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.

[Jalvb73]

The random should be improved.
If you listen to a playlist in random and finishe, and then start again, the musics come again almost in the same order...

[kneipe2]

@Jalvb73 this has to do with them not changing their seed for their "randomizer" function. A simple fix but, alas, they haven't bothered with such a silly thing. It's the gamblers fallacy. hashtagsnark

[Stefanie_Eilis]

Having some wireless issues going to Ireland (saying it's 2.00 per minute) however,  I Iisten to Spotify day and night. If I can find a way to connect to wireless - will I be able to listen over there from my laptop at least? I cant go musicless

[3mon]

Or at least give us another button for real shuffle if you want to maintain the non-random random button 😛

THanks!

[Sivee]

I'm having the same problem, I'm glad it's not just me. My playlist with over 600 tracks, keeps playing the same bunch. I never had this problem with iTunes. A shuffle function that actually works is not much to ask from a £10 a month music service! The 3 month free trial with apple music is looking very tempting, however recreating my playlists is not...

[styerswill]

It's 2016 and I'm still having this problem. I completely love the idea

[polynomial]

Yeah, this is still a problem, "implemented" or not, the shuffle function is very poor at picking tracks randomly.

[hlatifi]

The improvement does not work. I have a 7 hour long playlist and when I set it to shuffle, I hear the same handful of songs, about an hour's worth. What happened to the other 6 hours of music I have in the playlist? The shuffle feature needs another improvement. 

[jsomm2]

It seems that the shuffle feature for Spotify, and especially when you use with your playlists and not just a certain artist, always just randomly plays the most recent songs you've added to the playlist and then slowly starts to make its way backwards towards the first songs that were added to it. This may not seem like a big deal but when you have a playlist with 500 songs in it and all you ever hear on shuffle are the last 150 you added to it, something's not right. It's almost as if it just randomly plays the last 20% of your playlist and then moves to the next 20% and so on, and this happens every single time. Very rarely you get an early added song thrown in there but I know for a fact there are certain songs that are just never ever played on shuffle because of their location on my playlists. When I choose to listen to my playlists with the shuffle feature, I expect it to do just that, shuffle up my entire playlist into a random and newly ordered playlist and then play that through. Not just listen to the last songs added in a different order and sometimes have those songs repeated. I'm not sure why it does this, maybe the programming and code that allows shuffle to work is only effective with a certain number of songs in the playlist and then it's function kinda starts to break down, but either way, I would love for this to be fixed so we can all listen to our bigger playlists and actually get to enjoy a solid mix of their entirety. Don't get me wrong, Spotify is awesome, this is just a thought, but I think it would be totally worth it.

[kreal]

The shuffle is NOT fixed. I have a playlist with 300+ songs and I keep hearing the same familiar songs every time I press shuffle. There are some songs in that playlist that I never hear, while there are some that I hear all the time. Even after I sort my playlist by Ablum, Title, or recenly added, the problem still persists. It really takes away from the user experience especially when you took the time to put together a nice playlist.  Come on Spotify, actually listen to your users and implement a fix already...do a quick Google search and you will see users have been complaining about this issue for years.