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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
Jetpackdan

I cant hit vote on this topic for some reason but I want to show my support in the comments.  I found my self here as I was using shuffle and multiple times it would always  play songs that I have already listened to many times first and I wish it would pick songs at true random (or sudo random at least as its impossible with math to get true ranome) 

decker12

LOL, I just finished a brand new 280 song playlist.

 

I put my new playlist on Shuffle Play, and I here's what I got in this exact order:

  • Tina Turner (Solo)
  • The Cars
  • Ike and Tina Turner
  • Joan Jett
  • Ike and Tina Turner
  • The Cars

In my 280 song playlist, I have three songs from The Cars, three songs from Tina Turner, and two songs from Ike and Tina Turner. In what world is this working as intended?

 

I HATE YOU SPOTIFY FOR RUINING MY MUSIC.

 

ScoobyKitesurf

Still drives me nuts, then occasionally it will play a song and I'll think "didn't even know that was on this list", simply because it hasn't played it for a year or more.

mojodrone

I almost give up. Because of Spotify’s pitiful shuffle algorithm and refusal to give a proper shuffle option, I’m now beginning to tire of songs I used to like. I woke this morning and on shuffle...first song that came up was played yesterday. Next song was new. Next 2 songs were played yesterday. Then a new song. Then next 2 were played yesterday. Out of 600 songs!!! Sadly, I turned off Spotify. Which is happening a lot these days.

ScoobyKitesurf

@mojodrone completely with you, I have spotify as one of my alarms, and I can't tell you how sick I am of hearing "Praise You" by Fat Boy Slim. Shuffle should mean SHUFFLE!

passionsrlife

I've been using Spotify Premium for over 5 years now. It appears the algorithm has been tinkered with again. I've only noticed it's gotten significantly worse in the last month or so. As if the shuffle wasn't already lacking, it has a new tendency to put songs back in the queue that I had only just listened to a few songs prior. (Mind you I haven't touched it at all during this time.) Most of my playlists contain hundreds of songs- why am I consistently listening to the same 100-something songs or songs I just listened to? What's the point of a shuffle that doesn't fairly shuffle all of the songs? Is this really so far beyond the capabilities of Spotify? This has been Spotify's biggest character flaw for so long now, it's hard to recall if it ever knew what the definition of 'shuffle' is in the first place. Annually, this service costs more than Amazon Prime. Y'all can do better.

decker12

I'm just using SpotifyShuffler and it's integration with Spotify to do the job for me now. I'll do this while I evaluate other services because I'm tired of Spotify ignoring their clearly flawed shuffle algorithm.

ScoobyKitesurf

Christ, imagine one of the biggest music streaming services on the planet needing a third party web site to have random music playback. Someone at Spotify needs demoting.

ScoobyKitesurf

I'm a dev and have been for 35 years, I've worked with so many super clever people, genius level who wrote programs to do incredible things. The problem is that you can't have these people design the UI as they ALWAYS overthink it. They believe their niche is all that matters and become blind to the bigger picture.

User asks for "Random music playback, no repeats", hyper-techie says "We can do better than random, we can group your songs you like, or hide the ones you don't play much, so you get the best of your list." Missing the core and very simple requirements by a country mile.

I've seen it since the day I started in IT, and they just keep re-inventing that broken wheel.

heraschanka

Guess if they gave people an option of free switching between True shuffle and "Spotify shuffle", a lot of their developers trying to "improve" the very idea of shuffle would be fired very quick.