Shuffle play is not random

[ws1482]

Shuffle play was bad before the update and now its worse. On my 442 song playlist, the same 30 or 35 tracks play over and over again and the other 400 songs I have barely heard once. I have had to delete songs because shuffle play was choosing them everytime I would listen. Spotify developers say shuffle play is random but how is repeating the same 35 songs over and over random. For some reason there is a higher probability of certain songs playing than others. This is a major flaw in the system. The shuffle play programs needs to be totally overhauled, it is awful

[jendavis1126]

Go to spotify shuffler . com and it will create a shuffled playlist for you and add it to your account...

agree that spotify needs to address this bs. It isn't that hard, y'all. 

[wbarnes1989]

Almost 4 years later and Spotify still can't get Shuffle right. I have a 136 song playlist that I created from scratch. If I use shuffle, there is always a group of songs that get played in that run very early on. I just shared the list with a friend that was streaming, and of 136 songs there are 6 songs by the same band. 4 of those songs played within 10 minutes, almost every other song. This also happens when I'm using Spotify on my radio, or just listening on my phone. No matter how many times I use shuffle this band has multiple songs that play within the first 15-20min of the shuffle.

6 songs out of 136 is less than a 4.5% chance that one of those songs would play first. That's 3-5min a song, that's less than a 5% chance a song would play in the first 30min.

It is obvious that their shuffle isn't random. This is garbage and really needs to be fixed. After 4 years though, I don't hold out much hope.

[StevBrennan]

jep, same here. it is so annoying that it is one of the reasons i think about changing to another provider...
What i found out helps is when you delete or adding songs it sometimes changes...

How can we officially adress this again and again to spotify development?

[Phruizler]

Hey everyone, I found a way to shuffle songs properly in Spotify if your playlist is large enough (100+ songs). Just sort by "Title" and then play it in order. Sure, there will be some minor clumping due to the fact that certain letters are preferential for beginning song titles with, but a huge bonus is that it won't ever play the same song twice in a playthrough. There you go Spotify, I just invented a better shuffle algorithm than your multi-billion dollar music streaming platform has built into it. 

I understand that making a shuffle algorithm that people will actually like and that doesn't have clumping is hard. But no one cares about clumping -- they just don't want to hear the same song 6 times in an hour. How about you shuffle the playlist and then play every song on the list ONLY ONCE? That's what I just did with my innovative new "Sort by Title" algorithm. 

[90percentbitter]

Has anyone else noticed that if you use shuffle while your songs are sorted by download date, it only plays songs from the past month that you've added music to your library? 

Similarly, if you sort them by title, your queue only plays songs from A to about D and nothing after that.

As the attachment shows, my songs are still shuffled, but there's nothing after a title that starts with the letter C 

[Dallinbohn1]

Wooooooah, thanx so much for finding that sorting menu!

[NonameSL]

The reason is that the queue only shows the first 100 songs (I think it's a 100). Once you go on in the queue it will update. For example, try playing the next song in the queue and you'll notice the queue filling up with the next songs.

[BananaMama]

The solution people keep saying about the qeue only having the 100 songs is bs because it's not a solution but more of explaining why it still sucks. If I shuffle my whole songs library it should randomly assort songs into a qeue of 100 rather than take 100 songs of maybe 5 different albums and then shuffle those in a random order. This allgorithm is broken and I look forward to it being fixed or finding a new music solution since spotify refuses to give their costumers real solutions.

[w00ter]

I have playlist of 2000 songs. It plays the same 30 or so songs over and over. Any programmer could do a better job doing a random shuffle. So after 4 years of no improvement, I guess there is an alterior motive. 

[RickRocknRoll]

I tend to agree with you. I did find that changing the order of songs - or how it's sorted by title, artist etc.does help a little. It changes the songs that it tends to repeat so at least it's not the same as the songs in the previous sort. Of course you'll need to swith the sorting again to stop it from repeating the same one's from that sort. 

