[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]

shotdeadfred welcome to our forum where dreams come to die. If you want a true random shuffle you can either use a third party program that will reorder your playlist for you or give your hard earned money to a company that gives a s**t about its customers which is what most of us did. You will own a house on Pluto before Spotify implements a true shuffle

[Mookpsu]

There's a very easy way to get what you are looking for, it's called Amazon
Music

[nomad71]

Well, I've been following this for a few years now. So, I guess the best thing is to start talking more about the competitors. I'm specifically looking for a music streaming service where I can choose a bunch of artists and it randomly play songs from this artist list. Is anyone familiar with a service that does that? It's similar to what everyone is talking about (a true shuffle) but instead of creating a song list, I want to create an artists list and have it play random songs from all those artists.

[rozeboosje]

"Artist list"

Nice idea. I don't think any of the streaming services have this exact option. I imagine you'd have to create a play list first, then visit a song list for each artist and simply go "select all" and add them to that play list, so that would be a bit more convoluted than just adding artists only.

Having said that, I wouldn't think that would be a HUGE effort, and once it's done you can enjoy all those songs on a good shuffle on any provider other than Spotify

[Slip269]

Funny you should say that,  Spotify used to have an option where you could select a Liked/Followed artist and it only played songs from that artist that you'd liked.

Now when you select a followed artist it plays their entire back catalogue regardless if you've liked the songs or not so playing all the stuff you probably don't like hence haven't added to your liked songs for good reason.

Yet another great feature taken away for no apparent reason (other than you're not listening to what they want you to!)

[rozeboosje]

I think what @nomad71 is looking for is slightly different. I think most providers have curated playlists for individual artists so you can search for an artist and then start playing more or less random songs by that artist. From reading their request though it sounds more like they might like a handful of artists and they're looking for something that lets them listen to random songs out of ALL those songs by ALL those artists. I have never heard of any provider offering that specific functionality?

[Mookpsu]

nomad71 I use Live One (FKA Slacker Radio) for what I think you are
describing. They have their own curated stations but you can also create
your own custom stations where you pick and choose what artists you want to
be in it. It also allows you to fine tune your station. Right now I'm
listening to my custom 80's/90's alternative station and it's only playing
songs by the artists I've added to the station. They are basically a
Pandora clone but better in my opinion. When I want to make a
custom playlist of specific songs or listen to an individual album start to
finish I use Amazon Music. Live One allows you to do this with their
"Premium" service but I only have the "plus" membership. And with Amazon
Music When I listen to one of my custom playlists in shuffle mode it will
play the entire thing with NO REPEATED SONGS. It's been well over a year
since I dropped Spotify and I have no regrets or no regerts for all the
Snickers fans out there. Hope that helps

[Casimus]

I’m changing YouTube 

[rednblu]

Snickers-- Yes!

[nomad71]

Thank you so much. I will definitely check that out. Sounds exactly what I’m looking for. I’m really surprised this is not a standard feature of all streaming services.