Shuffle Is Only Going Through A Handful Of Songs

[eduardocastrof]

Hello, everyone!

I have finally signed up to Spotify premium and was excited to do the transition and reinvent how I listen and discover music. Spent a good 2 weeks building my library, with close to a 1000 songs downloaded on my phone (for offline listening), but when I shuffle the songs in my library, the same songs will start repeating after I've gone through 20 or 30 songs. This is not an issue with probabilities, I actually started skipping the tracks and finding that it was repeating the same 20/30 tracks I had already heard out of a pool of a 1000 songs. It's hard to believe a simple shuffle feature doesn't work, and it's hurting my experience. It's especially frustrating seeing that these issues have been going on for years. Is there an easy fix for this problem?

[cfam]

• Your device NOTE8
• Device's OS ANDROID 8
• Spotify version 8.4.68.911 armV7
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue SHUFFLE PLAYLIST
• Is this happening just with playlists? Albums or all?  JUST PLAYLISTS
• Is it only playlists with over a certain number of songs? PRESUMABLY
• Is this happening only with certain playlists/ albums? If so can you link us here. https://open.spotify.com/user/chadfamilant/playlist/1gNKAbZ3WqeqOrVV3DjEpE?si=g10TobDHR062q0p7E_UROw
• When you hit 'shuffle' does it always start with the exact same song (please give album, playlist and song links)) NO
• Any screenshots/ videos are always helpful N/A

[SDevilbiss]

• Your device
  • Desktop PC (happens on my android too but I don't use that constantly anymore)
• Device's OS
  • Windows 10
• Spotify version 
  • 1.0.88.353.g15c26ea1 (Windows Store version)
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue
  • Create a playlist with several songs each from multiple albums
  • When playlist is played it will play several songs in a row generally within one album then switch to  another. I recognize that random selection will often have seemingly non-random elements, however, if I wanted to listen to 5 albums one at a time, I would just play the albums. If I were the one who were attempting to resolve this I would just put in an if statement that if 2 songs are from the same album/part of the list, and a 3rd is drawn from that same album/part of list, redraw. 
  • An example: 
    • https://open.spotify.com/user/121611498/playlist/65hxh067LWDJ1mqkkvrFKX?si=AX0vngD2TS-klyIKFcE95g
    • This playlist has 46 track from 5 Muse albums. They were added one album at a time. 
    • I began this playlist and this time seems to have more variance than usual. This was my first click, I didn't reload to find something like this. 
    • 3x Blackholes an other Revelations, 1x Origin of Symmetry, 5x Showbiz... 
    • 
• Is this happening just with playlists? Albums or all?
  • Playlists 
• Is it only playlists with over a certain number of songs?
  • I tend to have playlists that have 3-7 songs from each album by an artist. That's where I notice that I'm only hearing one album at a time
• Is this happening only with certain playlists/ albums? If so can you link us here. 
  • Nope
• When you hit 'shuffle' does it always start with the exact same song (please give album, playlist and song links))
  • Nope
• Any screenshots/ videos are always helpful
  • Submitted.

[meahtenoha]

Hey @SDevilbiss thank you for the detailed response. When you go back to the same Muse playlist today and hit shuffle, do the some tracks end up at the beginning? Our shuffle algorithms are random--and do not weigh which album the track is from necessarily. The list you've provided is 'random'. Now, if you're getting the exact same order of songs or the same few songs at the beginning every time you hit shuffle then we do have a problem. What happens when you come back to the playlist and shuffle again? 

[meahtenoha]

@cfam can you give us some more specifics about what's wrong when you shuffle that exact playlist? If it's not the starting with the start with the exact same song or songs then what's the problem you're having? The more specific the better. 

Update: I saw your earlier post, "On phone and laptop, shuffle only plays a portion of playlist.  This is not limited to the first several songs, as the last songs added may be included.  Whether it pulls from the first songs or the last songs added to the list, only a subset of the playlist is ever queued to shuffle. "

Can you define which tracks in that Ozzy Osbourne playlist are in the 'portion' that is only shuffled every time? Thanks!

[cfam]

The issue is that only a subset of the playlist ever queues, and I'm not
able to shuffle the whole playlist.

[rednblu]

     >>  ... only a subset of the playlist ever queues, and I'm not
able to shuffle the whole playlist.

To avoid hearing repeated subsets, my friends in the previous four-year discussion showed me how to shuffle my playlist outside Spotify and then save it to my ShuffledPlaylist-- And then I delete from the top of that ShuffledPlaylist whatever I play-- with the Spotify shuffle turned off.

