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.

[dexteritee]

Not sure if this is the right place but I was directed here from Twitter. Recently, when I hit shuffle playlist and skip the first songs the app chooses but then listen to one of the songs, those songs that I had previously skipped come up again after I finished playing the song I chose to listen to. Very annoying. 

[Tobraham]

Hey there, @rednblu, that link you provided doesn't appear to be working. ..

by rednblu 50m ago

I continued this very useful discussion in >> a fully-functional forum << with adequate *Edit capability-- There I give a working example of how I produce a Spotify "Radio" that has zero repeats in any six-month period.

In addition at that link, there are instructions for playing my Non-repeating Spotify "Radio" for this month-- Of course, that Non-repeating Spotify "Radio" reflects only my musical desires by containing only tracks from "All of Spotify" that I have not DownThumbed.

[Tobraham]

I continued this very useful discussion in >> a fully-functional forum << with adequate *Edit capability-- There I give a working example of how I produce a Spotify "Radio" that has zero repeats in any six-month period.

In addition at that link, there are instructions for playing my Non-repeating Spotify "Radio" for this month-- Of course, that Non-repeating Spotify "Radio" reflects only my musical desires by containing only tracks from "All of Spotify" that I have not DownThumbed.

[rednblu]

I apologize everyone-- my posting seems to have triggered the actions of the "censors".   Sorry-- I will copy directly to here what I can.

Thanks.

[Tobraham]

@agl89xs20, I'm actually working it right now. It's kind of a pain because my total song count is nearly 58,000 songs, so it takes about 5-10 minutes depending on internet traffic to load all of the songs into my database. Then if there' a bug in the script I have to fix it and re-rest it.  😄

Also, I'm experiencing a bug where other people are using the shuffler at the same time I'm uploading my massive song list and it looks like their resulting playlists are full of my songs. I can't figure out why my variables would carry over into someone else's browsers.

Grrrrr

by agl89xs20 2 hours ago

@Tobraham I'm keen to try out the Nuclear function if this is something you are able to do - can you let me know how its getting on, I'm more than happy to test it for you if required. Thanks!

[Tobraham]

@Tobraham I'm keen to try out the Nuclear function if this is something you are able to do - can you let me know how its getting on, I'm more than happy to test it for you if required. Thanks!

[Tobraham]

@agl89xs20

I went ahead and added a 12-hour and 16-hour option for you. Give it a whirl!

---------------------------

@Tobraham, Shufflefly looks good, I like to have playlists more than 8 hours though. The one in particular that I would like to randomize has 362 songs in it currently, and is likely to expand over time - but I dont want to lose any tracks from this list. 

Based on an average of 3 minutes per song, this would calculate it at 18-19 hours of music.

Is this something that is possible? If so then I'd be a massive advocate of your system!

Thanks

[Tobraham]

@Tobraham, Shufflefly looks good, I like to have playlists more than 8 hours though. The one in particular that I would like to randomize has 362 songs in it currently, and is likely to expand over time - but I dont want to lose any tracks from this list. 

Based on an average of 3 minutes per song, this would calculate it at 18-19 hours of music.

Is this something that is possible? If so then I'd be a massive advocate of your system!

Thanks

[rednblu]

Spotify "Radio" that gives zero repeats for a week

Here is how, @Tobraham, >> I produce a "Radio" << with zero of those hated repeats from over 80,000 tracks in my favorite 10 playlists.

** I am indebted to my many friends on this forum who have showed me how to do this.

@Tobraham considered ways for Spotify users to "program" a functional Spotify "Radio" that plays only the user's favorite 45,000 tracks:
_____________

> As for radio, I'm not sure there's a way to write your own app that impacts Spotify's radio but I'll look into it.
_____________

Opportunity

You would do great service to all Spotify music lovers, @Tobraham, if you could produce some version of my "Radio" process by creating "one button" that would assemble a series of four randomized Non-repeating "Radio" playlists-- numbered 1 to 4-- from the user's folder containing 5 playlists of 9,000 tracks each.

Then to play the "Radio" from the user's "AllOfSpotify" 45,000 track stack of random songs selected from only the user's favorite playlists, the user would merely "Cut to the Queue" from the "lowest numbered remaining playlist".

For the latest Spotify player on your desktop, the "Cut to the Queue" could be done manually by 1) Select 90 tracks from the top of the "lowest numbered remaining playlist" -- then 2) Right Click and "Add to Queue" from the dropDown menu-- then 3) tap the Delete key on the keyboard.

By this "Cut to the Queue" you prevent duplicate plays by removing each queued track from the "remaining playlist stack".

Sample play statistics from my "Radio" that has no repeats

>> At this link, << you can see the repeat statistics on my last 2,000 plays-- At this posting date there have been only 8 repeats in the last 2,000 plays-- each of those 8 repeats I specifically inserted into my Play Queue-- because I wanted to hear some track again that I had already played in the last 7 days.

Sampling an "AllOfSpotify" Radio with zero repeats

You can find my Non-repeating Radio for this month by-- in your Desktop player-- [Ctrl-L, Search] for "AllOfSpotify"-- and you will get back a link to my  Rednblu  playlist named "AllOfSpotify".

* Copy my "AllOfSpotify" Radio for this month to your own playlist called CustomRadio.

* Then "Cut to your Queue" the first 90 tracks from your CustomRadio playlist.

* Repeat the "Cut to your Queue" operation every day that you want to hear a Non-repeating Spotify Radio.

Would that be something that you could program under one or two buttons?--

Maybe one button to

* Randomize all of the tracks in a folder to sequentially named playlists-- 1, 2, 3, . . . .

And another button to

* Select the first 90 tracks from the "lowest numbered remaining playlist"-- then "queue" those selected 90 tracks-- then "delete" those selected 90 tracks.

Any ideas?

[Tobraham]

 @rednblu

Well, I've already got the code working that will go through all of your playlists and load them into a database. From there I could really do what ever makes sense.

If your end result is a 90-song playlist per day, you could easily build 30 of those at a time to have one for every day of the month and you'd have zero repeats. Just load up the database, select '30' days and off you go.

So really, with one button I could have you specify how many songs you would like in your playlist and how many playlists you'd like to generate at once. In your case you'd choose '90' songs and '30' playlists and off it goes. Piece of cake. 

[Lukeaskew]

I've noticed that on collaborative playlists, the shuffle favors recently added tracks (or maybe tracks that I have not played personally). When I am playing a collaborative playlist that I own and someone adds some tracks, their tracks seem to get played more often.

I would like a truly random shuffle experience.

[dexteritee]

 @Lukeaskew not sure if anyone is really reading this or not, looks like they're just trying to help this one guy out with some app he's doing or whatever. I'd like to see my shuffle fixed as well. 

[Tobraham]

 @dexteritee

I think the overall consesnsus if you read this 40-page thread is that Spotify acknowledged there was a popular interest in this topic and they recently implemented some changes to their shuffle / random selection algorithm. As you can attest, there is more to be desired. Therefore, I'm working on a simple app that I hope will be beneficial to everyone, including yourself.