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

[fraktalisman]

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...

[mrthomes]

Join the club Guyb, it's the most ridiculous thing about Spotify. Like you, my playlists are made up of my favourite songs but after a while some of the songs, the ones that ALWAYS seem to play in the same order, become my least favourite as you hear them too much, there are many that never get played in random mode. I would not be so aggrieved if Spotify would just say, 'You know what guys, we have tried everything and we just can't crack this random play nut, we've tried but hey, live with it or leave'. At least you would know where you stand then.

[Matthew-S]

I made a tool that connects to your account and runs in the background, tracks the songs played on your account, and skips overplayed songs based on a criteria. For example, for me I have it so it won't play a song it already played less than 1 week ago, doubling this distance as I listen to it more. I also have it so that if I skip a song it no longer plays it for a long time. I've been using this system for a few months now and it's allowed me to start enjoying Spotify again.

Would anyone find it useful for me to share this tool? To use it you would need to be comfortable running some commands in the terminal and leaving it running in the background. Personally, I just have it running on my raspberry pi and I never have to think about it.

I would release an official third party Spotify plugin to do this, but their API is so bad that it makes this infeasible. (Specifically, they have never released sockets support to their public API despite the numerous requests and already having the API for internal use. Without sockets, my servers would need to poll their servers ~2 times per second per user so 100 users means 200 requests per second)

[rednblu]

Beautiful!  Elegant!

[Dsears2661]

LI would love it if once a song is played, it is marked with a number such as one and every song that has a one by it will not be played until all songs in the playlist have a one by it. I know in order to do this it might be more than just what I said but the basics of it would be once one song is played it will not be played until all other songs in your playlist have been played no matter how many times you guys shuffle it exit out of the program. 

Call it super shuffle and put it on the paid platform

[Javierba]

#SpotifyDoesntCare

[ekpatr]

I really like this idea, but it can even be further improved. It would be awesome if it is possible to tweak randomness in order to select how to prioritize songs based on popularity.

This can be done with a simple sliding bar, where all to the left will prioritize popular songs and all right will prioritize unpopular songs. I can even be more customized with some kind of probability density function (similar to how EQ bars works today), where where the statistical probability to get a song certain popularity is selected.

The probability density function approach may risk discriminating new the least popular songs, though, as the best setting likely is to set unpopular songs to almost zero.

This tool may also be useful for restaurants and clubs, which likely want to play some odd music early during the night, then play new popular music in the middle of the night and in the end emphasis more on classics.

[KevH4575]

Hi ekpatr,

I agree. There could be an advance settings page tucked away somewhere so
that those interested could tweak settings without cluttering the simple
interface.

Seems like Spotify are not interested in even providing some basic
customisation. This point was raised by others before me and nothing has
been done..

Perhaps they just want to keep it simple or perhaps it might cost them less
to play certain songs.

I would have though keeping your customer happy was "stay in business"
101. There will be a challenger to Spotify at some time in the future and
if they have the feature people are asking for that will be it.

[elisse1]

Spotify, come on, you offer a PAID service and ask for input, and there are literally THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of people who, in one way or another, are telling you that the shuffle option you have doesn't work like anyone wants it to. There may be slight variances in what folks want, but as a general rule, they are saying "shuffle does not actually shuffle." Why is it hard for you to allow this to Premium customers who are PAYING to get the options they want? Fine if you want to leave your current "shuffle-but-not-really" shuffle option for the free version. Heck, most of us would settle for just a normal, true shuffle.....shuffle randomly through ALL my songs in a list until ALL of them have played. Then start over. That is NOT a difficult concept to implement. I use my list(s) while I work, and just this weekend, I had a list that was 6 hours long, and MULTIPLE people said to me various times during the day....."do you not have that list on shuffle?! We've heard some of the same songs at least 4-5x each." YEAH. I KNOW. Shuffle isn't really shuffle. Please, Spotify, have better customer service responses to this issue. Many people have suggested I switch to Apple Music, and it's starting to sound more appealing by the day.....

[Javierba]

#SpotifyDoesntCare

[johnvestevich]

Can we get a use-case in support of "smart" shuffle? Can you provide one hypothetical scenario in which a not-actually-random shuffle algorithm helps a user to accomplish some goal? Just one example. Typically with a big company, the decision to devote company time and resources to develop and implement a feature must be pitched to stakeholders for approval. I must presume that that pitch contained a little story about a user who (insert insane logic here - needs to hear a particular song over and over? or accidentally added some songs they hate to a playlist and can't be bothered to delete them and is so counting on a non-random shuffle to help them avoid the accidental songs?) ______. As you can see it's even difficult to imagine one possible scenario in which smart shuffle provides any benefit. But since you actually implemented it, that means the supportive use-cases exist and were successfully presented. So, in the face of literally a decade of thousands of users demanding this, it should be a simple matter to pull up one of the use cases and open our eyes to it. Because obviously Spotify seems to know something about smart shuffle that none of your users do. So awaken us. Let's have one of those use cases. It's just a few lines of text that could help us all to stop bugging you about this. Just give us the logic behind smart shuffle. Just repeat the reasoning that you already have established, but to us.