[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

[jonathanleyerle]

So I’ve been noticing more and more recently that Spotify’s default shuffle feature doesn’t fully shuffle your songs. It does some sort of grouping to try to get similar songs together based off of what I’m sure is dozens of factors. Every time I shuffle a playlist (the one I noticed this with the most is ~100 songs and 6 hours of mostly full albums) it will group the songs mostly or completely together by album/artist, and given the number of times I’ve re-shuffled and checked the order there’s no way it’s just a coincidence. They also generally seem to be in the same order as well. If I hit shuffle play on a playlist it’ll generally put the same artists at the beginning every time.

With larger playlists of albums I am really not a fan of this shuffling method. If I have 6 hours of music on a playlist I will hardly ever have 6 hours to actually listen through the whole thing, but when I do listen to it I would like to hear all of the music on it equally, and not just the artist or two your algorithm likes to shuffle to first.

Anyways, I’m a reasonable man, all I’m asking for is an option to have a true shuffle (take all songs in the list, put them in a random order, and once they’re all played reshuffle them and play them again). Make it premium only if you want. I don’t think you should scrap the current shuffle algorithm because it sucks. Looking at some of the suggestions on here it seems like some people lobbied hard to have it that way. Just add an option for a true shuffle for those of us that don’t care about potentially getting the same song twice in a row.

[Mookpsu]

rozeboosje I guess it's easier for Spotify to ignore one complaint forum
instead of several

[zx6dude]

1 forum to rule them all...

[thesugarclouds]

I'm a relatively new Spotify subscriber after using Apple iTunes for years.  I have several large playlists that I would like to randomly shuffle and be surprised by the next tune, but I've been noticing that many of the same songs play each time I shuffle leading me to google the issue and find myself here.  I'm a musician and while it was very expensive, I didn't feel too terribly bad about paying for songs on iTunes because I know the artists get a healthy cut when you pay for the songs, and now I'm seeing that my extra money afforded me true shuffle on my playlists over there as well.  I have over 5,000 songs over on iTunes and if I can only hear the same 40-50 songs out of the 6-7000 I've saved here or be forced to create a bunch of mix-tape style playlists, it will be worth going back to iTunes.

[spconrad]

The current button with the incorrect "Shuffle" name simply changes the list of songs to a different pre-set order. To avoid confusing and frustrating users it should be renamed to something correct. Something like "Same Songs But In A Slightly Different Order" and for the "AI" infused version "Same Songs But In A Slightly Different Order And With a Handful of Random Songs That Were Picked Once and Will Never Change"

[taliatorpy]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 13 Pro

Operating System

iOS

My Question or Issue

Whenever I hit shuffle on any of my playlists, the same few songs play. Usually in the same order. There are some songs on my playlists that I barely ever hear. I don't have anything added to que. Anybody else? PLEASE fix this.

[dank13]

Ha! Welcome to the club @taliatorpy, there are financial reasons why this happens and for the same reasons it will not get fixed, I heard a podcast with a Spotify Executive that answered all the questions. Bit to give you a short resume this is how it goes:

1. Artists get paid per listen, but they only receive $$$ once their account has passed a certain threshold let's say $100 then they get paid... they receive 0.002 per play, so it might take a while until they get paid. Spotify prioritises artist on low $$$ so they don't have to pay them.

2 record labels pay Spotify to promote their artist... pretty much like an ad. They pay, and the artist of choice gets bumped up on everyone's playlists.

3. some artist sell their music to Spotify, means they don't get paid per listen. They get paid once and Spotify can play that song as much as they want. So, guess what? They prioritise those songs too.

4. Ai Generated music also gets priority, because there is no copyright on it.

in conclusion, this will never change. I suggest you to take your money somewhere else as I did with mine, installed an app that can migrate your playlists from Spotify to any other service and moved to Apple Music. I'm just waiting my wife give me the ok, when she finishes moving her music to Apple Music and I'll cancel this.

[zx6dude]

Sad, but true. I only wish that Spotify would come clean and admit to it in this "live" idea.

Profits over customer service.

As @dank13 said, better take your money elsewhere, Spotify will never fix this, they are too greedy.

Most providers have a free trial period, I tried Amazon Music, Apple Music and Deezer, ended up with Deezer. I wish I could try Tidal and YouTube Music, but neither are available in my country.

I can confirm that Amazon Music, Apple Music and Deezer have shuffle that actually works, I have heard songs I'd almost forgotten about, and I almost started re-liking songs that I used to love until Spotify repeated them so many times I started hating them. Ironic for a music provider: "lets play great songs so many times, that people will start hating them"

[rozeboosje]

In all fairness I also think that perhaps those poor schmucks who are still parting with their money for this abysmal service are barking up the wrong tree. I suspect that the problem isn't "shuffle" per se, but in fact the problem is "large play lists".

I will never go back to Spotify so it would take someone who is still with them to try this but am I right in thinking that Spotify's shuffle works fine on short play lists? Play lists containing 80 songs or less, to be precise?

My hypothesis is that Spotify do not like large play lists. These would consist of MANY songs by REAL musicians, so playing them will cost Spotify more in royalties when other forms of "random" play will allow them to sneak in their AI generated musical chewing gum for which they don't need to pay any artist a cent.

So to discourage people compiling large play lists for themselves they will never allow users to rearrange them, shuffle them (properly) etc, which short of them point blank blocking the creation of large play lists will help them, because people will soon get fed up hearing the same songs in the same order every time and try "something else" - cue more royalty free musical garbage.

As others have already said: Spotify could at least come clean about this and bluntly tell people that they will never fix this, rather than tasking their moderators to keep shoveling repeat requests for this into this black hole of a thread.

[Calbyte]

Please implement this true shuffle!!!

[Mookpsu]

Calbyte they've been ignoring us for the last four years but who knows,
maybe they'll listen to you. And if not Amazon Music has a true shuffle,
they now get my money