[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]

I can’t know what Spotify means by [New Idea]-- but all of my family accounts find that the Spotify shuffle is light years better now in May than it was in January.

For example, someone has published a trick for initializing Win_10 and Win_11 Spotify players so that they both will shuffle perfectly on any Folder of 202,000 tracks and then “Select another device” to play on an iPhone-- This newest advance displays on mobile that the playQueue consists of tracks from the FolderName = “FolderOf_202K_tracks” at the top of the screen and then displays in the next line the “Now playing” track and then reports “Next from FolderOf_202K_...” followed by the next three tracks of the upcoming totality of Shuffled tracks queued from the Folder.

Hence, it appears that Spotify is preparing to announce some great advance in

1) detecting shuffle failure immediately when shuffle failure happens-- which is indicated on the mobile when the “Next from” field goes blank-- and

2) providing an automated re-initialization of play for the rest of the unplayed tracks from the shuffle that just failed.

Accordingly, in the last overnight Win_11 update that broke the Win-11 shuffle, just letting the connected mobile proceed with its connected shuffle play of the “FolderOf_202K_tracks”, after the desktop Spotify running on Win_11 came back up and sat there for fifteen minutes, the Win_11 Spotify player read in the updated parameters from the shuffle play that had proceeded all night on the mobile-- and after the Win_11 Spotify queue updated to be in sync with the mobile, the Win_11 Spotify player could continue play normally without breaking-- and hence without any of those infuriating repeats of tracks that had already played.

Desktop Folder, File structure, and lacking FolderName in Queue displayPerfect shuffle on mobile-- Workstation initiated this shuffle on 202,000 tracks held in one folder containing many playlists across many Sub-folders-- Then from the workstation "Connect to a device" and select the mobile

[julien230]

Can you imagine this is annoying enough for 262 users to take the hassle every day to go to https://stevenaleong.com/tools/spotifyplaylistrandomizer ?

And there are so many of these randomizers...

Just keep it simple: random is... random,

not stupid smart IA sort of random.

[Ivr]

It's the gaslighting that makes it so insufferable.  

Spotify made a deliberate choice for shuffle to be the way it is now. They're not willing to offer a 'randomize playlist order' function which would immediately conclude the matter at hand.  

It's not a bug, it's policy. We don't know why this is their policy. They're unwilling to be transparent about it. It breeds cynicism as people will speculate this is about Spotify either preserving resources (by putting select songs in the fast lane) or putting their thumb on the scale for labels that demand it (by putting select songs in the fast lane).  

If there was a more benevolent, altruistic reason for depriving the community of a randomize playlist order, then they woud have shared it with us by now.   

[RICARDO448]

I agree 100% It is incredible the horrible shuffle that Spotify has and the lack of willingness to do a random one as described with the ability to tick each song played

[stevemcgowan1954]

And they have increased the premium price to £11.99 a month

[rozeboosje]

Exactly. If they were serious about fixing this they would stop the algorithmic Juan King, simply shuffle all N tracks in the playlist, save the playlist in the newly created order and then allow the Spotify Premium user to play this playlist without shuffling all the way through from song 1 to N.

Programming 101

[rozeboosje]

@stevemcgowan1954

Of course they have. They are dealing with people who have been paying for Spotify Premium for years despite them ignoring simple requests like this one. They know they are dealing with a cohort of people who mistakenly believe they are a captive audience and so they keep paying Spotify for their abysmal service. Spotify has learned that they can get away with murder and treat their paying listeners like idiots.

[luciano9429]

@rozeboosje

Maybe once because there were only them in the market. Sooner or later people get tired of it, there are so many music streaming services

[rozeboosje]

Exactly. There are, and there are tools that will let you migrate your Spotify playlist to a provider who actually cares about what you, as a paying customer, want.

[Darth_GTB]

@rozeboosje, could you share some competitor suggestions and a tool like that? I'm actually looking into moving to another platform right now