[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.

[Centifim]

i'm so tired of hearing the same 10 songs every other day. for the longest time i thought i was crazy, until i checked my streams on the airbuds app and found that the same songs were playing...in the same exact order that they played in a couple days earlier. if i have my playlist of over 1000 songs on shuffle, why would i want to only hear select songs? the algorithm clearly needs fixing and many people have pointed this out, yet nothing has been done about it. might eventually have to switch apps.

[tunedIN]

Hi Mantrina

I could geek out on this topic for hours. Fortunately I have posted a YouTube video where I discuss randomization, and Liked songs amongst other thing. Being my first YT video it's a bit cringy but I have explained how randomization works and more importantly why it doesn't. This link will take you directly to the section relevant to you here. 

https://youtu.be/Zbgdl096q-E?t=618

[telengard]

200 pages of people asking for this over multiple years.  Ridiculous...

[Ncg94]

The last bit sums it up perfectly: serious music collectors are being left behind in favor of engagement.

[KS00]

I am sick of this flawed shuffle. I have a playlist and it keeps playing only one artist every few tracks. I don’t want to turn shuffle off as then it’ll play them by the whole album straight through (how they’ve been added). 
Please fix this. We don’t want a smart shuffle, just one that plays each song in a random order once. 
the artist whom it keeps playing isn’t even a favourite of mine and it’s sending my bonkers. 

[rednblu]

Bingo!

So how about using a five track "Blast out the Spotify mistakes" playlist?-- as a "cleaner of the shuffle" so that when you go back to shuffle your "real interest" of over_1000_tracks-- You will see that the queue resulting from Starting a shuffle of your 1000_tracks gives a quite different queue.  Take a screenshot of the top of your queue the instant you start each new cleaned shuffle on your over_1000_tracks of interest,

Then use this screenshot of the last shuffle to speed your detection that the Spotify shuffle has broken again.  And I sympathize with you that Spotify managers should let the programmers fix this-- but ....  Oh weep . . ..  

[Sergjjii]

It's high time to give users the ability to customize at least the number of repeats (for example, set songs to repeat once a week or once a month, or set a percentage ratio of repeats to new songs) and more customization options. Otherwise, it seems like Spotify has very little music, and you have to try very hard to find something new because new music is hidden behind a wall of repeats and songs you've already heard. Please give us more customization options.

[delamoramusic]

How is this not fixed? We're literally just asking for a shuffle and not some complicated algorithm. Can we at least get a play count in a play list so I can see the songs it never plays? 

[uhnxyxru79n3ghzuopbp]

Plně souhlasím. Algoritmus podle kterého Spotify vybírá songy z oblíbených nebo i random je úplně debilní. Ve vyhledávači spustím nějakou oblíbenou píseň a očekával bych, že mi budou nabídnuty podobně zaměřené písně i nové a jiné .. Ne, je mi neustále dokola přehráván téměř identický řetězec stejných songů a objevovat nové musím velmi obtížně.. Z playlistu oblíbených mi to také hraje dokola jen nepatrný objem a prakticky ve stejném pořadí.. až mě to už začíná skutečně srát... 

[Charlie2019]

This!!!! I enjoy the "smart" bias toward recent plays, popularity, or engagement when I am using the AI playlists or DJ. But when I want my full library to shuffle, I don't want to hear the same song twice in one weekend. It has been driving me crazy - it did not used to repeat like this.