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.

[stewart100]

This doesn't really apply. You've used a playlist with 64 songs. I stated
that shuffle doesn't work with large playlists.

[129764083]

I currently have two artists in one playlist. One was added before the other. However, whenever I try to shuffle the songs, its always playing huge chunks of one artist. It's been like this for the past 3 weeks. I have gone ahead and tried to "re-shuffle" in the "Play Queue" page and it did not make a pure shuffle but just reclumped the sections and only artist is always played first over the other. I've read different pages on this board it seems like Spotify implements a priority shuffle for songs you listen to more over new or lesser listened to songs within a playlist.

[actualccb]

I appreciate that. Working on quantifying how it is or is not working.
Am experimenting with a 115 song playlist now (2x last test report) 75 songs are in the queue, 10 have been played.

The queue shows no repeats. To also refer to an earlier post about editing the queue, on desktop and for payed account, this is on mobile and free account. There is no editing the queue and it doesn’t show queued ads.

Point being it seems quite logical, if Spotify can create a clean non-repeating queue it could play from the list and not repeat.

On very large playlists it is not going to show all of them in the queue so it has to batch load them. The coding needs to make sure it is not loading anything that was in the previous queue.

Rather than complaining, let’s give Spotify information to work with.

[whatisdelicious]

Whatever Spotify is currently doing for shuffle is unbelievably terrible. I don't understand how it can be so bad. It only plays songs from a handful of recently added artists. Just over and over. It's not at all what I want when I go to my entire song library and hit shuffle. I want my entire song library shuffled. Not five or six recent artists. Please change the shuffle algorithm because right now it's so awful guys. 

[swagmacjagger]

thats what happens to me its annoying

[actualccb]

So what I noticed today about the queue.... it maintains about an 80 song list of possible upcoming songs. But guess what, this list is alphabetical! Not a random list. So this leaves songs to be inserted as songs are played. But not all songs are accounted for in a larger playlists. 

I am am not sure if Spotify will play a song not on the list. But the list in itself is not randomizing the songs but even alphatebetical would guarantee a no repeat playlist. Spotify? 

[stewart100]

It's pretty annoying that my post was moved into this thread without any indication or notification. My original post was submitted to 'ideas' and this thread is in 'implemented ideas'. I'd like to know who moved it and why. There are numerous different issues with shuffle that have all been lumped together here. To be specific, my post was about shuffle not working with large playists and only shuffling a small portion of the playlist. I also added a lot of information about what results I got from sorting the playlist and then reshuffling it. I have not had issues with the same song being repeated. Like quite a few people in this thread, what I want is a shuffle that just plays songs at random from a playlist. I don't need it to check whether the song or artist has already been played recenty, I just need it to implament shuffle to a large playlist (just to clarify, 1 or 2 hundred songs is not a large playlist, I'm talking about 1 or 2 thousand or more). 

[uofmars]

I have a playlist around 450 songs . I have the songs in alphabetical order to make it some what random and it will  play the songs in order for about 100 songs and start over. This will happen if start with the first song or in the middle and with the phone or the computer. The shuffle doesn't work right and we shouldn't be the ones trying to find the magic solution. Spotify dose not  care, all of these same shuttle problems are on threds as far back as 2012

[stewart100]

Sounds like the same issue as me. Thanks for adding this. I completely
agree, it's a fairly standard feature and should just work. they've
overcomplicated it and broken it. I'd love to see their code.

[uofmars]

People are complaining because they are paying for a service in which one of the most important parts has had the same problem for over five years.