[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.

[kevinswoon]

More than 10 years of making money and they can't
 generate a decent random selection.

[Fams]

When I play from my liked songs, when I click a new song I was expecting a randomized song list for all songs after that in the queue. Every time I play a new song I end up with a very similar queue as before, so I cannot truly randomize my playback of songs. This used to happen this way, but something changed and it now sucks.

[dank13]

I've been a subscriber of Spotify since they launch in May 2012, and last week I cancelled my family subscription and moved to Apple Music. When they asked why am I cancelling my subscription:
- Lack for true shuffle
- Lack of HomePod support
- Never listen to their users
- Constant price increases 
And a few other reasons.
But i'm glad I did it, I guess its the best way to tell them something, is by giving your money to someone else. Since I've added HomePods around my house, i've been paying for Spotify and Apple Music, and ended up getting better service from Apple Music than Spotify.
- Better shuffle (doesn't repeat songs on big playlists)
- HomePod support
- Lossless Dolby Atmos music
- Pays artists more per stream
So, long story short i'm glad i'm not paying AU$28/mo to a company that is greedy and doesn't listen to their customers.

[ebbaozolins]

Since it been a issue since 2020, maybe they should actually fix this, especially since they are rising the subscription fee again.

[newfoundmass]

How is this still not fixed? Shuffle is virtually useless, as it repeatedly plays the same songs (in the same order no less) constantly!

It's the point where I am heavily considering moving to another service.

[brother_down]

It's crazy that this isn't a feature. Since people have been asking for this for years.

[1_Volcan_en_ATL]

some of my playlists have over 1000 songs, but when i put the list on shuffle, why do the same songs keep coming up? Why aren't the ones that haven't been heard coming up?

There needs to be the ability to set a playlist to be set to "shuffle", and the priority will be to play songs that have a lower play-count. 

I'm getting sick of the algorithm paying the same songs. Ihave over 400 playlists, na d naturally there is cross-pollination, but just because i heard a song on one playlist doesn't mean i want it pushed to the front of the line on another playlist

[telengard]

I posted back in here a couple of months ago after getting super frustrated with the Spotify shuffle.  I'd hit play on a playlist with shuffle on (not 'smart' shuffle), and it would play songs I've heard recently all the time (even though I have > 7500 liked songs), and if I shut Spotify down and started play again on another device etc it would play the exact same songs over again from the start!

After that post I made, I started developing an app to do random shuffles of your playlists, put a lot of time into it and it works great!  However, I should have read the new requirements for app developers as of May 2025.  I cannot release my app as it has herculean, if not impossible requirements to meet their standards.  You have to have 250k users before they'll grant you the ability to publish the app, and it's a sort of chicken and egg problem as until you are granted rights from Spotify, you can only have 25 users.  😞

I called it Shuflit... shame it can't be shared with all the folks on here unhappy with shuffling as I was.  If the terms of service of streaming/control apps for devs ever changes, I'll make this available.

shuflit