[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.

[Mookpsu]

Or you can just switch to another company that gives you a true shuffle by
just hitting the shuffle button

[rednblu]

Absolutely!  Well said!  And I have taken your advice.

Therefore, I will transfer to a better shuffler when I have found all the tracks and renditions that I like!

For right now, looking for new music, I make do with completely random scattered repeats due to restarting-- including re-initializing my continuous shuffle to include up to over 202K tracks together with new Spotify Sub-folders containing new organization and new playlist modules with new tracks and new artists.

For the last 90 days of finding new music that I like I have Spotify shuffle scrobbled 17,317 different TrackNames under one Spotify folder . . . .   with only two tracks repeated 4 times randomly and none repeated 5 or more times over the rolling 90 days of now 17,322 different TrackNames of shuffled tracks.

Hence in the process, I am compiling the performance specifications that I will require of this new and improved new shuffle service that I have not found yet.

[sithmith]

It's just ridicoulous that a billion dollar company like Spotify, doesn't have the knowledge to make a decent shuffle feature. Or is there something more nefarious going on and maybe you have some sort of artist package deals for this, to promote certain artists over other ones? Either way, how unfriendly you are to your consumers is something that we can all depend on! 

[rednblu]

I think there is a lot of heart in what you say.

[Slip269]

lets be honest, the shuffle feature came out when CD players first came out,  there's little effort in implementing the feature unless there's no payback in return for doing so 😉

[rozeboosje]

Obviously we are not privy to the inner workings of Spotify but let's make a few reasonable assumptions:

1. Spotify engineers are not stupid. A randomizer function is Programming 101. There is no technical reason why this couldn't be implemented.

2. Spotify aren't so evil that they are deliberately refusing to do this just because they like to see their listeners suffer.

3. If something isn't technically hard to do and it won't cost them a lot of money to do it, anybody who develops software would jump at the chance to implement something that would make their users happy.

So I can only conclude that the reason Spotify are not doing this is that doing this would cost them dearly. What I don't know is why. Contractual obligations? As I mentioned before, Spotify was the first serious legal music streaming service on the market. Picture it as a still pretty small company besieged by record companies and artists threatening to sue it out of existence. Perhaps they agreed to a few "sweet deals" at the time that now have them backed into a corner. A situation that later streaming services didn't have to contend with. Sometimes being the first at something can later bite you in the backside.

[zx6dude]

What I really don't get, is the way Spotify are ignoring this. At least come clean and say you can't/won't do it and why.

Ignoring paying customers (ex customer in my case) is not the way to go. 

Giving a canned nothing answer is even worse than being ignored. It's insulting. 

I find Spotify's treatment of their customers as far as this issue is concerned appalling. I think this forum is here just so they can tick a box saying that they provide a customer service. 

I do miss some Spotify features, but I'm glad I'm not giving them my money anymore. 

[wearedunn4]

I have over 4500 hundred songs in my 'Liked' playlist and I still hear the same songs from day to day.  Makes zero sense.  If I want to hear the same songs more often, I'll make a playlist ;).

[José4]

Ordem aleatória sem repetições!

[rozeboosje]

Now look what you've done. Now they've started begging in Portuguese.