[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.

[defr]

Hi @Seekingstars,

Although your CV is impressive and could be useful to Spotify, we all have to accept that their fake shuffle is not due to a lack of expertise and it is totally done on purpose. The question is why... I've seen various hypothesis on this forum but I'm not sure exactly which is one the right one...

[BluntBetsy]

I always thought the lousy shuffle was intentional to boost sales for artists. Every time a song is played that’s another cent in the labels pocket. I wouldn’t be surprised if artists or labels have some sort of deal behind the scenes. Same goes for Instagram, they really didn’t care to make the feed chronological because they want you to experience the posts that are most looked at instead which makes their platform more intriguing. I hate that companies don’t give us the steering wheel on most things.

[sammond7]

Very happy to participate in this testing. This limitation is causing some dramas for us and we have some excellent playlists on which to test improvements

[teollo]

dream on dreamer

[robgallet18]

This needs to happen 

[Davisx3m]

I have had the same thought for years, I like many here have huge playlists but you dont really get to experience them fairly. So hope this will be a thing 

[ViperBoy1]

Shuffle is so very, very, very broken - by far the most frustrating mis-feature on Spotify. In fact, today I got so fed up, I finally found on the web how to turn it off which is NOT obvious because I usually listen to auto-generated lists that don't have a shuffle defeat button. Most web pages point to that non-existent shuffle button

Here is the list of problems I have constantly

1) after a while the same artist gets played in chunks from my "liked songs" list. This is mentioned in the forums. In addition, often my "liked songs" also get clumped together too instead of mixing with new ones

2) when playing an auto-generated list, there is no shuffle defeat. I have to defeat from another standard playlist and then the setting gets inherited (web epiphany today)

3) starting a playlist by pressing the first song instead of the play button does NOT disable shuffle. I remember reading about that as an option during the Taylor Swift flame-up on shuffle issues, but it doesn't help

4) auto generated lists play the same songs after restart. I use android auto and am constantly getting repeats after every reconnect. there doesn't seem to be any "already played" bit when running through the playlist. Note that auto-generated lists download new songs automatically so I just want to hear the new ones that should have been put on the tail

5) today I was playing a list on my android phone and it repeated 1 song very quickly - prompting me to finally figure out how to disable shuffle

6) should never have shuffle as a default. Auto generated lists are by definition already shuffled. For normal albums, you want to listen to them in artist preferred order the 1st time and then shuffle manually later

7) re-pressing the play button would be a good way to toggle shuffle since it has the shuffle indicator on the icon and there is no need to hit play otherwise on an already playing list (right now it just re-shuffles)

[painterrob]

I want a true shuffle. Because Spotify has made certain decisions about what it thinks that I want to hear more often, I have actually deleted some songs from my Liked songs because I am sick and tired of hearing them over and over again, sometimes multiple times per day.  I am an artist and I listen to music while I work. I work for six or more hours a day. I have more than six hours worth of Liked songs, so there is really no reason for me to hear some songs multiple times per day.

[Subnode]

I finally stopped paying for Spotify last month. The only thing that could bring me back would be this issue getting resolved.

[Dunkinidaho]

You left, 100 new folks joined. Spotify wins, again