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.

[Tiocabanas]

As everyone, it wouldn't hurt to have a feature in which we could play ALL our playlists, in a random order, but without repeating songs. Like the creator of this topic said, shuffle the songs, play all of them, and shuffle again.

very sad that the spotify team isn't responding to all of these complaints

[Zuzu]

Please, for the love of God, do something about this. I'm so sick of putting a 500+ song playlist on shuffle and constantly having the same songs get shuffled to play, not in the same order but the same songs will be the first to play in a group of 500+. What's the point of s playlist and what's the point of using spotify if that portion is useless to me? I want to have a large playlist of my favorite songs and shuffle and play for hours while I work but every time I restart the app it goes back to shuffling the same group of songs before any others. Looking into alternative services because this sucks and so does the so called "radio" function which is also totally flawed and useless. Get your **bleep** together Spotify

[ShelbyM5]

How has it been almost three years since this topic was started and this still can't get a fix? I can tell you from experience that creating a shuffle algorithm isn't hard at all.

[Sizzlin]

I'm a paying Spotify customer, but am dropping them because of this issue. It's not limited to playlists, but "radio stations" will play the same 15 song from a genre. Thumbs up and thumbs down seem to have no bearing on what happens to the station whatsoever. Shuffling in an individual artist will give you the same 3 songs over and over again. 

[camillo75]

Hi! What is the status of this request?

With Spotify Connect it seems that Shuffle will repeat songs before finishing all the other songs.

This means some songs are played very often, other never.

Is there a solution?

I would like also a "listened X times" counter on each song (also differentiating between completely or partially) and also having the opportunity to have a report of all listened songs, for example if i want to see what songs I was listening on January 11th of last year (this could be an useful feature for Spotify to increase customer retention)..

Thank you!

Camillo

[WaxwingSlain]

Three years on, and this is still a huge problem with Spotify.  If they can't fix the problem, I'm going to have to dump the service.  It's really annoying.  

I wish Spotify would at least be honest about what is really happening when a user enables shuffle.  We've seen dishonest blog posts and excuses and promises year after year and the problem continues.

I've about had it.

[_daniel_]

Ok, I admit I didn't reed the 16 pages of comments but I assume they are similar to here: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Announcements/Your-Ideas-At-Work-Shuffle-Improvements/td-p/...

In this news bulletin, spotify announced to have solved the shuffle problem of this thread... but as we all know they haven't.

Some time ago I conducted a little experiment:

I created a test-playlist with 50x songs, shuffle-played them and wrote down the order of each song when it was played. After I shuffle-played all 50x songs I had to see that, to my surprise, each single song had only been played ONCE until all 50 songs were played. I was so shocked (because it didn't reflect my experience) that I repeated the test again... and again... and again! But still, after four times, the result remained the same: a flawless sound shuffle function.

But again, my feeling told me there was something wrong so I continued with other experiments. I hibernated my laptop in the middle of a playlist but still, the shuffle play worked perfectly.

Eventually I found the problem (at least what I consider to be MY problem). I listened to 25 songs out of my 50 song test-playlist and switched off Spotify. When I switched it back on again, Spotify would still remember which actual song I played when I switched it off. However, Spotify forgot those other 24 songs I played before l switched it off. The result was, Spotify shuffled the whole playlist all over again (including the 25 songs I had already listend to).

The same happened when, after having played 25 songs in my playlist, I switched to another playlist, artist, album or used the radio function. Spotify simply did not (and still does not) remember those songs from the test-playlist which it had already played. Switching off the laptop causes the same problem too.

So if I NEVER switch off my laptop and NEVER listen to any other playlists or artists or radio again and just stay in my ONE SINGLE playlist, then shuffle should work perfectly. Other than that it makes using Spotify a PAIN.

Would be happy if others could validate my result.

Thx

Daniel

[lukasP]

---

So if I NEVER switch off my laptop and NEVER listen to any other playlists or artists or radio again and just stay in my ONE SINGLE playlist, then shuffle should work perfectly. Other than that it makes using Spotify a PAIN.

Would be happy if others could validate my result.

---

You are right, that is the current behavior.

Unfortunately I can't tell you when this is going to improve.

[_daniel_]

A great idea of how to improve it has been already proposed by SebastianSaint:

Spotify Coders:
1) Create a data field for each song that stores the time I last played that song.
2) Whenever the player is on Shuffle, choose the next song from the current playlist only considering the 10% of songs on the playlist with the oldest LastPlayed value.

Here's my logic:
1) The current song will not be replayed until I have heard at least 90% of the other songs in the playlist.
2) It will work if I listen with or without interruption.
3) It will work if I switch between playlists containing some of the same songs.
4) The solution remains simple.

//

Sounds like a great solution to me

[zaveqna]

 So this post is from 2012, and it's now 2015 and the problem is still the same - I just listened to a playlist of about 50-60 songs and only about 10 are actually playing and constantly repeating. For shuffle's sake, do something!!1!11