[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

[jonathanleyerle]

So I’ve been noticing more and more recently that Spotify’s default shuffle feature doesn’t fully shuffle your songs. It does some sort of grouping to try to get similar songs together based off of what I’m sure is dozens of factors. Every time I shuffle a playlist (the one I noticed this with the most is ~100 songs and 6 hours of mostly full albums) it will group the songs mostly or completely together by album/artist, and given the number of times I’ve re-shuffled and checked the order there’s no way it’s just a coincidence. They also generally seem to be in the same order as well. If I hit shuffle play on a playlist it’ll generally put the same artists at the beginning every time.

With larger playlists of albums I am really not a fan of this shuffling method. If I have 6 hours of music on a playlist I will hardly ever have 6 hours to actually listen through the whole thing, but when I do listen to it I would like to hear all of the music on it equally, and not just the artist or two your algorithm likes to shuffle to first.

Anyways, I’m a reasonable man, all I’m asking for is an option to have a true shuffle (take all songs in the list, put them in a random order, and once they’re all played reshuffle them and play them again). Make it premium only if you want. I don’t think you should scrap the current shuffle algorithm because it sucks. Looking at some of the suggestions on here it seems like some people lobbied hard to have it that way. Just add an option for a true shuffle for those of us that don’t care about potentially getting the same song twice in a row.

[Mihail]

Updated on 2021-09-14

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your votes and for bringing us your feedback in the Spotify Idea Exchange.

As this idea has gathered a fair amount of votes, we've discussed it with the relevant team once again. We actually want to take a closer look at what you're experiencing and get some of you in touch with our devs.

@jonathanleyerle- since you initiated the thread it would be great if we can have you on board.

@j4m1eb, @PrestonSale, @decker12, @jules99- what you mention is particularly interesting, so we'd like to have you on board as well.

We'll send you more info via Community PM, so please make sure they're enabled in your Community settings.

If anyone else is interested in participating, please let us know in this thread. We'll reach out to you, should we need more folks.

Thanks!

[rozeboosje]

@Mihail yes please.

My patience with this issue has worn extremely thin at this point. I am currently in the process of setting up a PLEX server so I can listen to my own music in a much more genuinely "random" order. But with Spotify I would not have to keep my PLEX server running all the time and of course there are also options in Spotify that I could never get with PLEX, such as discovering new music. But that's how frustrated I have gotten with this... I'm seriously considering moving to that methodology.

[decker12]

Sure, I'm on board and made sure to opt-in via my the little mailbox icon in my community profile.

[algorithm_guy]

That is excellent news!

I have SDET experience in SCRUM environments, as well as background designing music players (personal projects)  I would be interested in being part of any more technical/idea discussion, inasmuch as my participation could be helpful.  Admittedly I do lack any background in balancing the needs of casual users vs power users and as such am curious the opinions and inputs  of others (including more business focused angles).  After all, I'm an engineer not a human!

[jonathanleyerle]

@Mihail My inbox is open im pretty sure. Let me know what sort of info you’d like me to provide.

[teollo]

I want to volunteer myself!

[PrestonSale]

I don't know how to make sure I'm open to PMs but I haven't avoided being. I'm interested in being part of any changes, so please let me know if unable to communicate with me as a couple of customer service people have through my email over the last week or so.  Thanks! Preston

[PrestonSale]

I don't know how to make sure I'm open to PMs but I haven't avoided being. I'm interested in being part of any changes, so please let me know if unable to communicate with me as a couple of customer service people have through my email over the last week or so.  Thanks! Preston

[JonoEddy]

Should you creat a true shuffle option, I would love to be an early tester of the feature!

[rednblu]

Yes, @rozeboosje-- Also my patience wore thin with hearing those infuriating repeats and the predictable and wrong structuring of the track order from the Spotify shuffle-- so like you, I had to set up my own "server operation" to queue correctly what comes through my speakers.

What I determined was "sufficient" for my hearing apparatus was to automate the process for me to 1) skip any play that I had heard in the last 90 days and to 2) present as my play queue whatever order of songs would come from sorting on the RAND() function in an Excel spreadsheet.

But, as several of you on this discussion thread and other similar threads of frustration with Spotify's shuffle pointed out to me-- I had to make sure that the playlist I put into the Excel shuffle had been deduplicated to remove covers, repeat performances, new mixes of the same performance, repeat performances with different track names, . . . .  That is, deduplication had to remove any track that my ears would interpret as a flaw in Spotify's shuffle.

And in the end, what I get from all of that work to build my own server operation is my AllOfSpotify_Queue-- which presents only the tracks that I have not played in the last 90 days--

-- plus for me then, Spotify is perfect and the best-- as long as it lasts and as long as Spotify allows me to do what I have to do.

And thanks to all of the writers above for all of the suggestions on how I could do this myself.  For I had to do it by building my own "server operation"-- as @rozeboosje says.