[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.

[Mookpsu]

I've been with Amazon Music for years and overall it is a much better
platform than Spotify. You are correct about the shuffle, it is a true
shuffle. It also allows you to listen to different playlists on
different devices at the same time without having to "upgrade" your premium
subscription.

The annoying feature you referenced is an "improvement" they implemented in
the last year or so and is what caused me to switch to Spotify. A very
simple workaround to this "improvement" is to delete the current version of
the app and then find & download an older version of it. Then turn off
auto-update on your device. I'm currently using version 17.6.1 and it saves
your playlist progress for as long as you want it to. Why Amazon thought
people would not like this feature anymore is beyond me but at least you're
not "stuck" with it like you are with Sptofy's "shuffle". I was given a one
year subscription to Spotify as a Christmas present and once that runs out
I'm gone. No way I'm giving my hard earned money to a company that could
care less about its customers. In the meantime I have been using
SpotifyShuffler and while it is annoying to have to take an extra step to
listen to my music, at least it makes it enjoyable

[andiejo]

So how many likes are enough to get this Live Idea implemented? Was just on a road trip and picked a playlist that would carry me through - 85 songs/6 hours. The same 20 songs kept repeating. I would skip and few times and a new song would pop up, then it was back to one of the 20. Skip a few times again to get a fresh song, but then back to the original list. I understand the algorithm is selecting these, but dude, why create a playlist that won't play in full, unless you are listening to them in order? And why would I want to listen in order? That's the beauty of shuffling the playlist - the surprise of the next song. People have been complaining about this for years now - give the people what they want!

[teollo]

Dream on dreamers!

This will never be fixed.

You'll ask why I stay on the forum if I think so.

The reasons are:

- I dream on

- I love the "family" this topic created, and I would miss you if I leave

- I am curious to see how long this will last

But, I want to be practical for some minutes.

I understand there are 2 services helping us to shuffle our playlists.

.spotifytoolz.com

and

.spotifyshuffler.com

Me, I use the second one. It's great and work easily, even if I need everytime to login and shuffle manually the playlist.

My question is: is there a way to schedule or to automate this action of shuffling? Any coder-programmer-computer-expert-nerd who can help and share on this?

This would be a workaround on the problem, blame on spotify and blah blah blah, but at least it would work!

[rozeboosje]

As I've said before, I refuse to pay for a service if I then have to start using 3rd party tools to make it work the way it should. And that aside, I'm a little paranoid so I'd be reluctant to hand over my Spotify credentials to a 3rd party tool developer. If none of that bothers you, then by all means I do believe those tools work very well.

[Dunkinidaho]

No one monitors this complaint site. I’ve never seen a written response
from anyone at Spotify here.

[lwf2013]

A moderator just referred me to this "live idea" after I added to someone else's recent complaint about the non-random shuffle. So somebody at Spotify understands it's an issue for some (many?) of us. Whether it will ever be addressed, I have no idea.

[rozeboosje]

As far as a moderator claiming this is a "live idea" is concerned let me just call a spade a spade here and tell you that's a barefaced lie. It's a shuffle, for Pete's sake, not software designed to safely run a Nuclear power plant. As for its level of difficulty, this is Programming 101. There is literally no way on Earth this has presented Spotify's "top developers" with a challenge they have not been able to overcome in more than two years. Please. To suggest such a thing is an insult to the intelligence of every person who visits this discussion.

[heraschanka]

I WANT TO BELIEVE

[raidu1]

How many people have to get angry to get that true shuffle?

[kreal]

Shuffle = Random. We don't want Spotify's algorithm version of Shuffle. Give us a truly random shuffle when the shuffle button is pressed. How many likes will it take for this to be addressed??