[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.

[decker12]

I would give Amazon Music a trial before you go whole hog. The trash that is Amazon Music's apps is what led me to switch to Spotify years ago. I doubt they've made it any better. 

The desktop client is awful and generating playlists for it is an exercise in GUI frustration. The mobile client is baffling in it's design decisions. It's a shame because the Amazon clients used to be great. Easy to use, clear controls, no sub menus hidden inside of sub menus just to view a discography for the band you're listening to.

One of my favorite (err, I mean most hated) part of Amazon Music's iOS app was the volume slider was, for some reason, just a little bigger than the size of your finger. You couldn't see what you were sliding the volume to - your finger covered the slider - so moving your finger a tiny extra millimeter could make the volume go from 3 to 10, which if you had your app playing through a BT speaker or an Echo, suddenly now you're blasting at full volume. It was staggeringly stupid design.

I distinctly remember the day in October, the day after the update, when I loaded up Amazon Music and went, wth did they do? Why is it like this? Who took a look at this finished product and thought, "Yeah, it's better now."

Spotify was like a breath of fresh air after struggling with Amazon Music's redesign for a month or two. Shame that Spotify can't be bothered to fix their shuffle play.

[algorithm_guy]

IN ALL FAIRNESS, I have multiple frustrations with Amazon Music app, including unintuitive navigation (mobile) and an inability to install on one specific computer (desktop)...  I think a file got corrupted but all normal methods of fixing this (ie uninstalling and reinstalling) have failed.  There was a multi-day pause in populating my large playlists leading me to believe they were too large and had broken the system

Spotify had annoyed me by being TOO synced between different devices - but Amazon music had the opposite problem. It seems like play resets on a default list, non shuffled every time and I had to leave "car mode" to be able to navigate to my playlists, which seemed like it took about 3 more clicks than it should have although I haven't ruled out that I'm misusing the app

Too bad Spotify thinks it's a joke that people want to be able to listen more than 15% of their liked songs during their commute and mocks us asking for "volunteers" while planning to make no change.

[rozeboosje]

Yeah it's very possible the Amazon Music doesn't work for me either. But I have a 3 month trial to find out 😁

[rozeboosje]

Yeah I am guessing it all depends on what your requirements are, but so far I have had little to complain about. I have no commute to worry about (have been working from home since March 2020, thank you COVID), so I don't really need to care whether there is any synchronization going on between my Desktop app and my Mobile app.

So far I have found one album (Golem by Wand) missing in Amazon, but two albums that were never on Spotify (Masters of Reality's first album and Human Fly by The Horseflies) I found on Amazon Music. Other than that it was a bit of a faff after importing 1000 songs (minus the ones it couldn't find) from Spotify to Amazon, but I sorted both my Spotify "liked songs" and my imported list in Amazon by Artist and did a side by side comparison to see what was missing which took me a couple of hours to sort out. All in all not bad.

[rozeboosje]

Look at how simple it CAN be:
All I need to do here is hit "randomise playlist". It shuffles the ENTIRE playlist. It would be great if it kept track of the last song I played but it doesn't, but meh, no biggie. I do that myself. So when I'm done listening I close the app. When I open it again, the playlist is still in the exact same order I left it in. All I need to do is hit start on the song after the one I last heard and carry on. And over time I hear the ENTIRE list. Nothing left out. Nothing repeated. No frustration for little old me.

This really isn't rocket science.

[rozeboosje]

And they still, also, have the "shuffle" button that allows you to keep a playlist in whatever order you originally designed it in, and play songs "at random" from there. For shorter play lists that's fine. Best of both worlds.

[braden_p]

If you are still looking for people to work with the dev team on this issue, I would like to volunteer. I have experienced the very same issue where shuffling "my liked songs" (a very large playlist with over a thousand different artists and 14,000 songs) or other playlists seems to play a lot of songs by the same small group of artists (although it can vary session to session). I don't like that it does this. I click shuffle because I want variety.

[Etterlatt]

I have 2300 songs in my playlist and some of them are repeated super often and some are played very rarely, it is really annoying. 

[PrestonSale]

@braden_p Hate to disappoint you but a lot of people have been waiting apparently ENDLESSLY for these bums to lift a finger. It is to the point now of being so inappropriate and unprofessional that some have canceled memberships - as I will ultimately do as a matter of General Principle more than anything else. I'm not accustomed to feeling disrespected in my daily life by businesses I patronize.  And that is what this is turning into -- a show of just blatant disrespect. 

I first came here and commented. Heard this issue had been going on for a long time and so I penned a detailed comment to Customer Service that was professional, polite, and written with concern for myself AND Spotify as a company providing a service that I value. I received a couple of replies from two well-spoken and seemingly interested and concerned customer service representatives. Not long thereafter there was outreach from Spotify here about a focus group being formed. My name was among the people from whom they indicated wanting further input. I felt positive and had a sense of accomplishment that I had approached a problem professionally and according to Spotify's own directions of what to do (contacting Customer Support) if I didn't get the answers I sought here in the "COMMUNITY." 

Weeks have turned into months since that feeling of accomplishment that professionalism was alive and well. We were told that enough attention had been shown to this problem that it was being addressed. However, this has not been the case. It's reaching the point now where I want to go back to the two people who spoke with such professional and helpful manners and tell them how this has played out. Because at this point I have messaged the people back in a private message to simply ask if they got my questionnaire since I wasn't sure it was sent right -- and have been blatantly ignored TWICE! But even without that last little tidbit. just the way this has been stretched out and the way people are being just IGNORED with utter impunity and dismissive disregard I find increasingly unacceptable. 

[DenverWoody]

Adding one more voice to the chorus. I’ve been experiencing this annoying issue for years. Now that I’m reading through the forum and all the posts I’m inclined to cancel my membership to show this company that people actually want what they pay for. And I pay for a streaming service that has a shuffle button.