Announcements
The Spotify Stars Program: Celebrating Values Week!

Help Wizard

Step 1

NEXT STEP

[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

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.

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!

Comments
algorithm_guy

LOL @rednblu at Excel rand()

 

Spotify's recommendation lists are beyond awesome and the reason I'm paying is for legal access to tens of millions of licensed songs -- not ready to give that up

 

Although, I have stopped using the built-in shuffle function, I prefer to look at it as 'glass half full' since it motivated me to setup a playlist to re-listen to everything I'd ever clicked like on  (Around 2800 songs, about 66% done... that's taking awhile! lol.. also can't miss Discover Weekly or Release Radar, so that slows me down)

Kspan06

I have always wanted a true shuffle! I feel like the algorithm takes into account what I have been listening to or added lately as more important. I hate that because than I don't get to hear songs I like but have not listened to in a while. Also, in my 8000 liked songs the likelihood of songs never being played because of the algorithm is high. Truly random as an option would be greatly appreciated! 

sadastronaut

@Mihail, I would be interested in participating as well.

teollo

@mihail, me too!

PrestonSale

Iver already posted this but it does not appear like it is visible or went through completely as prior ones have. I posted:

 

"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"

Darth13

The random play is really horrible. I have a playlist with like 32 hours of music. It plays the same like 30 songs over and over and over. If you stop listening, it repeats at the first track that it played when you listened earlier. It is effing garbage and has been a problem since at least 2012. New idea ha **bleep**ing ha

vertigo98

Hey @Mihail, this is what I'm currently experiencing when I say that shuffle mode isn't random. I've made a video proving this issue. Everyone, please share this video on forums & social media so it gets Spotify's attention 🙏


sadastronaut

Well done @vertigo98, 

I have a similar post (although not as well done) here.  

pauldeoktopus

I concur with all the comments below. When I shuffle I really want a randomized list of songs. I appreciate all that your algorithms have done to show me new music, but it is antecedent to the whole function of shuffle. Please allow users to utilize an actual random shuffle function.

Thank you.

vertigo98

Did they change something? The behavior I showed on the video above isn’t happening anymore, atleast on the iOS and Web version of Spotify, it’s still happening on the Desktop version though (macOS). 

Spotify, please confirm that shuffle is actually random now so I can switch back from that awful Apple Music app 😂😭