[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.

[Enced]

This is the one thing that makes me not want to pay a monthly subscription. I don't want to listen to the same songs over and over, that's why I want a shuffle mode. When I've talked to other people about this, they have suggested I should use apple music instead. As a work around, I've created a playlist called "Spotify-overplays-these" where I put the songs it keeps playing in preference to being random, that way I may actually eventually get to listen to all of my songs. [True shuffle is not difficult for a computer to do, it only needs the time stamp of when a playlist was last modified and the time stamp when the shuffle was started to seed the random number generator to permute the list (or choose a permutation).]

[Plazmex8]

If 5.5k votes aren't enough for Spotify to fix almost a decade long bug, then I don't what will.

[dank13]

Spotify has over 678 million users, including 268 million subscribers. 5.5K votes is 0.00081% of users....  I don't think that is going to make a dent on Spotify pockets even if we all leave tomorrow... Unfortunately that is the reality we are facing.... Spotify don't give a fk about us.

[oddindeed]

hey spotify, your shuffle sucks **bleep**

[Undeterred]

I just cancelled my Spotify Plan. I encourage others to do the same, there are better music streaming platforms out there and all offer free trial periods, cheaper options and have capability to shuffle playlists properly.

NOTE TO SPOTIFY:

This platform does not shuffle playlists properly and I get annoyed listening to such a small selection of songs from any given playlist and resorting to a third-party app just to hear a decent shuffled mix. There's clearly business reasons for this and you're no doubt aware of this glaring shortcoming from the innumerable requests and complaints on the Spotify Community pages. To add insult to injury, during the cancellation process Spotify has the nerve to offer me a discount! Why don't you support your EXISTING customers? This absolutely confirms to me I am making the right decision, to move away from Spotify. Your customer service is appalling. Seriously, you have the biggest market share but you are a long way from being best in class. Your competitors are growing their share, steadily, because they do more than you. So now I get more and pay less for simply shopping elsewhere. You have the opportunity to be the best but given the complete lack of customer focus, I sincerely hope you go under, you insufferable merchants of greed. Good riddance.

[compunrd]

Especially since you said it costs less, which other streaming service did you go with?

[Undeterred]

There's plenty of options out there and all seem priced fairly similarly. All of them offer a trial period, so you can check them out with no obligation to pay until the trial period ends (then either sign up or cancel).
I figure the "best" platform will be different for each user depending on what they're looking for, so it's important to trial and see how you go before committing to a plan. There's also services which (for a once off, small fee) migrate your playlists across to whatever platform you choose.
For me, I have an android phone based in Australia and my interests are in music only (no podcasts, etc.). During the trial periods I migrated all my playlists across, to see if the music database covered everything I usually listen to. The main two platforms I focused on were Tidal and Deezer. A quick web search will bring up comparisons of these vs Spotify if you want to read up on it further.
Both interfaces were good, I preferred Tidal, but Deezer wasn't far behind. With the music I listen to (various playlists), Deezer had more of the songs, in Tidal there were a few too many missing. So I went with Deezer.
I had already signed up to Deezer Family Plan before cancelling Spotify, then when I went to cancel Spotify they suddenly want me to stay and offer a discount. With the new discount it would have been $1 cheaper per month, but I leave out of principal anyway, this is an extraordinarily disrespectful way to treat customers. 

[WinandVM]

Jesus Christ, I'm sick and tired of listening to the same 300 songs over and over again. I have 7.000 more songs in my list! It's ridiculously stupid.

[oddindeed]

spotify, your shiet service did it again. 

[oddindeed]

FIX YOU SHIET!