WE NEED PURE SHUFFLE!

[DOGGOくん]

As many would have noticed, shuffle mode is not 100% random, as it depends on the popularity of the song, your last listen.

But I believe shuffle mode should be fully random, and then make a new setting called "enhanced shuffle" with those variables.

I absolutely love this app, but the one thing that's keeping it from being my favorite streaming service is this shuffle feature that only plays popular, and replayed songs. it infuriates me that the algorithm doesn't purely represent my/our music, and I desire to just turn off the app when songs constantly repeat.

[Mitre226644]

“When Spotify first started, it operated on true random shuffle. Every song in a playlist had equal chance of coming up when you pressed the shuffle button. However, the streaming service found themselves bombarded with complaints from users saying that the shuffle wasn’t random enough and that they kept getting clumps of songs by the same artist when on shuffle. The issue is that as human beings, our perception of random isn’t how random actually works.”

No matter what, there will be complaints. Why would they bother?

[ChrisPine]

Yes, and Spotify solved this a decade ago!

But then they went and broke it (but kept the blog post up about how it used to work). The above is definitely not how it works today! Features of today's broken algorithm:

• Listening to the same playlist on random plays the same songs in the same order, at least at first. (Seems to affect some playlists more than others.)
• Try shuffling a long playlist and notice how you can listen to hours of music without hearing a single song in the second half of the playlist.

There should be a way to create a long playlist, listen to it on shuffle N times, and have mostly different songs coming up as you listen. As it is today, you'll only hear a subset of the playlist, and the shuffling is weighted by who-knows-what such that for some playlists, you just hear the same songs in the same order.

[Mitre226644]

@Pinecones,

I am not experiencing what you’re describing. In lieu of arguing with you, I wish you luck in finding peace with this issue. And if the levees break and we’re forced to live on our own resourcefulness, you can still press buttons and listen to exactly what you want instead of trusting the machines.

[zx6dude]

There is another 'live' idea like this one or very similar. 

Absolutely no action from Spotify.

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Option-to-have-a-true-shuffle/idi-p/488059...

[JustinTyme29]

Me and my cousin who is very close to me complain about this almost every time we see each other. One thing I really miss about using MP3 players is that true shuffle experience. I think the shuffle algorithm is Spotifys biggest problem as a streaming platform and I patiently await for them to hear their community and fix this issue.

[Hollovoid7]

I really hope they fix this. It always focuses in on 10-15 songs and never breaks out of it. I’ve tried turning shuffle off then on, uninstalling, reboot, reinstalling, and going to different playlists then back to liked playlist. All that does is makes it focus on 10-15 different songs. If I skip the song, it just goes to another one I’ve heard in the last hour. Maddening.

[zx6dude]

• They won't fix it, they haven't in years... 

[Dylanica]

As engineers at Spotify are aware, pure random shuffle (like Fisher-Yates shuffle) leads to results that don’t “feel” random. Something like what is described in their blog post in 2014 about shuffling is probably what most people actually want.

But that is clearly not how the shuffling works anymore. Everyone I’ve discussed this with has noticed that the algorithm plays some songs repeatedly and others almost never. I have manually shuffled a playlist and played it in-order; the results are clearly different–and preferable–that way. 

This means that Spotify must be shuffling music with an algorithm that weights songs by predicted user preference somehow. This is not what your users expect or want, Spotify. Users build playlists because they want to hear the songs in it. And the algorithm isn’t perfect at predicting songs I want to hear. Even if you think that most users do want this, there are a lot of users who don’t (as indicated by the existence of threads like this one), meaning that it should be a setting!

If anyone at Spotify is reading this, please listen to your users and give us options. I know engineering is hard and it’s expensive to maintain multiple sets of functionality, but this is the core functionality of your app that your competitors are doing better than you.

[ChrisPine]

This means that Spotify must be shuffling music with an algorithm that weights songs by predicted user preference somehow.

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Well, it means they are weighting it, but I suspect is is not related to user preference. (They don't seem to care a great deal about user preference.) I suspect they are weighting it based on what music they are trying to push, or how much money they make (or lose?) on which songs, etc.

[MrsMcGibblets]

HATE the new algorithm. Need pure shuffle.