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[All Platforms] Shuffle algorithm that favours "unpopular" songs

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:


https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Shuffle-Is-Only-Going-Through-A-Handful-Of-Songs/idc...


https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Please-stop-marking-shuffle-complaints-as-quot-not-a...

 

Updated on 2020-03-23

Hi everyone, we like the idea, but we don't have any immediate plans to implement this.

Comments
Matthew-S

spotify.gif

jeremysee

+1. In general, Spotify should provide us with actual options for smart playlists so we can actively enjoy our library rather that existing as merely passive consumers of whatever Spotify wants us to listen to.

Goodman
Status changed to: Not Right Now

Updated on 2020-03-23

Hi everyone, we like the idea, but we don't have any immediate plans to implement this.

fraktalisman

> "we like the idea, but we don't have any immediate plans to implement this"

lol no surprise, but maybe it's just time to reactivate my mp3 player and finally ditch Spotify altogether.

Javierba
Well, there are many threads, going for more than four years, and asking
for a solution to shuffle, that doesn't work on any platform or device.

In a list of 4000 songs it always play the same 100 songs.

It's about time that you fix this issue.

#SpotifyDoesntCare
fraktalisman

> It's about time that you fix this issue.

> #SpotifyDoesntCare

It's time to find a better service. If at least there were open source clients then we could experiment and fix ourselves.

musicdeveloper1

Dear Spotify,

You do really need to take care of this idea very seriously. Spotify always echoing "Music for Everybody" in its tagline. "Everybody" here means not being dictated by labels or algorithm that eventually leads to the artists with big support of marketing strategy from big label that is displayed in Spotify Header feature (Announcement). Spotify users are people who love fresh musics behavior (this is the interesting part the streaming mode, my dear), not repeating the same song again and again (repeating song is for Vinyl, tape, or CD behavior). Spotify has tons of music collections, give users the chance to listen at least a quarter part of them. Don't let big label and popularity algorithm make your premium users bored. When they feel bored, you can predict what's gonna happen, right? well why bother collecting songs with zero listener?

Javierba

#SpotifyDoesntCare 

mrthomes

I to feel this is a must, i can guarantee that if i shuffle a playlist it will play the same songs when i shuffled the last time. It's very annoying that you have to keep skipping tracks to get to unheard tracks.

rednblu

 

          >> How could I put together for myself a shuffle that promotes my new releases to play most often?

 

You might try the following-- http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/6YlrIF2sHKrDWdPO5pPpxu -- which is the output of a "serendipity" shuffle stored in a playlist to either send to Spotify shuffle or play straight through with the Spotify shuffle turned off.  The above "serendipity" shuffle output demonstrates shuffling to present NewReleases more often than the background playlist of ancient songs that you love and know by heart.  There are two types of boost to plays of NewReleases in the above example-- a) boosting the whole list of, in this example, 73 selected NewReleases and b) boosting one track-- "Weight of the world"-- which NewRelease track is boosted to play somewhere in every ten tracks-- average.  Of course, under a true shuffle, sometimes-- rarely-- a boosted track may play three or more times in succession-- just as you may sometimes flip three heads on a coin in succession-- that is how probabilities in a true shuffle work, right?-- But someone could write an extended shuffle just for Spotify that would follow the "true shuffle" step with a "remove immediate duplicates" step where the step would scan the HTML_text line by line and [if the next line is equal to the current line, then delete the next line-- otherwise advance to the next line] until you reach the last line of HTML_text.  Anybody want to do that?

 

The following "recipe" illustrates one method for producing the above example of "serendipity" shuffle using a Spotify desktop app running under Windows 10.

 

* Create six blank playlists 1), 2) .... in a folder named "One NewRelease for every ten plays--Average"

 

* Copy your New Releases to your blank playlist 1)... giving for example,  http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/4VtWym9wGqLbRZwUKjnoY9 .

 

* Copy your favorite playlist of ancient songs to your blank playlist 2)... for shuffling with your desired density of repeats for your NewReleases-- giving for example, https://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/6OcaIHGAIERbUK6yh5qsQk   .

 

* Do Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C in your playlist of NewReleases to copy them-- and then do Ctrl-V ten times in your blank playlist 3)... giving for example http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/35ufEPM6kIU2Da84QdBO7d .  Note that the number of tracks in 3)... will be 10 times the number of NewRelease tracks in your playlist 1)....

 

* To your blank playlist 4)... , copy 1000 tracks of your first NewRelease track-- "Weight of the world" by Deacon Blue in the example giving http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/4wV7Z5yfbpD3gCMrYPMFKh .  I created the 1000 tracks by first doing Ctrl-V ten times, then copying the ten by Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C-- and then doing Ctrl-V nine times to give 100 copies of the track "Weight of the world"-- then copying the 100 by Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C and then doing Ctrl-V nine times to give a total of 1000 tracks of "Weight of the world"-- You can tell where you are in this copying process by looking at the summary line above the first track in the playlist to see how many copies you have already put into your playlist 4)....

 

* Then copy the contents of playlists 2), 3), and 4) to the blank playlist 5)-- giving for example http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/2KZMMgiG9J3ce2dWjCsHH6 .  You will have to accommodate that notorious Spotify design bug that prevents you from seeing more than 10K tracks in one playlist; there are several ways to get around this bug, but for this demo, you might try first using less than 7000 tracks in playlist 2)....

 

* Then you use a text shuffle tool to shuffle the whole mix and copy the shuffled text lines to playlist 6) ... as exemplified by http://open.spotify.com/user/rednblu/playlist/6YlrIF2sHKrDWdPO5pPpxu .  Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C in playlist 5) copies all tracks to the Windows 10 buffer-- Ctrl-V in the first box of https://www.browserling.com/tools/random-lines for example pastes the HTML lines of all tracks ready for shuffling-- Then clicking the "Randomize Lines!" button truly shuffles the HTML lines of all the tracks-- Then clicking the smaller yellow button to the right with the hover text of "Copy to clipboard" stores the shuffled text lines-- then Ctrl-V in the empty playlist gives you the shuffled playlist 6)....

 

* On my equipment and software, I need robust

  1. a) initialization and
  2. b) diagnostics

to correct the Spotify shuffle configuration and cranky Spotify shuffle memory so that Spotify shuffles huge already shuffled playlists and folders of 150K tracks perfectly for my tastes without crashing Windows 10.  Apparently, huge already shuffled playlists that change daily cause the native Spotify shuffle algorithm to bypass the buggy code that often sends the Spotify shuffle into a nonsense repeating loop that never plays most of the tracks in a 7K track playlist.

 

* With my custom-made initialization and diagnostics, the Spotify shuffle works perfectly for me in never giving unwanted repeats that I notice when listening.

 

Bon voyage!  And stay healthy on your cruise!