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[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

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.

Updated on 2024-05-01

Hello everyone, 

 

Thank you for your continued engagement and valuable feedback on this idea. 

 

I'm afraid there hasn't been any change on the status of this idea since our last update. However, we've been reading all your comments and feedback which have been incredibly insightful. 

 

We’ll keep you folks posted as soon as we have any new info to share.

Comments
heraschanka

@roseboosje Thanks! Just out of curosity, who are the ones you gained who's not on Spotify? 

rozeboosje

If I remember correctly they were Masters of Reality and The Tragically Hip

Of course that was several years ago so they may have been added in at this stage.

I lost a couple, too. For example Camper van Beethoven's "Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart" album is not available on Amazon Music, or Nina Hagen's song "Unbeschreiblich Weiblich"

Tatatatiffany

Anyone else having issues or know how to fix the shuffle? Everytime (since the most recent iOS upgrade) I shuffle my liked songs, it chooses the same exact songs everytime no matter how many times I shuffle. Then it will only play like 15 songs then repeat the same ones. Super frustrating. How do I fix this? 

Plan

Premium

Country - USA

Nunyabizz

It’s pretty **bleep**in stupid that it is 2025 and Spotify still can’t shuffle a playlist. That has to be one of the simplest implementations ever, highly requested, and a frustrating complaint users have had for years. I do not understand the resistance by Spotify and its developers to just fix it. Your updates are completely useless. I feel like I’m in a musical echo chamber and it’s making me want to move away from the platform. 

Rhakete

Last reply from Spotify from 05/24

 

"Hello everyone, 

 

Thank you for your continued engagement and valuable feedback on this idea. 

 

I'm afraid there hasn't been any change on the status of this idea since our last update. However, we've been reading all your comments and feedback which have been incredibly insightful. 

 

We’ll keep you folks posted as soon as we have any new info to share."

 

Hello Spotify,

 

stop acting like you give a **bleep**. Either enable proper shuffle or put a reply in this thread explaining how you don't give a **bleep** about your paying customers. You're way too quiet on this issue that has 5k votes, that's pretty stupid of you. Not that we expect anything else, you incapable **bleep**. 🖕🏻

ozavraham

It’s absurd that Spotify still doesn’t have a proper shuffle for playlists. The current shuffle is a joke—repetitive and anything but random. This is a basic feature every music player should have. I’ve canceled my subscription because I’m tired of waiting for this to be fixed and have moved to a service that actually gets it right. Do better.

zx6dude

I love this bit of Spotify's ridiculous reply "we've been reading all your comments and feedback which have been incredibly insightful" - Insightful that people are leaving to other providers? Or that people hate Spotify's version of "shuffle"?

Absurd. 

imperialpint
Not clear why you bother to post to this thread if you've cancelled your subscription
rozeboosje

"Not clear why you bother to post to this thread if you've cancelled your subscription"

Allow me to answer that.

 

Spotify must die. It's as simple as that. This is not said out of malice, but simply because at this point Spotify has become the dinosaur, the blockage in the way of getting better quality music streaming services. Because of its dominance in the market it is inhibiting the growth of other streaming services that DO take things like keeping their paying listeners happy seriously.

We keep coming back here to tell people that there actually are alternatives to Spotify. Music streaming services like Amazon Music, Apple Music and YouTube Music that DO allow you to shuffle your entire playlist so you can listen to all your songs in a fresh new order. We keep coming back here to get more people to move away from the godawful excuse for a platform that's called Spotify.

zx6dude

I guess you could also argue that: "Not clear why you bother to post to this thread" if Spotify doesn't bother doing anything about it...