If they can't make a true random shuffle they should add a filter that allows you to not play the same song over x amount of hours/days/weeks etc. 

It's pretty frustrating that this 'paid' service doesn't think it's important enough to create a true random shuffle solution even though the Spotify community is loaded with customer requests/complaints about this feature.

R

[d_a_n_e]

What it's doing is shuffling the first 4 or 5 artists' tracks and not including any of the other tracks in the playlist. So I'll often get artists that begin with letters A through C shuffling, but no more. Sooooooo FRUSTRATING! 

[d_a_n_e]

UPDATE: 

I have found a way to properly shuffle playlists on a computer app, but it's still broken on my iPhone app. 

If you double-click your playlist, it will begin playing it on shuffle and will include all artists. When I view my queue, I can see the whole variety of artists A to Z. When I hit the shuffle button on my iPhone app, it still only selects a handful of artists to shuffle. 

Another weird discovery: when you go back and forth between playing on different devices, it refreshes the queue with a whole new set of tracks.  

[kolorafa]

My way of dealing with shuffle - use external player like Clementine:

Pros:
- correctly working shuffle and order playback
- you can mix spotify with other music sources

- you can set "stop after current song"

- no autoplay suggested songs bullsh-t at random - correctly play whole playlist without playing over and over the same!

Cons:
- no suggested songs - so no way to easilly add more songs from suggestions
- no way to manage spotify playlists (maybe different player can), you can make local playlist
- no radio based on songs

I already got sick and tired of listening to the same music so my Premium was canceled, but I'm testing clementine with spotify trial run.

Mayb someone else use some different (maybe better) external player for spotifyt? (there was also spotiamp ['] )

[camcoh]

Wow, this is so stupid to be honest.

While I'm at work, I use a wireless headset for my mobile. If I start the shuffle on my laptop, it's completely random shuffled. BUT, if I change the spotify client to my iPhone - the "not-so-random" shuffle retakes the command. Eventhough I'm skipping/jumping to next songs on my laptop, its the iPhone app that really does the shuffle. And therefore plays the same 30-40 songs. What a load of bulls***.

I learned that it takes the top 30-40 songs of the playlist, unbiased to how you sort it. So now I've sorted my playlist after songlenght, so I have some feeling of randomness.

Can't believe it's 2018 and this basic functionality does not work properly.

[4teenth]

Try tweeting them. They clearly don't give a **bleep**, so putting your problems in the public domain can force a decision to avoid PR disasters.

[tavasti]

My solution to this random problem is listening tracks on order, sorted by track title. Every time I start listening, I select 'shuffle play this', and turn off random. So starting point is randomized by spotify, and then listening in track title order.

Sure not that random when reaching some Jean-Michel Jarre, Oxygene part 1 - Oxygene part 2 ... 🙂

[codmon23]

I have been listening this way myself for about 2 years.  Spotify programmers can't take away the alphabet. So, there is always a way to shuffle with no repeats.  It also works great for shuffling new material into an existing playlist, even if you are in the middle of the playlist cycle.  Another advantage of alpha order by title is that it is easy to synch your listing position across devices.  Since the order is always the same, you always know your listining history.  Even if Spotify does fix their shuffle, I will probably continue to listen this way.  The only trouple is non-premium members can not listen to a playlist in order (Can not turn off "random"), they always have to push the "Shuffle" button and are stuck with any limitations of the algorithm.

[evalou555]

Yup, almost 4 years later and right now could tell you the exact order of songs on “shuffle” of my 200+ playlist because they are always the same. Every time. Can some one please do something about this?? Thank you

[909hemi]

IT IS STILL AWFUL AFTER ALL THESE YEARS! Same problem as years ago: Same 50 artists played, often with repeats from that same artist! W-T-H!! Sucks!

[sauceitup]

yeah the shuffle is trash, it plays the more played songs even with 900+ songs.