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.

[FUspotify66]

**bleep** still not working.

I thought this was a way to get subscribers but nooo. First and last 99kr you'll get from me. **bleep**in clowns you've had, what, 4 years to fix this and it's still not **bleep**in working. 

And the other problems on ps4 with songs that you remove actually starts duplicating, songs that can't be played (usually every second in my list). And the ui is another bad joke. I'm guessing your programmers spent about 10 mins to make it. 

To summarize: Spotify sucks and they pay the artists next to nothing (you can read about how stream services are basically **bleep**in them over worse than anything AND it's actually the big labels that invest money in these companies).

So you can **bleep** all the way off. You're an embarrassment to Sweden.

Now go home and get your **bleep**in shine box!

[ws1482]

i have a 19 hour playlist that i listen to for an hour or 2 and i keep hearing the same songs over and over smh

[RockieRat]

This is great. For months now, we just sit around and complain about this.
No one from "Spotify cares". If you tweet to them? You get a bot reply.

[julianerenee]

shocker!

[ARCINTHE757]

It's not months, it's been YEARS! I've tried to contact them directly and
always get some stupid reply along the lines of what device and Spotify
version are you using and to restart the app and **bleep** like that...They
don't actually listen to anything you tell them and seemingly assume you're
a complete idiot and this is an isolated event. They pretend that there is
nothing wrong. That's why I cancelled my 3 year old Premium subscription. I
refuse to pay for anything broken and run by absolute morons.

[rednblu]

Amen, @ARCINTHE757! Bravo! Well said!

I was furious.

And then I realized that the whole "setup" is an unassembled "erector set". Remember those? -- an erector set with lots of missing pieces-- There is not even way to play every track in a playlist-- in a random order-- with "no repeats" of any track in the playlist.

It would be nice, right? It would be common sense and expected if you pay money, right, ARCINTHE757?

So I asked my friends here on this forum and outside-- And my friends showed me a simple way to get the kind of NonRepeating play you can see at >> this link-- <<  Not even a single repeat in any playlist of over 1000 tracks-- except for the couple of tracks that I deliberately put onto my Play queue-- because I wanted to hear a "repeat".

You just have to "build it yourself"-- and make your own "programming fixes" to the bugs in what is here. It is very easy. Spotify cannot do it-- because 80% of the paying customers do not care at all about those repeats.

Wonderful music though, here on Spotify! Right?

[TheThePearls]

To whom it may concern,

            I am sure you have heard this before.  The shuffle you, Pandora, and every music application out there does not have a good shuffle feature.  From my perspective it *is* shuffling, in that all the songs it is playing are played randomly.  Although, out of my 440 song playlist it is playing the same songs over and over.  Often times it plays the same songs every time I return to the playlist and hit shuffle.  Once in a while it even plays a song twice, after only skipping through three songs.  My suggestion would be to create an algorithm where the shuffle covers *ever* song on a playlist before repeating a song twice.  If there was a random pattern the "shuffle" could follow, this would be great so that I hear every song.  I know it would be a premade pattern so it's not technically random, but I would definitely rather have that than hear the same songs over.

Thank you,

-Patrick Moore

[charmjem]

A playlist remembers which song you were up to to stop duplicates when you cant between saved playlists.

[charmjem]

Prevent duplicate songs from occuring over a set time period ie 12 hours.

In the situation when you have set up the perfect playlist to last the entire event and another person gets hold of it partway through and selects a song they like, messing up the playlist order and causing duplicates or the playlist repeating. 

If a time limit prevention was available, they could click on a song and not duplicate songs previously played. 

[Discorrunt]

Spotifys' shuffle system seems to favor songs played most by others. I constantly hear all the same songs on shuffle. I remember random functions preforming better than this two decades ago.  If not addressed I'm canceling by Christmas.