[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.

[rozeboosje]

Exactly. And don't stare yourself blind on the claim that Spotify doesn't care because its main source of revenue is through advertisements to people who use its "free" offerings. That is as may be, but other providers have "free" offerings, too. If enough people walk, the ADVERTISERS will start realising that Spotify is a waste of their money. Perhaps THEN they will get the finger out.

I wasn't willing to wait for that to happen though. I moved to Amazon Music, yikes, over a year ago now? Initially I kept coming here to see whether Spotify had finally decided to take action as I was willing to come back if they did. Now I'm just here to keep watching the slow motion train crash.

[Riann_Reaper17]

When going to shuffle your music, you now have two options, your regular playlist and your enhanced playlis, but that's having to press the shuffle button three times to re-shuffle the music if you don't like the sequence of songs.

[turntaccount]

Any lengthy playlist is completely useless because you just cannot shuffle through all of the songs. Its pretty appalling that there's not just an option to randomly shuffle all the songs. I don't want to be forced to have the Spotify app make choices for me let a random number generator do it, jesus christ.

[Emessbee]

For years now I've had the same issue off and on with my main playlist. I keep it on shuffle and frequently it will play about 20 songs before "restarting" the shuffle mix, but it's the same 20 songs that were just played. If I play a different playlist then go back to my main playlist it resets, but again it will only play a couple dozen songs before indicating the entire playlist was listened to. Currently I have 730 songs on this playlist. When I searched for this issue just now I only found a couple other posts about it from 2019 and a response from someone who essentially said "yeah, we know about this, we fixed it, k thnx bye ;)". Would love an actual helpful answer.

[cclambb]

Heyo! So I've been having this problem for a while now and it really is annoying. My friends and I always talk about how we wish there was a true shuffle option that actually shuffled the playlist when played instead of playing the same songs that the algorithm thinks we like the best over and over again. Also, adding the "enhanced" shuffle did nothing tbh. You guys should really add a true shuffle in and I bet a lot of people will be really happy. Please and thank you!! 

[Mookpsu]

Things that will happen before Spotify institutes a real shuffle...Man
lands on Mercury, Bigfoot is discovered, dinosaurs are found to not be
extinct, New Coke returns, Crystal Pepsi returns, Jim Morrison reunites
with The Doors, Prince Harry becomes King of England, etc.

[jonathankemp00]

Feels kinda obvious that Spotify benefits from this major flaw in their design... the more songs you ask for, the more stress on the streaming pipeline.  Pretending they designed this broken shuffle feature for the good of their users is laughable.  True shuffle should be a very very very easy fix.  Put all songs in a list, assign them an id number, randomize the ids, and play the songs.

The simple fact that this idea has been floating around for so long without getting implemented shows they don't really want to fix it.  

Now seriously considering taking a look at the competition.

[markteasdale]

this is so frustrating when you see that you get apps that can apparently do a tru shuffle, meaning that there is huge demand for this. Im getting so frustrated listening to the same somgs that ive even signed up with Apple Music to see if they do a better shuffle. Even got out the old ipod the other day as this does have a true shuffle!

[rozeboosje]

"[I've] even signed up with Apple Music to see if they do a better shuffle"

I don't know about Apple Music. I moved to Amazon Music and with regard to "true shuffle" I would have bad news and good news. Amazon Music's shuffle is probably not a huge amount better than Spotify's, but it wouldn't be "Shuffle" you're looking for. In Amazon Music there is an option "randomise playlist" and that is the option you'd need as that randomises the entire play list after which you'd just go and play it without applying any shuffle from start to finish.

I'm not sure whether something similar may be in place for Apple Music?

[irony58]

Someone mentioned Spotify losing paying customers, but that's not all they lose. I'm one of those "free" customers, so they earn a little from advertising from me. I doubt ad dollars are as much subscription dollars, but those ad dollars are going away as some of us "free" folks also switch away. 

I've been trying out Pandora for a few months, and now haven't gone back to Spotify for at least the last month. Pandora doesn't have lists, but since Spotify doesn't have the kind of list I want (randomized), there's no loss for me. Pandora is more of a "radio station" music player, but I like their selection better than Spotify's radio version. I pick a single artist I like and their "radio station" plays that artist's music about half the time. The other half is a pretty good selection of similar music. It's not the same as a list where I pick each song, but it's pretty close enough. I may hear a song I wouldn't have selected for a list, but only because I've got Pandora set to "Deep cuts" or sometimes "Discovery", each of which finds songs I haven't heard before. I often have to go to the app to see who's playing because it's pretty awesome.