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.

[rednblu]

    >>  Spotify shuffles when I'm not connected to any speakers . . . .

Perfect description of the bug.  But this bug is in the Spotify Connect function-- The shuffle still works on the ControlSession-- but only the first few tracks showing on the ControlSession actually transfer to the ListeningSession.

For some combinations of hardware and software you can discover some particular sequence of undocumented StartUp keystrokes that get the Spotify shuffle to play through the whole playlist on the computer with the ListeningSession.

[theragnauths]

STOP BOMBARDING ME WITH THIS IRRELEVANT**bleep**

[mrdylanspencer]

Opt out of topic updates... Pretty simple.

[Kyndal017]

Hey, ever since my Spotify app has updated, I've been shuffling my playlists like I usually do, but it has only played the first 10 songs from every playlist I have. Is there a way you could fix this? I have so many songs that I love, but don't get played anymore 😞 I'm wondering/hoping you guys could fix this problem, and make the playlists more random, and more of a variety? 

[theragnauths]

Definitely. Especially as a very simple, basic question could not be answered by the Spotify tech nerds.

[theragnauths]

Has ANYONE had a satisfactory response from the 'Spotify Community' regarding the false claim that the SHUFLE function actually does shuffle more than the next 50 songs in the playlist that contains the first song?

[larip290]

Whenever I play playlists on shuffle, there are always the same songs in the exact same order played. This happens with every playlist and by playing on my device without Spotify Connect since the last update.

[s07975km]

Shuffle play is still not random. How is this not fixed??? It does not shuffle at all and only creates 1 random playlist essentially making it the same. 

[tj_ayling]

To anyone at Spotify, I've writted some pseudocode that implements what literaly everyone here is asking for.

This is accomplished by assigning a number to each item in the playlist. I'm not sure what language is used for Spotify so that's why i've done it in pseudocode.

alreadySeen ← []

SUB randomNumer:

    FOR number IN alreadySeen:

        randomNum ← randomInt(0, playlist.length)

        IF randomNum = number:

            randomNumber()

        ENDIF

        RETURN randomNum

FOR song IN playlist:

   alreadySeen.append(randomNumber(alreadySeen))

/*Now we have a list of numbers in a random order that is the length of the playlist, this doesn't take much computational power either as it is simply creating an array of numbers*/ 

So now you have an array of random numbers, this code would run when the shuffle button is pressed and then each of the numbers represents a song in the playlist, how the number is assignes to each song doesn't really matter as it will be random anyway (to the extent of the computer generated randomness). Please at least make it an option for spotify users to shuffle like this, thiws is all we are asking for. This ensures that, as long as there are no duplicate songs, the songs will play in a random order and will not repeat meaning also that is you add a song into a playlist more than once, it will increase the probability of it being played.

[tj_ayling]

 On the post above, the sub should have alreadySeen parsed into it, and the return should be in an ELSE statement