[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.

[nbondoc]

I've been complaining about this for the past 10 years! Watch the Netflix
documentary about Spotify called "The Playlist". It's a 6 part mini-series
that is an eye-opener! You will have your answer.

[Shiv71]

do we have to ? Can't you just put it in a short sentence on here? 🙂

[brand0n]

I love my playlists and the year in review but I'd consider changing music providers if this doesn't ever get sorted out.  

[carrucha00]

Already added this on another idea, but this looks like the real one...

1. Your "random" sucks, try to make it more random.  This has been working fine for the rest of the world even since before the winamp days, why is this so difficult?  And don't tell me anything about pseudo random numbers and how a computer can never pick a truly random number... the rest of the world has figured out how to get "random" numbers that everyone would agree are "random enough".

2. It seems like only some songs are ever able to be chosen.  This is frustrating when I spend time putting together playlists with hundreds or thousands of songs.  Your library is good, but your interface needs help.

3. Sometimes after listening for a while it seems to get stuck on the same few tracks.

4. When I listen on one device, then pick up on another it mostly works. But when I go back to the first later it will cycle through the same songs I just listened to on device 1.  

Usually when it all goes belly up I have to randomly start the playlist over again to not listen to the same songs again.

[rozeboosje]

As people have pointed out several times already, this is not a technical problem but a political one. And as a result it will never be resolved. Either the top management at Spotify are irredeemably stupid, OR someone has them over a barrel. I don't know whether it's their advertisers or some of the record companies, but Spotify have been forced down a path of no return where they cannot or will not act on this request, as reasonable as it is. You may think you're a "paying customer" with your Spotify Premium account, but your payments fade into insignificance compared to their ad revenue and their financial obligations to record companies, and as a result your complains will count for nothing.

Smell the coffee.

[ShuffleHater]

One of the things I was hoping to get when switching to premium was a better shuffle. I have a main playlist I use 99.9% of the time that has nearly 48 hours of music... Yet I hear the same songs every couple of hours. How hard can it be to put in a simple random number generator? I really couldn't care less what other people think are popular - I curated this playlist for what I want to listen to, and it contains some tracks that are widely popular and others that shall we say aren't. But I want them to be equally popular for me.

On an unrelated note, I recently connected my account to my Chromecast device - and that was a bad idea since it totally disabled shuffle, regardless of whether I was playing on the TV or not

Took a while to disconnect it sufficiently that shuffle became an option again. Keep it simple....

[jpm-178]

Is there any way to only get notified if spotify responds to this issue?

Also, is there any way to actually make noise about this for spotify? I'm guessing they have this thread muted, it might make more sense to try to contact their support or blast them on social media and start generating negative press about this rather than keeping it confined to a thread of people who already care about the issue complaining at each other. I'd do it if I used social media

[fcmzqudym3lpfk6]

Yes please, please PLEASE make true random shuffle at least an option if not the default. The algorithm used gets you in a spiral of the same songs over and over which infuriating.

[Levzowk]

Yes! It has been infuriating lately, normal and “smart” shuffle completely unable to play me a single song I want, playing the same 10 songs over and over! I don’t know what they’ve messed up under the hood but lately the situation has been terrible. I may have to use YouTube music for its slightly better algorithm if things continue like this. 

[mikeael]

@spotify Stop acting like you're Algorithm knows what I want to listen to. I curate my own listening experience. Isn't that the point of playlists? Yet your Algo highjacks the shuffle feature. I have to use a third party app to get the True Random Shuffle experience I deserve as a paying customer. I don't want "Shuffle+". I WANT REAL SHUFFLE.