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.

[kneipe2]

Cracks me up that they have this marked as solved. Bunch of **bleep**ing morons.

[user-removed]

YES YES YES. I can't believe I'm paying for a service that doesn't even allow any variety on shuffle mode! I have so many great songs I'd love to hear while driving and do not want to risk looking at my phone just to hear different songs than the same 20 over and over and over and over. It seems to me to be THE MOST BASIC FUNCTION a music service can offer, and blows my mind that they haven't done something about this yet. I will be cancelling soon if they do not implement these changes! 

[kneipe2]

The only way I sort of got their attention once was suggest people use something else like grooveshark or pandora (both of which are great and have better selection-they also don't tell you that if you want to hear something then you should contact the artist and have them make it available-yes, I'm looking at you spotify, and their random/shuffle functions aren't total garbage). I only sort of got their attention because the person that responded back wanted me to go through and do their job for them, letting them know where/how it didn't work.

I'm sorry, I have a job I'm expected to do, otherwise I don't get paid. I don't have the time to do your job for you, spotify. Stop being **bleep**ing lazy cunts (stupid lazy c uuu nts, since it will edit out what I wrote) and do your **bleep** job. There's no way in **bleep** I will ever pay for spotify. Ever.

I will pay for pandora long before spotify ever sees a single cent from me.

[RaunchyPrime]

Why is this marked as implemented??? The "Shuffle" function just isn't working still. Remember Winamp? How it would acually mix up the entire playlist (not just 50 chosen randomly) and play it for you? That's what I want. Please?

[kneipe2]

@RaunchyPrime They implemented something different from what was there before. So technically, they fixed the old problem with a new one....maybe. Pandora actually is pretty awesome. I would highly recommend switching.

[wbrinegar]

I may be missing something, but in my experience, the shuffle feature works as it should*: open playlist, hit "shuffle play," and all tracks are randomly ordered for playback. Hitting "shuffle play" again will resort in a different order. No track gets played twice through the duration of the playlist.

Now, about that *... Shuffle may work well when you listen to a playlist on one device, but let's say I have my Spotify app open on my phone, as well as my laptop. I can control playback from either device while listening to the music from the device of my choosing. Great.

But let's say in the middle of a 20 song playlist, I switch playback from one device to the other. Doing so resets the shuffled playlist. So, for example, if I'm four tracks into the playlist when I switch devices, and the tracks that have been played are Track 5, Track 12, Track 7 and I'm in the middle of Track 9, switching playback devices will transfer the song from the first device to the second seamlessly, right where the song left off on the first device, but switching also resets the shuffle.

In other words, Tracks 9 becomes the only "spent" track in the playlist. I'm just as likely to hear Tracks 5, 12 or 7 following Track 9 even though those tracks have already played on the first device. It'd be nice if shuffle order could maintain its integrity unless directly reset by the user.

[rednblu]

Bravo, @wbrinegar, I like your design for a Shuffle that really works across all devices.

The many commenters in this thread showed me how to do my version of your complete redesign of the Spotify shuffle to make it work across all devices.

As you can see from >> this last.fm analysis << I get Zero repeats in over 6,000 played tracks across all devices-- different operating systems, different versions of Spotify, different mobile devices. The "repeats" you see in that last.fm analysis are all RequestedRepeats that I specifically put onto some PlayQueue.

But you will have to do the "programming fixes" yourself-- they are simple, as my friends showed me-- but you will have to do the "programming fixes" yourself. Spotify is busy creating new "features" for the 80% of paying customers that don't mind at all those "repeats" across devices.

Bravo!, wbrinegar, for your perfect design for what Spotify should do for us-- sometime. (laughing)

[rafandersson]

I think Shuffle works by having songs of the same genre next to each other sometimes. So like I have 3-4 reggae songs right after each other. And them 4 EDM songs? Is it true? 

[AdamEidi]

I am having issues with shuffle since the new version of Spotify has been installed/updated couple days ago. Both desktop and mobile apps started to repeat the same songs. Given example, shuffle keeps repeating merely a fifth or sixth of my saved songs in a regular pattern. Sometimes it even plays the same song twice or three times in a row and then it switches to a song of the same artist, album, etc.

It'd be also great if the shuffle recognized songs of the same artist and didn't repeat an artist or songs of the particular album too much so as to ensure variability within the random order.

[elmagron]

Here's a truly revolutionary idea: how about you make the Shuffle function actually shuffle songs? In a 600-song playlist, I have songs that are played 3-4 times in one day, while others I haven't heard in over a week. Please get real, this is just stupid. You have just lost a premium subscriber over this - one of many, I presume, since it seems there have been complaints about this for years already