As a paying Spotify premium customer, I need a shuffle algorithm different from the current, non-random shuffle that seems to favor "popular" songs, as has been pointed out by other customers who experimented with what is actually happening (see links to other posts below).
Currently there are only two possible ways to listen to music in playlists, either in the listed order, or shuffled by an algorithm that makes listeners miss out on about 20% to 30% of the songs in the list, favoring the ones that we already listened to hundreds or thousands of times.
I want to be able to choose another algorithm that does exactly the opposite: play songs in a pseudo-random order but leaving out the ones that already have been played frequently, and instead focusing on songs seldom listened to, in order to make me rediscover new songs and inspirations! This is even more important when listening to playlists made by other people, to help me discover new music.
The new algorithm could be called something like "serendipity shuffle" or "discover mode". This could be an option to activate in the user's settings, so the existing popularity shuffle would stay the default option.
In case a serendipity shuffle is too hard for you to implement, a simple randomized shuffle function would also be much better than the current one. This has already been pointed out in other posts in this forum.
See other posts in this community:
Updated on 2020-03-23
Hi everyone, we like the idea, but we don't have any immediate plans to implement this.