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.

[caglakhan]

This has been very frustrating and nothing has improved since the supposed change in February! I never had this problem with iTunes, Windows Media Player or anything else.   I guess the only solution is to quit using Spotify and switch to someone else. 

[Jelly591]

I have the same issue but not only with saved songs but with the "artist radio" stations. It plays the same set of songs over and over, sometimes the same songs follow to other stations of similar genres and continues to loop the same songs even though i havent "liked" the song on the new station

[Viralpoet]

I'm glad I'm not the only one to see the shuffle as a weak point. 850 songs and I hear the same 50 or so each time. I put my songs into Google play or iTunes and hear tracks I've not heard in over 6 months.

[jpholzschuh]

The Spotify random is not random enough. It seems everytime I select random, my playlist plays "randomly" in the same order, i.e. it seems a random playlist is made within my playlist, that plays every time I restart it. Also, with a playlist consisting of more than 75 hours of music, I would not expect to hear the same song more than once within that period of time, meaning the entire playlist should play, randomly, through the entire list before repeating a song. On many occasions I have played one of my playlists for about 3 or 4 hours and have heard the same song more than twice, how is that random while other songs in the playlist are never played when I select random? It almost seems as if Spotify is playing the most "popular" songs in my playlist over any of the others. Let me know how you feel about these comments.

[Sardior]

 Yesterday shuffle wouldn't leave 6 Artists/albums, and even after skipping over "50" songs it recycled the same songs again. Quite simply your new algorithms suck. I was playing my entire library (thousands of songs) and all Spotify could find were the last albums I added. Repeated songs over and over (please agents of Spotify look at my history if you want proof).

[thehosh]

Have a playlist with over 900 songs, the same song played twice in the last 15 minutes... It's 3 years after this issue was initially raised and still nothing. 

[Cricket29]

Please spotify doing something about the shuffle system it is horrible the same songs are played back to back and there is only a handful of songs that are actually played I know spotify wants customers to buy premium but it does not make me want to buy premium please change this

[3mon]

I am playing a new playlist in random since last friday with quite a few songs. Among them i have the song Silver Screen, Shower Scene from a Felix the Housecat album, which is in Spotify, and a remix of said song by Laurent Garnier that i added locally because it wasnt available in Spotify. Shuffle play has played these 2 songs in order one after the other THREE times today, and at least once yesterday. This **bleep** aint random, it is selecting tracks acording to some algorythm we dont know.

[kpwiebe]

This is not "solved". Who determined that in the first place? In addition to the Shuffle problem itself, the Spotify process for reporting and resolving issues is also broken. Spotify Support needs an overhaul if this issue is any indication. Come on, this isn't Freeware...

[chrisshakes]

Hello! Spotify is great, but Spotify's shuffle is awful. As anyone who uses it knows, it constantly repeats the same songs, while completely skipping others.

For example, I made a 9 hour, 150 song summer playlist. I shuffle this playlist for hours every day. At a quick glance, about 25% of the songs didn't get played all summer, and at least 10-20 of them are played every single session. That, I'm afraid, is not very random.

Please improve this for all who love to shuffle. Cheers!