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.

[kennyboy55]

I like some song more than other, so I want to hear them more often. In my other music players I solve this by adding my favourite songs more often to a playlist. The normal expected behaviour when shuffling would be that the song is shuffled into the queue multiple times within a loop. However, when I tried this on Spotify I got very different behaviour. Even though the songs are not after one another in the playlist, when I shuffle the playlist, all duplicates always play right after each other (see image). It would seem a lot better to me if that didn't happen and instead they just appeared in the queue more often.

[joshderickson]

It says it is shuffling but I all the time spotify is playing 2 songs from the same artist.  How is that a shuffle if it is playing 2 consecutive songs from the same artist.  I took statistics in high school so I did the math and there is a 1/2% chance that this could happen, if this was a true shuffle.  But this happens all the time so there is no way our playlist is being shuffled at all.  PLEASE FIX SPOTIFY!!!!!!!

[kevinmikol]

Hi!

Today I listened to Gwen Stafani on Spotify my whole commute when I ended up clicking "shuffle" on My Songs. Yet, that account has hundreds of saved songs in that list.

[A57]

There is something seriously wrong with the shuffle algorithm.  I have been shuffling my entire music library (which has to be at least 2-3,000 songs) and it keeps only playing music that I just added.  Out of thousands of songs I have gotten up to 5 songs off the same album (that was recently added) in a row!  It might just be me, but that doesn't seem like the point of shuffling.  I have noticed something similar with smaller playlists too and it is really annoying.  Otherwise, I love your service, but it would be really nice be able to truly shuffle (maybe even make different shuffle algorithms available to be selected by users since there is probably somebody that really likes the way it is now). 

[bayselim]

I'm directed from twitter to here. So here is my advice: putting some "if statements" to codes about shuffle playing after second or third track from same album. When I listen shuffle from an artist usually 90 percent of tracks are coming from newest albums. I think it's an easy problem to solve. Thanks...

[tandre1016]

It’s such an easy problem, obviously running for such a long time, and with such obvious effects, that Spotify might not consider that a bug but rather an intended behavior of the function: to favor playing some songs rather than others.
That might also explain why the shuffling is so prominent in the UI, with this implementation they can statistically increase the occurrence of some songs playing versus others. A scheme to push some artists to the front ? Influence their revenues? All of that despite our choices?

Maybe I’m getting paranoid too, but the evidences are there...

[AdamDo]

Allelujah! Tidal is now on Android Auto so goodbye spotify! Just cancelled my family subscription and moved all library to tidal with soundiiz.com

[Et1Yet1]

I just can only confirm that shuffle isn't shuffeling, but only on my Alexa devices.

I have several playlists, that i play often via Alexa. It always starts with the first song in the list and play the following in the same "random" order. This means, that the order is different from the order shown in the Spotify-App on my PC, but it's always the same different one. This is realy annoying. Please fix it!

[Chananovinsky]

Shuffle Issues remain in 2018

It seems that this section of the forum may not be as relevant as it used to be, but the issues of the shuffle algorithm being broken are as relevant as ever. I am unsure if it is because the Spotify team are ignoring the issue, or if there is some valuable reason the Shuffle algorithm has to be unfixed for a certain amount of time. Both possibilities seem ridiculous, but the algorithm is also ridiculous, so clearly something isn't being done to fix the problem at hand. 

My personal experience with the broken Shuffle system used to be very minor compared to the issues I am currently facing. Back then, I would play a playlist of around 60-70 songs, and every once in a while a song would repeat. It's a very minor problem, but the Shuffle system should be more elaborate as to not make someone sick of hearing the same songs replay over and over again while other songs are kept unplayed for days or even weeks. The problem I am facing now is really screwing with my experience on a major level. 

-- The Issue --

The issue I now am having to deal with is only noticeably happening on the one playlist which I happen to listen to most frequently. This tells me that this could very well be a general problem that I just haven't been noticing on other playlists that I don't listen to as often, but let's give you the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. The issue is that every single time without fail, when I begin listening to the single playlist, 1 of 3 songs always play first and absolutely nothing else will ever play at the beginning. I'll say that again. Out of around 35 songs, one out of only three specific songs will ever play at the beginning. And it doesn't end there. After those 3 songs play (those specific songs always seem to play within the first 5 songs I listen to on that playlist) only certain songs from 2 different albums of the same person will play, despite there being around 7 songs from one other artist that I now never hear on the playlist. It seems that the songs I more recently added to my playlist are the ones I hear the least of. 

This issue requires immediate attention. A completely new Shuffle algorithm can be made to replace the current one if need be. I was really about to consider getting Spotify Premium until I discovered this was a problem. Now I don't want to feel like I'm just gonna be wasting my money with a music platform that has a faulty necessary function. Please fix your Shuffle algorithm, Spotify. The current one needs to go

[starseedpyxis]

I've also been frustrated still with the shuffling. I store all of my music in playlists in a single folder called "Library" specifically so I can use the shuffle function to randomly play songs from my entire history of saved music, when I don't feel like actively queueing up songs.

- I also notice that sometimes the randomized list seems to get cached and so if you click on a playlist to play, with shuffle on, it'll start back at the beginning of the list that you already heard (meaning you hear the same songs again in the same order)

- The app seems to LOVE to play one particular album for me, which I never really liked in the first place, and now it plays those songs incessantly. Like every 5th song. I'm going to have to remove it from my library so I don't have to hear it any more, but then the shuffle might just try to ruin a different album for me 😕 I don't know if there's some kind of preferential selection of songs in shuffle based on number of plays, but if so it's just resulting in a death spiral of boredom in a song as shuffle recursively reinforces the same song selection. Sometimes I feel like I'm only actually hearing maybe 20% of my library when on shuffle. I'd much rather that shuffle be a true shuffle and randomize the entire list up front with no preference, so that theoretically you could play through your entire library on shuffle without hearing the same song twice.

I love spotify, and hope that it keeps getting better and better!