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

[RickRocknRoll]

I hear ya - but apparently Google Music has the same sort of limitations. I just don't get it. So yeah - I spent all of $2.99 for a solution. Not a perfect solution mind you, but it works nonethless. Better than nothing I suppose. 

[_bvd_]

It may have something to do with the taste of most listeners that Spotify takes into account. At the moment I also hear the "lesser" songs and for me that's fine. I think most people want to hear "the best off". But make two buttons, one Shuffle and one Shuffle for Top 100 people 😉

[Sayre]

Try reloading the app from the app store or check if your playlist is actually in shuffle if youre using browser

[RickRocknRoll]

Trust me, we've all been using true shuffle. It's a limitation of Spotify.
This was corroborated by a Spotify employee as well. The Spotify response
is posted a few posts back. This subject has been open for years.

Thanks though..

R

[Pcg21]

Spotify Shuffle handled by third party devices like Chromecast audio just doesn't work, as anyone with a large playlist can tell. But it does seem to work when the playing device's audio output is redirected via bluetooth, or by setting Google Home so that it channels all sounds to Chromecast, instead of specifically instructing Spotify to  broadcast through Chromecast : I have noticed that shuffle seems to use the entirety of my playlist, instead of playing the same tracks over and over.

My two cents... 

[ctreitzell]

Well, I don’t recall if someone suggested it in this thread, but I have found a solution to break the Spotify 100 limitation. This past couple of weeks I have successfully listened to massive playlists without repeats and it works well.

Using the playlist filter, set the track order to something other than “album”. I have been filtering by title which will order the tracks alpha numerically. Then simply play back from the first track in the playlist. This will give a fairly randomized playback IME. The important part is that you will hear every song! The biggest problem with this is remixes or live versions of the same track or artists who have titled their music numerically or with similar titles.

To find the filter in iOS, when you are at the top of the playlist with the thumbnail for said playlist pull down again to reveal the hidden filter (I despise hidden functionality UI elements) and then open the filter drop down just outside the search input field.

Playback by title gonna give you a whole new experience 🙂

[kagarrett]

This seems to be the trick! Only tried it with one song so far, but it seems much more random that just a few minutes ago. Checking the queue confirms.

[2_dmz-cf7su7y]

I have a problem when I’m using my Spotify shuffle. I’m not really a playlist person but I have over 3,000 songs in my library and when I shuffle them the first 300-500 songs play over and over. Shouldn’t all of your songs be accesed with shuffle. 

[TheAdmiralAleho]

Yes they should is the simple answer but Spotify show a remarkable disregard for their subscribers which is why l took my business to Apple Music who provide a far superior service for the same price.
No brainer as they say.

[BenjaminPrill]

Same.

[Lucaslemoine]

They should but they are not. I created this thread to address that issue
and to gauge how many peopLe are affected by it. It seems like it is a
problem with the majority of Spotify users. They seem to have an algorithm
that chooses the songs that they feel you like most, most recent adds, and
what is cheapest for them to stream. Unfortunately most streaming sites do
this so there is no better option to go to. Even if your play list is over
20 songs it will choose to replay before finishing the list which is
terrible. I like to listen to music while working and I have to constantly
skip and remove songs just because Spotify chooses to play them more

[phenedate]

I’m constantly bumping up against the 10K song limit to my saved music. That’s a whole other bugaboo I won’t get into. It’s my dream to randomize my entire collection and get a completely random and curated musical experience. As most have mentioned and is well documented here, it’s not truly random. All newly added songs or songs I already listen to a lot. I was trying it out this morning and 6 songs from the same album, sometimes 2 in a row, played within the first 20 songs. That’s not even a funny joke. 

So, it does seem to matter if you’re streaming to other speakers. I stream to Sonos speakers. When I sort by title I get 50 songs that start with a number. 2 more dead, 5 minutes alone, 36 chambers, etc. I laughed. 

However when I switch back to play on the iPhone, hit shuffle play, the list is MUCH more random. So I did that, thinking I could just switch back to Sonos during the shuffle play as the playlist had been essentially set. Nope. It switched back to playing only songs that started with B as the song I was listening to was a B song. wth!!!  It refuses to randomize. I tested this again and again. It changes the playlist as soon as I switch the speakers. Like it can’t handle it. Or it’s messing with me. Very frustrating. “I have dreamed a dream. But now that dream is gone from me.”

