for that detail!

[Scooter666]

Bit annoyed this shuffle thing has never been fixed looks like im canceling my subscription, spotify will never compare to the Pandora radio i had taken from me. 😞

[uofmars]

It is so very sad that this issue is on threads from 2012 and sill no fix. Who is working on this George R R Martin. I should get a reaction from my premium payment each month for a feature that has never worked and is so important to so many. FIX THE SHUFFLE OR HAVE THE GUTS TO TELL US YOU DON'T CARE.

[bntski23]

The shuffle function still does not shuffle. I still hear many of my songs over and over, while other songs I feel I only hear them if I pick them. I like all the songs in my playlist. I would like to hear them all. 

[actualccb]

It seems to me that all these complaints, frustrations and suggestions can be solved with one new preference addition in the playback area: repeat songs yes or no. Yes=whatever Spotify wants to do, leave it as is.

No=no repeats within a single session, even if it is paused. If someone leaves the playlist, plays something else, it starts over. 

If songs are added during playback it is fair if the playlist is not updated for playback until the playlist starts over. Same, if a song is deleted during playback, it could still play until the playlist is restarted. 

[Bazman1981]

This looks to be a big problem! I found a post from 2 weeks ago, and was then directed to this post from 2012! Wow! I've got married and had a daughter in the time since this was posted! I'm sure you could fix the shuffle fucntion!

I clicked on shuffle all my songs the other day, and played it through my Sonos. I would expect every song to be a different artist as there are thousands of songs, but nope, it just seemed to want to play chemical brothers.

Please, please fix this problem. Don't be too clever, just shuffle the songs. 

If you want to be clever add a "Super Shuffle" which plays only your favourite songs, or the most recent, or the ones that are most istened to by other people.

Keep the shuffle pure, simple and true!

[PepijnNL]

Found this and the one you marked duplicate (https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Randomize-Shuffle-ENTIRE-playlist-Shuffle-ALL/idi-p/14...) and finally I know what is wrong with what I'm hearing in Spotify. It has been bugging me since I started using it. I noticed earlier today when I started a song from my playlist that I added a few days ago to let someone hear it, and I left it to shuffle from there, and noticed I was hearing song after song that I hadn't heard in ages while I shuffle this playlist every day.

I just can't believe you guys thought this was a good way to do this... You call this an idea? No, this is a bug you need to fix. If this is 'by design' as engineers have a tendency to say, then the design is moronic. It's insane to see that this is something that you've left to fester for years already...

As for "Implement a shuffle function that allows me to listen to every single song in a playlist one time before any repeats are played"... that would be a randomize function (as Winamp called it). It's not quite the same as shuffle, but yeah it would be a very good feature to implement (and that actually would be a new feature). It always baffles me how modern music players lack in functionality compared to what Winamp was doing 20 years ago.