[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.

[JHenderson97]

This would definitely be a really useful feature for me! I have a bunch of playlists that I create for myself and most of these are 100+ songs but I always find myself listening to the same 20 songs or so. A true shuffle feature would be great so I can get the true variation in my playlists as they are supposed to be! 🙂

[rednblu]

Words of peace here, early in July-- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2UVzGRRm0QRUeZ2wgVHWmJ?si=6a0b4ccffd504d84 --    -- ... .....

[gu_-tqdjarlb9]

I want my shuffle to be as random as it gets, with zero influence. Respectfully, isn't this a feature that even first generation iPods had? | love Spotify so much — my discover weekly is great, the local concerts feature is awesome, the recommended songs to add to playlists, etc. — but I would give up ALL of the fancy features just to be able to shuffle randomly. Please hear us out! 

It is very likely the EASIEST request in the Live Ideas queue. Low effort, high impact!

[amk5]

Agreed! If I listen to a song all the way through instead of skipping it, I guarantee it will play another song by the same artist within the 4 next songs. And it keeps on playing the same 20 or so songs I've added most recently. If I'm shuffling my goal is variety and novelty but I keep getting fed the same things.

[llllllllllllllllllll]

garbage answer

[Raveneficus]

I just realised that when I click shuffle and play a particular playlist with ~100 songs it doesn't actually shuffle. It plays the songs in a predetermined order. Deterministic shuffle? What the actual? It keep trying to play the same 5 songs over and over. Specifically the last 5 or so songs added to the playlist. I skip ahead and it plays one random smart-shuffle song, then immediately loops back around to one of the last 5 songs again. This is abysmal. 

True shuffle is what's expected from a Shuffle button. 

[teollo]

" I just realised that when I click shuffle and play a particular playlist
with ~100 songs it doesn't actually shuffle. "

W E L C O M E T O T H E C L U B

[rozeboosje]

You have two clubs to choose from here.

1. The club of hopefuls who think that after many years of begging, somehow THEIR "zomgpleasefixthiswithsugarontop" is going to be the comment that causes Spotify to sort this problem.

2. The club of ex Spotify users who have long since moved to other streaming music providers and who are only here to watch the slow motion train wreck

Choose wisely

[rednblu]

Wow!  Thanks, Devs!

I’m still running Spotify 8.9.54.343 on my iPhone— and I can:

* Start unshuffled play of a MasterFolder with 20,000 tracks in several Sub-Folders on my Win_11 desktop,

* Let the iPhone synch with the Win_11,

* Transfer play to my iPhone,

* Then, on my iPhone queue display, click the greyedCrossedArrows to start a perfect shuffle of the “Next from” 20,000 tracks on my iPhone.  Zero repeats.

I see no flaws at all— You have created perfection, Devs!  Thanks and cheers from everybody in the world!

[thephilosoft]

random.seed(time.time())

already_played = set()

play_history = collections.deque()

max_history_size = max(10000, min(len(playlist), len(playlist) // 10))

while True:

    next_song_index = random.randint(0, playlist.length - 1)

    while next_song_index in already_played:

        next_song_index = random.randint(0, playlist.length - 1)

    already_played.add(next_song_index)

    play_history.append(next_song_index)

    playlist.play(next_song_index)

    if len(already_played) == len(playlist):

        # every song was played once, start from scratch

    if len(already_played) == max_history_size:

        oldest_played_song = play_history.popleft()

        already_played.remove(oldest_played_song)

here, spotify. I gift this piece of python-ish code to you.

* random order of songs, depends on when you started => every time you start random play of a playlist/album you get a new order

* playback history, so people can go back and forth through what was already played up to 10k songs

* repeat playback prevention - no infinitely repeating songs in the same order

* not the same order even if you listen to a playlist for hours on end (hint: road trip)

* easily adjustable to "not to loose" playback history/order at all

* tunabale size depending on the available memory and playlist size (but considering that you push for "canvas" with videos by default I'm sure that a couple of thousands of integers wouldn't be a problem to store)

* easy and cheap to keep state "in the cloud" for sync between devices (hint: list of [bound] integers is pretty easy to compress)

* easy to implement in any programming language and hook up to GUI

* just tune up "next song selection" for something better than randomized brute force (like taking a number from unordered set of unplayed songs)

and here you have it. pretty good random that solves 90% of problems people have.

just saved you decades of effort and apparently millions of dollars of expenses on this impossible-to-solve R&D problem