[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.

[stonelaughter]

Plan Premium

Country England

Device Pixel 8 Pro

Operating System Android 16

My Question or Issue

I need a shuffle mode which is as random as possible, but avoids re-playing songs I have played recently (say, the last x days). It'd be even nicer if there was a setting to give the value of X.

At the moment, shuffle prioritises artists/albums I recently added. It prioritises songs it "thinks I'll like". It prioritises songs I may or may not have skipped recently. What this means is that I never hear most of my library... or I spend twenty minutes skipping before it plays something I want.

GIVE US RANDOM SHUFFLE and get rid of (or make optional) the stupid algorithm!

[KingDraino20]

Spotify quit playing with us. Yall know that more than 6602 people have wanted this changed in the past 6 YEARS. Yall are playing what you want to play instead of catering to the community that you have built. Is this the fate of any business that gets too big? you prioritize money over the people. It should be a TRUE SHUFFLE anyways. That is what shuffle means. NOBODY wants an algorithm telling them what to listen to. Just fix the problem and stop making excuses. And you wonder why people leave spotify for apple music and youtube.

[Marshall3911]

https://www.androidauthority.com/spotify-shuffle-3602119/

[teollo]

Do you think this time it's going to work?

[ISbit]

Marshall3911 is this for real??!?!???
Where is the spotify source for this?
It is HUGE if true

[stonelaughter]

We can but hope....

[UntitledDuck]

I hope that is true Spotify is working to add a true shuffle play

[avintegrator]

Potentially encouraging news from android authority.

https://www.androidauthority.com/spotify-shuffle-3602119/

Could this be?

I’ve been following this thread for years, and after reading teardowns, Android Authority’s coverage, and a few lines of code that have surfaced recently, it finally looks as if Spotify may be preparing an opt-in version of a larger-window, less-repetitive shuffle.

If that’s true, it’s exactly the right approach.
Don’t change the default for the median listener — just let those of us with multi-thousand-song playlists choose real randomness.

For anyone wondering why this matters: the current playback engine doesn’t randomize across the entire playlist. It works from a small “window” of a couple hundred tracks, largely for memory and network efficiency. That shortcut saves resources across hundreds of millions of sessions, but it also guarantees repeats and clumping for anyone who built big libraries.

Scaling the window is expensive — per-user memory, prefetch, cache churn — so Spotify has always optimized for cost and for the majority user who lives inside a 50-song daily loop. The rest of us notice, and it’s maddening.

A quiet, opt-in True Shuffle mode would solve all of that without breaking anything:

• Keeps infrastructure load low — only power users enable it.

• Avoids public “we broke shuffle” optics.

• Lets Premium users finally hear their whole library again.

Internally it would look something like:

• Larger local index (1–2 k tracks)

• Real Fisher–Yates or equivalent seeded permutation

• Cloud-stored pointer so you can resume mid-shuffle

• Optional “no repeats until list exhausts” toggle

And that’s all we’ve ever asked for — a switch marked Let me handle randomness myself.

Until then, alternatives like Plexamp or Deezer still demonstrate that perfect shuffle is possible at scale. But Spotify has the reach and engineering depth to make this work if they finally choose to.

Here’s hoping the rumored feature quietly rolling through beta is the start of that. If anyone from Spotify is reading: thank you for testing it. Just give us the toggle. We’ll handle the rest.

🟩 1. Hypothetical Internal Spotify Internal Memo

Subject: Playback – True Shuffle (Opt-In Mode)
Author: Product Mgr, Playback Experience
Date: July 2025

Background
Persistent community sentiment indicates dissatisfaction with perceived “non-random” shuffle behavior. The recurring complaint: repetition within large playlists (>500 tracks). Historical mitigation has emphasized perceived variety and engagement rather than statistical randomness.

Catalyst Example
Community post ID p/7007873 (July 2025) highlights a veteran user with an owned-music background who tested competing services (notably Deezer) and reported near-perfect distribution over 10 days. This post encapsulates power-user expectations:

• Deterministic fairness (no track repeats until exhaustion or near-exhaustion of the list)

• Cross-device continuity (“pick up where I left off”)

• User control rather than opaque algorithmic bias

Problem Statement
Current shuffle algorithm operates on a sliding window (~120–200 tracks) for memory and latency reasons. Result: statistically higher early-repeat probability in large playlists. The issue disproportionately affects <2 % of Premium users yet generates high-volume discourse and reputational risk (“Spotify doesn’t do real shuffle”).

Goal
Introduce an opt-in “True Shuffle” mode delivering unbiased randomness while containing infra cost.

Proposed Approach

1. Client-side caching: Pre-index up to 2 000 track IDs + metadata.

2. Seeded Fisher–Yates permutation computed locally; resume pointer stored cloud-side.

3. Lightweight recency index (last 50 plays) to suppress repeats across sessions.

4. Feature flag: playback.true_shuffle enabled for select Premium cohorts.

5. Telemetry: session length, skip rate, repeat incidence vs control.

Roll-out Plan

• Q3 2025: Android internal beta (1 %)

• Q4 2025: cross-platform opt-in under Playback Variety Options

• Q1 2026: Evaluate for default inclusion

Messaging Strategy
Avoid “fix” language. Frame as:

“We’re testing new ways to enhance playback variety for Premium listeners.”

No public acknowledgment of prior shortcomings. Community outreach limited to controlled “Idea Implemented” closure once feature matures.

[jesuslivesinme]

Thanks for posting this. It was very well thought out. 

Still hopeful ☺️ 

[BlueMoon90]

Apparently thousands of people and 5 years later Spotify still isn't able to fix repeating songs before the Playlist has fully played. It's an embarrassment to the company, and insulting that they would ignore their customers for something that's been possible for at least 25 years. How many people are needed for the company to fix this easy problem?

Just saw the comment above mine about rumors on a possible fix. One can hope!