[Lucaslemoine]

I know what you mean. It is incredibly frustrating. I have since decided to
create 50-100 song playlists. It has been playing songs that are not even
on my saved list or on the play list because they may be similar to the
music I had on it.
I was listening to foo fighters, it put on Aerosmith, I don't like
Aerosmith so I had to change monitors and skip. I put on random punk music
and I get sum 41 and blink 182...I have to skip. It makes me wonder why I
ever wanted to pay for this product.

This thread has been active for a while with many people's views and not a
single person from Spotify staff has even attempted to address the single
largest problem with their system that seems to negatively affect a large
amount of users.

[turkycat]

Please just give us an option to disable the Spotify random algorithm.

As a Spotify premium user for more than 5 years, all I have ever wanted is a truly random song selection when I press shuffle. I don't care if it's shuffled once like a deck of cards or selected via a RandInt() function for each song... But I am constantly frustrated by the same issues of repeated song selection I have seen others complain about in this thread. I understand the advantage of having a selection algorithm for the basic user, but please give me the ability to choose which behavior I prefer.

[bp_7xma-8qctq]

... i canceled my spotify account 3 month ago and cange to Amazon Music. Now i try our spotify agein and there is still noch possibility to play randum (shuffle) songs thru different playlists ... in can´t believe that this easy thing is still missing ... untill spotify is not able to offer this feature it is no serious alternative to "apple Music" "Deezer" or "Amazon"

[RickRocknRoll]

 wrote:

Using the playlist filter, set the track order to something other than “album”. I have been filtering by title which will order the tracks alpha numerically. Then simply play back from the first track in the playlist. This will give a fairly randomized playback IME. The important part is that you will hear every song! The biggest problem with this is remixes or live versions of the same track or artists who have titled their music numerically or with similar titles.

---

This is great for 1x as the songs are alphabetical by song title but if you want to play the same playlist in random order you can't do it by your method. It will always be alphabetical. 

Shuffly app has still been the only thing I've found to shuffle the entire order of the playlist (puts it into a new shuffled list). But, you're requiring a standalone app to create the shuffle for you - not a perfect solution. 

Spotify just doesn't care about this thread. 

[kolorafa]

Spotify should implement that feature from Shuffly, aka just give a "shuffle" option on a playlist, it should reorder the songs in the playlist then let you play from top to bottom random songs... and not the current "play random" that magically shuffles something somewhere in deep space and play some alienated order...

[WirralFire]

As one of the original posters in this topic some time ago, I thought I'd flag this up.....

This morning, booted up the HiFi, opened Spotify on my iPhone X, told it to stream to my Chromecast connected to my kitchen speakers and hit shuffle, expecting to hear a 'random' selection from the last 100 tracks in my playlist (from over 1400 tracks)....

BUT.... the shuffle appears completely random!! Even going as far as playing the seventh track I ever added to my playlist (The Coral's "Jacqueline", if you're interested)

Has the algorithm been changed overnight? Is this a brave new world in shuffling??

Anyone else noticed a change?

[dıbıkyaran]

I know it is pseudorandom but, I didn't see this much pseudorandomness before 🙂 There are 350 songs in my playlist and I'm listening only 40-50 of them all time. Please correct it.

[molafish]

As a free user, my only option is shuffle play on android (which is really the only place I use Spotify). With the last update that I applied perhaps a week ago I noticed a big change in the algorithm:

Before I was seeing mostly random play order with all the behavior as described throughout this thread. But after this last update my playlist of 400 ish songs has suddenly become mostly sequential in nature, with every third or fourth song playing from elsewhere in the list and then resuming the sequential order.

There are no sorting options that I can find in the Android app, so although this change is worse for me, it may be beneficial for most of you.

What I'd like to see as a stopgap solution is an API that will let me add or remove songs quickly to a playlist, in which case I can just randomize them myself and then feed them back up to a new playlist generated for each session. I don't know if such an API exists, but if so, it coupled with the current Android behavior is a solution.