[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.

[rednblu]

Status:

WOW!  Thank you, DEVS!-- Perfect shuffle now!

Zero unasked repeats.

I am running  1.2.42.290.g242057a2 under  WIN_10 with about 10,000 new tracks just added to my All_202K_tracks... folder just three days ago in about three folders of over 30 playlists to my regular background shuffle of over 12 of 9K track cumulative playlists--

And last.fm shows that this newest version of desktop Spotify shuffle now prioritizes the newest tracks with an estimated favoritism of about 90% to new tracks over the 120,000 tracks that were already in my All_202K_tracks... folder.  (I guess I should soon take that ...202... out of the folderName-- right?)

Furthermore, I can tell that-- over the last three days-- the concentration of JustAdded tracks in the play queue has dropped-- and of course, the concentration of old tracks has grown back toward what it was before I added the new tracks.

From my user end, the only special thing I did was-- after the initial setup-- use the

* Double-Click on the initialization playlist

* Right-Click on the FolderName and “Play” from the dropDownMenu, then

* Enjoy the perfectly shuffled Spotify music!

-- that routine that everybody on this forum helped me and all of my family accounts find by trial-and-error. 

Thanks for helping us enjoy perfect shuffles on Spotify now!

[dreamy_error]

its been 4 years. has any progress been made on this? i have a playlist with 60+ hours of music and yet i hear the same 10 or songs every time.

[bynofdoom]

Please, please, please make this happen! I'm so sick of hitting Smart Shuffle on my playlists and getting the same songs, in the same order, every. single. time. And it always starts with the most recently added, which gets annoying. If I turn shuffle off and back on again, it should be reshuffled in a different order, it shouldn't go back to the exact same order as before, starting from the beginning again. 

I also keep getting the same tracks repeated multiple times, both back to back, and a few in a row, and then the same few again. It's very frustrating.

[rednblu]

  >>  … and yet I hear the same 10 or so songs   …  and I’m getting the same songs, in the same order, every. single. time.

Yes--  That happens to all of us-- to all of my friends and family accounts UNLESS-- unless we always shuffle an initialization playlist before we shuffle the playlist that we want to hear shuffled.

My favorite initialization playlist is a FiveTrackPlaylist from five different brightly colored album pictures so that my play queue quickly indicates repeats or something else wrong that won’t go away.

Then I set my defaults so that all I have to do on a laptop for example is

* Double-click my initialization playlist--  then

* Double-click the playlist that I want to hear and then

* Enjoy a perfect shuffle that starts with a random first track and gives me no unasked repeats--  until I reboot or logout or play all the songs in my playlist for example.

We need to get the Spotify help desk to correct all of the Spotify instructions so that the instructions don’t cause these infuriating repeats.

[Bobbbq134]

You guys really don't care about paying customers.

I'm just going to pay for YouTube Music which can shuffle since the beginning since it's a very simple and basic features.

Horrible customer service 

[fraktalisman]

Default Spotify shuffle has become even more broken recently: Spotify plays recommended songs that aren't even part of the playlist, and they call this "smart" ?! 🙄😲🤢

[Undeterred]

S P O T I F Y   I S    F Û Ċ Ķ É Ð   A N D   T H E Y   D O N ' T   C A R E 

[Undeterred]

Dear Spotify, 
Please keep merging similar requests into this thread, because EVERYONE who ends up here realises that you DO NOTHING either because you can't or because you dont care. SAD.

SPOTIFY SHUFFLE DOES NOT WORK. NEVER HAS. NEVER WILL. A$$HOLES ! 

It's time to leave; there are BETTER OPTIONS.

[jlesieur]

Ahh.....popping back in for another monthly laugh! 

I'm not sure what's worse...Spotify being complete corporate douche bags not giving two shits about customer requests and feedback, or the drones of you on here complaining about a missing feature yet continuing to give them your money when there are much better options out there. Guys and gals, it's time to actually start being hands on consumers again. Stop throwing your money to clown companies like Spotify just because they make a shiny app and spend a boat load of money on advertising. How about actually supporting companies who treat their customers with respect? 

At the end of the day, all the whining and complaining on here won't force change. Spotify has already affirmed that. If you keep giving them your money, why would they change anything? I don't know, maybe make the change yourself by moving to a different platform? What a concept...

Oh, and yes I know you have playlists and moving them would be a pain. Well, stop whining then if you don't want to put in the effort (why have we become so lazy). Or better yet, think for yourself, realize there are programs that can automatically transfer your playlists from Spotify to another service, move on and don't look back (except to come here and have a laugh). 

[KortWizzard]

Random w/ no repeats and repeat, something my old cd Walkman could do.  Why won't they implement?  

This is my main complaint and has driven me to other music apps multiple times.