[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.

[docracing]

Same frustration for me. Please give us a true shuffle version!

[Narko]

Yes please!!!! While you're at it why don't you make it possible to shuffle the actual permanent playlist order and leave it in that order until I ask it to be re-sorted back into album/artist/order downloaded/or re-shuffled etc?

[rozeboosje]

"make it possible to shuffle the actual permanent playlist order and leave it in that order"

Hang on ... wait ... that sounds a little familiar ... where might I have heard that before ???? .... oh yeah .... Amazon Music's "randomize playlist"

[rednblu]

       Fix to get iPhone 100 hours of perfect shuffle

Our user volunteer data team has convinced me of what causes those infuriating repeats in the iPhone Spotify shuffle.

And here is one user fix-- until Spotify wises up and gets its Spotify business act together.

User Fix-- a [sufficient] fix-- not necessarily a [necessary] fix, right?

1) Split your 100 hour playlist into eight playlists-- I link you to the beginning of the eight sample splits that I am playing through right now--  01_... https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5J4ezoSZSwqMI6MlKO2wMb, 02_ https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5ziwAM83cppweY3JCUEj5e,  03_ https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2nZNjOnFpMIizEqYLKpRGu ...    Then start shuffling the first, the 01_... split from the playlist that you want to shuffle.   And when the stupidities in the Spotify coding destroy that shuffle, then you just start shuffling the 02_ split from your playlist-- and so forth.  (And yes, we understand that you need a laptop to split painlessly your 100 hour favorite playlist into 8 separate batches-- but some of us need the iPhone Spotify player specifically to shuffle play correctly because of the portability-- like for driving with Waze.  I just want to start the next perfect shuffle-- and go.  I don't want to look for where the last perfect shuffle stopped-- I want to just go.)

2) If you start your shuffle correctly-- and if you just let your shuffle play-- without you starting any other playlist or album or podcast or new release-- and if your Wi-Fi and cellularLink_SwitchOver does not fail-- your shuffle will continue on a perfect shuffle with zero repeats until each and every track has played and then the Spotify player will stop.  Never ever restart shuffling the playlist split that you just played-- because restarting the Spotify shuffle on the same set of tracks too soon-- within three days or so-- guarantees that you will create an Infuriating series of repeats that you will notice-- and the Infuriating series of repeats will increase roughly linearly over the next few hours to include eventually each and every track that you just played-- and often in the same exact InfuriatingInfuriating order of the shuffle that you just played!  Glory be to Spot!-- So never attempt to restart any iPhone shuffle on the same batch of tracks for at least three days, ok?

3) And watch out!-- The iPhone Spotify interface is very anxious to play you new music!-- Isn't that good!!-- so if you let yourself look around, you surely will play something new. even accidentally-- something not from the shuffled queue that you put under iPhone Spotify control-- And as soon as you start playing something else while you are shuffling, you have destroyed your current shuffle-- Hence, when you restart your shuffle play, restart your shuffle only on a batch of tracks that you have not played in the last [three days]-- seven says?-- depending on how unforgiving your ear's memory is.  That is, restart your shuffle from only the next, most unplayed split-- for example, stop shuffling 01... and start shuffling 02_.  And when the Spotify coding blindly destroys your shuffle of 02_ move on to setting up a shuffle on your split 03_ that you have not played in the last three days-- and so forth.

Here is the deadly flaw in how Spotify does business-- the part of giving customer Ahhh-- satisfaction

4) If you want your iPhone shuffle to work perfectly-- Just stop looking around for new music, you see!-- If you just let your iPhone Spotify shuffle play with an uninterrupted Wi-Fi connection to the Spotify cloud, you will find that your iPhone shuffle is perfect-- and without repeats until each and every track has played-- and then the player stops.

Of course, when Spotify gets its business act together, Spotify will allow its coders to complete the coding of the shuffle-- because the coding of each and every [new shuffle] should contain the logic of loading the shuffleQueue with only tracks that you have not played in the last three days of play.

That is, excluding the tracks that you have already played should be automatic-- such as loading always the new shuffle queue with only the tracks that you have not played in the last three days of "Recently played" tracks as listed under the clockIcon in the upperRight of the Home screen of your iPhone Spotify player.

