Spotify Connect not shuffling (Confirmed to affect: iOS, Android, PC)

[zizoor]

There has already been a few forum posts about this. But with how the unique way that this company seems to run it's support where you need backup from the rest of the community to have a problem resolved it's gotten no where.

No matter. We shall try again. 

Playing a playlist of a decent size (In my tests I've been using a 1000+ song playlist) from for example my PC to my Chromecast it seems to only play perhaps the first 100-120 songs. These songs are truly shuffled. But in this playlist I've added albums from a few artists all in a row, my first two artists on the board being In Flames, then Machinae Supremacy with one Amaranth song in the middle. You can see the layout of the playlist here: spotify:user:zizoor.:playlist:6Sw5k0HiW1P9nONadSUsEt

This means I ONLY hear two different artists at best in a fairly decently sized playlist. This particular issue has persisted for probably over a year and a half and I've completely given up on you fixing it. 

The issue can be replicated on any given device too. If i control spotify on my computer via my phone the very same issue happens. You can see this here: 

However if I just shuffle not via Spotify connect it looks like this, and as you can see there are more artists than just machinae supremacy and in flames, its also the same playlist..

The fact that this issue remains and that it's so incredibly easy to test for anyone at spotify is mindboggling. You advertise spotify connect as a key feature to spotify. One of the selling points and yet it's not functional. What are you DOING?

And obviously this post wont reach anywhere because the only way you get recognition here is by getting upvoted like we have some sort of popularity contest. But I plead, FIX IT!

You can replicate this in literally no time. There's no excuse. The other posts I've seen about this problem have both been closed or marked as "Not an issue" and if this isn't an issue then I really don't know what would count, spotify not starting? 

[Alfredo]

Hey @zizoor!

We've let the tech team know, and they're investigating this as we speak.

We don't have an exact timeline available for a fix, but we'd recommend keeping an eye out for updates to the app.

As soon as we have an update, we'll post it here.

Stay tuned.

[zizoor]

I'm staying carefully optimistic in that case... Please keep us updated.

[zizoor]

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Connect-only-plays-100-song-chunks-of-playlists/idi-...

Found another one with the same issue. This being "Not right now" since Early 2016. Yeah. That was the last of my hope being killed off. Seriously..?

[blubbo]

@Alfredo, "investigating this as we speak" ... mmm, good one.

@zizoor, you got my vote at least. I tried starting another thread on here to point out that the connect-only-plays-100-song-chunks-thread existed and to try and get an update on the issue. My thread was promptly closed with a message about them "nudging the right people about it". This was maybe a month or so ago and then nothing.

I really, really hope Alfredo isn't flat out lying about talking to the "tech team" this time but It's really hard to stay optimistic about this.

[Lee]

Hey @zizoor & @blubbo!

I just wanted to pop in and reassure you that our tech team are aware of this. We'll keep you posted on any news with have, but for now, we don't have a time frame to give you.

Thanks for bearing with us!

Cheers,

Lee

[jamesonsavage]

I've been using Spotify Connect at my restaurant and assembled a playlist compiled from various other playlists that are genre-specific. This playlist is over a thousand songs and the genre order goes as follows: 60's garage rock (about 200 songs), Motown/r&b/funk/disco (about 300 songs), power pop (around 200 songs), indie/punk/alternative/Britpop (around 150 songs), and top 40 from '56-'96 (around 300 songs).

When I played the playlist on shuffle, I noticed that it was favoring the garage rock songs, and played 10 in a row. Given that the genre comprised only 1/5 or less of the playlist, the chance of that happening is about 1 in 10 million. I tried starting the playlist in various spots and found that the same thing happened, it would stick to the same genre. 

Since my playlist is loosely organized by genre, this gives me an insight into how the Spotify shuffle system works (at least on an iPad using Connect, I've never had this issue on my desktop PC version). It seems like it only shuffles around the songs immediately in the vicinity of the song you select in the playlist. So for instance if within a playlist of 1000 songs, I select number 225, it will only shuffle songs 200-300 in the queue.

After reading up on this issue, which seems to have plagued Spotify since 2012 (!), I came across a solution that I thought might work. It suggested sorting the songs by title and THEN shuffling. I did this and started the playlist on the first song (19th Nervous Breakdown by the Rolling Stones). Shuffle then followed that with "Bacon Fat" by Andre Williams, "Behind the Wall of Sleep" by the Smithereens, and "Always Something There to Remind Me" by Naked Eyes. At first glance that seems random until I realized all of those songs started with numbers or A-C. So, it's still not truly shuffling the entire playlist, just the first 200 or so on the list.

This all is very frustrating and I would love to see Spotify fix this bug. I haven't observed it in the desktop version, so that appears to have been fixed, but it's definitely still and issue with iPad and connect. As someone who wants to treat the customers in my restaurant to a variety of good music from different eras, it's disappointing that I cannot truly randomize my playlists so that listeners don't get fatigued from hearing the same section of the playlist over and over.

Please fix this!

[Chris]

Hey folks,

Thanks for sharing all of your feedback. We understand the frustration here, but right now we don't have a solution for this. 

We can cofirm that the right team are aware, but we don't have a timeframe for a fix. 

As soon as we have an update, we'll let you all know in this thread. 

Thanks for bearing with us! 

[CapitanMercury]

I have a playlist with 6.6k songs in it and when I attempt to listen to music on my ps4 it only plays a handful of them, and it does the same thing when I put it on shuffle. It selects a handful of songs and plays only those. My ps4 and my spotify app are all up to date, and I've even tried just controlling it from my phone to try and fix this issue.

[JulianA_Bogota]

Hey @CapitanMercury! Thanks for writing.

Just to check, does this also happen on a different device, like a phone or a desktop PC? It'd be awesome if you could fire over the Spotify URI or link for the playlist in question. That way, we'll be able to take a look at it backstage. Also, we'd love to know if the same occurs with any other playlists. 

Keep us posted 🙂

[CapitanMercury]

It happens to all my playlists, all that I'd tried, and yes whenever I'm controlling my Spotify app on my PC by using my phone, and I choose a song without picking it from the queue it will make the same problem occur. I've recreated the issue several times while trying to see if it were possible, and findings proved it was concurrent with all variables included.

As for the URI for the playlist: spotify:user:capitanmercury:playlist:0KHNuxbq99W7QsjSvkFWjH