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

[Ben_JM]

How is this still not fixed? How hard can it be?

[pr0pag4nda]

The queue and shuffle function are ridiculous. Same as your support and development. 

If I press shuffle on top of ‘songs’ in my library, I expect all tracks to be load to the queue in random order. Nothing else. 

Maybe you are just too miserable to implement this, but the queue, which contains +- 80 tracks (really guys?!), could at least contain tracks from the whole library instead only the fist tracks of the list. Further it shouldn’t be too challenging to implement an algorithm that loads the next random track from rest of library to the end of that ridiculously small queue when the current track ends. 

This can be done by a trainee in a few days guys... But you are aware of this for more than 4 years?!?

I would be embarrassed that this app can be seen and used by anyone if I was a developer of it. It’s nothing but a shame. 

[Paulotorre5]

2018 and still **bleep**ty!

Shame on you Spotify!!

[flowryaan]

please add a true shuffle option!

[WirralFire]

Right, firstly I haven't browsed through all thirty-three pages of this thread, so apologies if my findings have been reported previously.

Secondly, surely the very fact that this thread is thirty three pages long kind of suggests that this issue requires tackling?

Anyway, I've messed about with the 'shuffle' option and on my laptop, listening through the laptop speakers I can actually create an apparent total randomness (is this a word?) to my playlist of 1220 tracks just by selecting shuffle and double-clicking the playlist title on the left-hand side of the screen BUT as soon as I cast the playback through to the different speaker sets throughout my house (via Chromecast Audio hardware) the play queue alters, only then shuffling the first 100-150 tracks.  This limitation applies whichever sorting option I have applied to my playlist. (track name, date added, length etc.)

[JanisE]

So, this problem of shuffling only the top few titles has been around since at least 2014, eh? ...

[whitworth]

This issue has been bugging me for years now too. I have been streaming Spotify from iPhone to Google Chromecast Audio. After some more experimenting tonight, I have managed to get my iPhone to properly randomly shuffle all my saved songs in my library (there are 1000’s of them). I have them sorted by song title, press ‘shuffle play’, and have the randomiser turned on. HOWEVER, this is only when playing on the iPhone. When I cast to any of my Google Chromecast Audio devices (which are really convenient, sound great connected to decent equipment, and are very cheap) the randomness is compromised, and the Spotify app starts randomly playing a smaller selection of songs that start with the letter of the last song played before I started casting. So perhaps a Google/third party constraint on the Spotify app?

[mediocaballero]

This issue happening in a paid service is quite sad...

At first I thought it was a problem only I had, but when I started writing in google search "spotify shuffle..." and it suggested "spotify shuffle always plays same songs", which directed me to this *sad* thread I couldn't believe what I was reading...

[Helle_1986]

I also experience that if my playlist contains "the same track" in different versions. E. G. Feat numbers, these gets played right after each other - its a freaking pain.

[JPontinen]

I can't believe this... Thought it's just my imagination.

I sorted my playlist by title and turned shuffle off. Now it can't do anything but play all songs.

Bwhahaha!

[m3marek]

I have the same problem. Especially while using Google Chromecast Audio it is playing always the same ~50 songs while I have 500 on my playlist. It ruins the pleasure of listening.

[whitworth]

I have found a get around for this. I have an Amazon Fire TV Stick connected to my TV on the same WiFi network as my Chromecast Audios, and when I cast to that, I get a proper shuffle of the whole playlist rather than a shorter selection. I can then select one of the three Chromecast Audios I have in the house, and the whole playlist remains shuffled. A little inconvenient, but it solves the issue. You also need an Amazon Fire TV Stick, so not an ideal scenario. I have reported this to Google and Spotify.

[TheAdmiralAleho]

Yup. Four years and still Spotify refuse to fix it or even engage in a dialogue with it’s many disgruntled users. I would reiterate that I believe you should all switch to Apple Music as it is a far superior service (for the same price) but even that is not perfect.
Perhaps we should all start buying records again ?

[TheAdmiralAleho]

Yup. Four years and no response or help from Spotify at all which shows they clearly do not care about their many disgruntled customers and refuse to even engage in a dialogue.

 Switch to Apple Music all of you. It ain't perfect but it is far, far superior and the same price so I fail to see what's stopping you.

[AetasSerenus]

Just reiterating what others have said. The randomization is horrible, it seems intentional as songs from similar genres usually follow one another. I wouod love if there was an option for true shuffle. 

[ginandcranberry]

Sigh... Yet another case where Spotify, in an attempt to pre-empt our stupidity, removes a core feature in favor of a piece of **bleep** lazy algorithm.

I have this issue, which appears to be ignored. On a playlist of 1k+ songs (of which I have many), it just cycles the same few artists. It appears to be a server-side issue with the randomization, because it happens across all clients - (I primarily use spotify desktop, iOS, and connect with a google audio chromecast or amazon echo dot). Anecdotally it feels like if I start it somewhere specific in the playlist, I get alphabetically similar artists preferred for that session, which made me worry that it was only randomizing the current "page" of results, or things that were available in memory on the client. But I don't have enough evidence to be sure.

In any case, this is **bleep**ing ridiculous thing to **bleep** up. At least give me an "advanced" setting to turn off this over-engineered garbage. When I hit random, I want (pseudo)random, non-algorithmically-assisted random. Like every **bleep**ing music player since digital music started.

Jesus christ Spotify get your **bleep** together.

[Mashinyan]

I don’t really have any huge playlists but a lot of smaller nishe lists on aprox 3-10h and I usually get to listen to all the song. However it always seems to be in sort og the same order. I feel like it’s sometimes by popularity, sometimes by personal popularity and maybe like once a month I get to listen to some of the songs that are not affectet by any of these variables first. 

[user-removed]

In order to hear all 2,368 songs on my Spotify playlist, i sorted the songs alphabetically on said playlist, then TURNED OFF the shuffle feature, then go through and listen to the songs alphabetically...

Not ideal, but at least you get the element of randomness that you were hoping to get with shuffle...  i've also tried sorting the songs by length to add variety to the order of songs on the playlist.

[律です]

Well, there is a reason why I hear certain songs more often. Because I like them more? Why does it always play the worst songs but I don’t want to delete them either

[sciascia]

wow! I ... kind of thought I was crazy. so. annoying. I guess I'm switching to Apple Music. I was such a big Spotify fan too. oh well.