Therefore-- since Spotify refuses to complete the iPhone player coding-- today, we users have to complete Spotify's job of coding by-- always loading our shuffle queue with only unplayed tracks by-- specifically starting a new shuffle from the next split-- where you have guaranteed by construction that the 02_ split, for example, contains NotEvenOne track that is also in the 01... split-- right?

Now how do we word this revelation for Spotify?-- Spotify, you could improve your profitability greatly by letting us wander all over the whole Spotify interface, trying this and trying that-- without destroying our shuffle plays-- Can't you see that?

Furthermore, I would listen to all of the Spotify radios-- a lot-- if Spotify would just code the radios as a [random-walk] non-repeating shuffle through everything [close] in your [distance] measurement from what I have played already in my "Recently played" tracks under the clockIcon in the upperRight of the Home screen of your iPhone Spotify player for the last three days-- But I insist on loading my shuffled queue only with tracks that do not appear under my "Recently played" tracks for the [last three days]-- where I can control the value substituted for [last three days] by a slider under Settings up to [90 days], [180 days], ...

How do we say that clearly?-- my friends.   "Dreamer-- Dreams on"?

Starting your perfect iPhone shuffle

Do the following to start the perfect shuffle on the next split 01_... , 02_,  ...

a) Start playing the FiveTracks playlist https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3lZ0UGZiuysJPdW7QBHwLJ -- Then stop immediately-- You can check the queue to see that there are only the expected five tracks on your queue-- This usually clears the exact repeat of 10 tracks, 100 tracks from the previous shuffle-- given that the FiveTracks playlist is never the playlist that you want to shuffle, right?  If still something is stuck in the shuffle, try the forced initialization procedure.

b) From your iPhone Spotify Home, LibraryIcon in the lowerRight-- search for the name of your next split such as 01_... , 02_ that you created above.  Then open that next split.

c) Click on the shuffleIcon to turn it Green.

d) Then click the Green playButton next to the shuffleIcon-- You should see that the first track playing is some random track-- that is, hardly ever the first track displayed for this batch of tracks.

Bon voyage and thanks to everybody here for all these insights and ideas.

        I am using iOS: 16.0.2        Spotify iPhone: 8.7.68.568

[Mookpsu]

Or switch to Amazon Music

[rednblu]

Yes, thanks.

I took your advice, thank you,  and built your Amazon advice into the shuffle that feeds my AllOfSpotify_Queue of 120,302 tracks that is practical only on my laptops-- but that won't work for me on my iPhone-- for me-- because it is impractical and impossible to keep track of where my play on all of my devices stopped and start my iPhone on that last played Amazon track in my Amazon playlist-- for me.  All of those crucial hooks and external spreadsheets are missing from my iPhone and ...

I just need to start the perfect shuffle on my iPhone and-- Go. 

Do you use Amazon shuffle on your iPhone?  How do you continue play without searching for the track where you stopped?-- or else getting Infuriating replays on your iPhone?

[Mookpsu]

I've never had an IPhone, only an Android. The issue with Amazon Music not
saving where you left off started around this time last year which is what
led me to give Spotify a try. The simplest solution to the Amazon issue is
to download an older version of the app. I'm currently running 17.6.1 and
it always allows me to pick up where I left off even after days or weeks
and as far as I can tell does not repeat any tracks when in shuffle mode.
Another nice feature of Amazon Music is I can have one thing going on my
phone, another on my tablet and another on my Google TV app. They don't
consider this "luxury" to be an additional cost like Spotify does. For now
I use Amazon Music for playlists and Spotify for when I want to hear an
album start to finish but once my subscription runs out in March I'll be
done with Spotify forever. I refuse to give my money to a company that
obviously could care less about its customers. Another way to make Spotify
tolerable is to use one a 3rd party program that will randomize your
playlist for you and then you just have to listen to it with shuffle mode
turned off

[rednblu]

Well said-- thanks!  Useful . . . .

[josephd60]

Or jump ship to a streaming service that responds to problems and fixes their issues. 

[ScoobyKitesurf]

@mookpsu I have Spotify on the car head unit and on my Google Home, if I'm driving listening to Spotify and my kids play a song at home I lose the Spotify in the car! Are you saying Amazon Music will not do that? We can both listen at the same time?