That is the only way I can hear each and every song in my playlist.

My friends explain to me that "repeated subsets" are not a defect in the Spotify shuffle-- Rather, my friends say, the bug of the "repeated subsets" results from the way I jump around looking for new music.

My mathematical friends tell me that I won't have this problem with a 50 track playlist if I never interrupt my play to click on some album that I have never heard before-- because the "repeated subsets" result from my coming back to my playlist and doing a new shuffle-- There is no way on Spotify to continue automatically from the previous shuffled list.  Do you know of any way?

Suppose I am really discovering manyMany new albums-- and suppose I "shuffle" play only one track from my playlist each time I jump to discover some new album-- then my mathematical friends tell me that only 3 out of any 10,000 hearings of 50 songs will contain each and every track from the playlist that I want to "shuffle".

And to make sense of the numbers, my friends gave me the formula  =FACT(C3) / C3^C3  that I can put into my spreadsheet calculator to get  0.00036  for shuffle play of any 10 track playlist-- That is, the cell C3 contains the 10.

Potentially, Spotify might construct some "shuffle" that would shuffle queue first the tracks for which LastPlayedDate was greater than 90 days, followed by all the other tracks in the playlist.

As an example of this potential design, my friends provide me with an  AllOfSpotify... playlist that implements presenting at the top of that preshuffled  AllOfSpotify...  playlist only the tracks that I have not played in the last 90 days.

In conclusion:  An absolute minimum requirement for enjoying my shuffled music is never hearing any track that gives me the feeling that I just heard that track in the last week-- last month-- last three months-- My choice.

[cheetahsblood]

rednblu has seriously the best answer here. I love, love the LastPlayedDate idea. 

[Hthompson2018]

• Your device: iPhone7
• Device's OS: iOS.11.4.1
• Spotify version: 8.4.67.665
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue: Choose a playlist to shuffle. It either plays down the list in order or it plays one song and switches to another playlist. 
• Is this happening just with playlists? Albums or all? Playlists
• Is it only playlists with over a certain number of songs? All of my playlists
• Is this happening only with certain playlists/ albums? If so can you link us here. All my playlists
• When you hit 'shuffle' does it always start with the exact same song (please give album, playlist and song links) Yes
• Any screenshots/ videos are always helpful

[__Nemz]

• Your device - pixel 1
• Device's OS - Android
• Spotify version - 8.4.68.911 armV7
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue
• Free account -I click on one of my playlists that is in shuffle mode and it always starts with the first song and stays in repetitive chunks of only the first songs

• Is this happening just with playlists? Albums or all?
• I only listen to my playlists(8 total) and it happens with all of them

• Is it only playlists with over a certain number of songs?
• They are all maxed out or have a high number of songs the lowest song count out of those 8 is around 1k

• Is this happening only with certain playlists/ albums? If so can you link us here. 
• https://open.spotify.com/user/1254631840/playlist/1ls1FUDTuRni4Id1FNCZ0H?si=S3kkB05NThWEihIN6zVKVw
• https://open.spotify.com/user/1254631840/playlist/6v3uryQ0cVs1mHPLgz5yHl?si=3XnrVcqWQv2z7nLB0N4Keg 
• (2 of the playlists) 

• When you hit 'shuffle' does it always start with the exact same song (please give album, playlist and song links)) 
• My previous links above are prime examples of the exact song playing Everytime and same chunk of songs playing.

• Any screenshots/ videos are always helpful
• I can do this if you think it's necessary.

[meahtenoha]

Hi folks, it sounds like quite a few of you are experiencing only the top tracks in a playlist shuffling/ playing when using Connect. This has already been reported here.

We’ve given a transparent status there explaining there isn’t a current timeline for a fix. Please do leave a VOTE there if you’re experiencing the issue and a comment. We can then bring this information back internally to show the size of the issue for our users.

If however you are experiencing issues with Shuffle when not using Connect, please continue to post these deatils below--we're looking into this. Thank you! 

• Your device
• Device's OS
• Spotify version 
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue
• Is this happening just with playlists? Albums or all? 
• Is it only playlists with over a certain number of songs?
• Is this happening only with certain playlists/ albums? If so can you link us here. 
• When you hit 'shuffle' does it always start with the exact same song (please give album, playlist and song links))
• Any screenshots/ videos are always helpful

The more details and specifics we can get the better. And be sure to click +VOTE above so we know how many users to coming to us with this issue. Thank you!