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

[moisaras]

I hope i don't end up moving to Google Music and realise that those guys also have the same thread in the forums..

[Jujunet]

moisaras, I doubt it. The remark that the last songs added, or perhaps listened to, are prioritized, seems more likely. I recently discovered an Italian singer of the sixties and seventies, famous in Italy, they have named schools after him, and whom I had never heard of, he came up in my discover-weekly. I found a album collection with all his songs, 120, and I saved them in my library. Of course, even in a real random selection, he is bound to come up more often than others, but almost all the time is an exaggeration. I doubt that he is particulary attractive financially to Spotify, as he died in 1999. We probably don't have the same tastes, but I recommend him anyway, his name is Fabrizio de André.

[Jujunet]

Yes, the grass often seems greener on the othe side of the fence, but beware.

[moisaras]

Jujunet, I'll try the artist, sounds interesting! 

As regards the artist's financial attractiveness for spotify, i assume that a basic idea of an algorithm that is designed to make more money for the company, is to 'force' you to listen to the artist who is cheaper for spotify to play. I also assume that Fabrizio who died in 1999 is cheaper for spotify than the beatles.

I wrote the word 'assume' twice, because i actually don't know if these assumptions are correct, maybe spotify's programmers are indeed idiots. Even though I highly doubt that. 

[Jujunet]

moisaras you have a point, my guts still tell me that's not the primary reason shuffle is so poor, but who knows?

[porkcutlet]

That's why I haven't done it yet!

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@moisaras wrote:

I hope i don't end up moving to Google Music and realise that those guys also have the same thread in the forums..

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[Colach]

I have now (thanks to the tip) found Jango.com to be really satisfying. 

The case with me is that I want to be surprised with good music. Thats why i save (plus funcion save) so much music, I have plused some 9000songs. In jango I did a search for Fela Kuti and then miracle: a great list unfolded based on that choice, mixed with other similar music (http://www.jango.com/music/Fela+Kuti). It was refreshing compared to all Spotify alternatives, lists, radio, etc.

I have also i Spotify tried the listing of saved/plused songs by track and then hit the shuffle. It did no difference what I could notice. The first next shuffeled track was Queen, then Eros Ramazotti... Cman, thats enough of proof when basing the suffle on a 9000songs long list. Getting too tired of this comercialism! Maybe best to encode the stuff and go back to mp3 and then real shuffle.... Huuuu tiering.

[RickRocknRoll]

I'm not against the idea of Jango or even other services, though they're just scraping songs off the internet with absolutely no sound quality control.  If you just want music, that's absolutely fine.  Their library is sourced and not their own, so you don't really get the experience of a full album and obscure cuts by an artist... I digress. 

Alternatives to Spotify doesn't really fix the core problem of the Shuffle play issues we're experiencing in Spotify. 

On the one hand, you may be right that the artist who's cheapest to play comes up more often. The other side of that argument is the labels themselves may put pressure on Spotify to play these artists more often.  I'm thinking the pressure from labels is more likely and they might even offer something enticing to Spotify -  discounts, exclusives or even $. 

It's just weird to me that 'shuffle play' has been around since I can remember. Definitely the origin of iTunes had done it correctly, and with the number of years it's been around I find it hard to believe that Spotify can't get it right.  

There's SO many posts about this, I don't understand why they won't give their users what they want. 

I've even scrolled through my playlist of 1500 songs, found one that has been on the list that I've never heard come up in shuffle rotation and started playing from there.  Spotify still seemily ended up going back and playing the same songs it always played. 

I thought changing the order of the songs would help - by Artist or by Title. I found the 'shuffle' on the Desktop version to be better than the app versions and the change to ordering gave a slightly better result.  Still, not the desired outcome though. 

Shrug - I really don't know. 

Just a lot of speculation :). 

[mdindestin]

"The other side of that argument is the labels themselves may put pressure on Spotify to play these artists more often.?"

That's what my gut tells me as well.  Think about all the great songs radio stations never play that are in the same genre.  It's always the same old songs.  Those stations, like Spotify, are being influenced by the industry, not the consumer. 

[nfplee]

I'm a long time Spotify user. But recently I've noticed that when I boot up my computer each day it starts with the same song it started with the day before. Then when I click next to skip it, it's the same second song and on and on.

[Dangermouse]

nfplee That's quite normal, and I don't really mind that as the play que remains from the last session, quick solution for this is double click 'songs' or within a playlist to 'reshuffle' (I use that word loosely as it has escaped Spotify what a real shuffle is)this will change the play que

[nfplee]

Thanks although it's an extra 10 seconds of my life waisted every day.

[YuvalOlsha]

For some reason spotify is only choosing songs/songs by artists that start with either a number, A, or B. It is very frustrating. For example, when it was sorted by title my shuffle looked like so : 2AM, Bored to Death, Brass monkey, Addicted to you... etc. and when sorted by artist it was a song by Billy Talent, followed by a song by Black Sabbath, then a song by th Arkells and on. It's very frustrating.

[fkelly]

Shuffle has gotten worse, sometimes playing the same song consecutively!! really annoying

[moisaras]

two possible reasons for this (playing the same song twice) are:
1 - the song is in the playlist twice
2 - the song is played from a search result, and you are out of the
playlist without realising

[kolorafa]

moisaras, That might not be the case, because how you would explain that while clicking next spotify would play the same or different (but played recently for example on different device) song from the middle?

It did happen to me multiple times for weeks. a lot of times i did change to next song using global shortcuts and i got annoyed that doing next it did play song X, doing next it did skip to middle of the same song X, and it was even more frustrating as only 2-3 songs did behave like that and i got sick and tired ot those songs after spotify doing it multiple times. 

Most of the time it was after going to different device and continue playback. My guess would be buggy Spotify Connect.

[Farlig]

Nope - this happens to me, all the time and I have eliminated all dupes - I've merged all my playlists into one huge one, eliminated dupes again, tried sorting in different fashions etc etc whilst it seems to work for a few songs / maybe a day or two afetr a while it goes back to non random repeats and from a songlist of over 4000 songs it's a joke...

I'm still transitioning over to Apple Music primarily because of this, but also because of being able to hear original albums, not remasters… However, I still use Spotify now & again on one of my wireless devices as it's handy with the connect / devices features - I still get repeats and even yesterday, a repeat within 10 songs ffs..!!

As someone further up the thread said, shuffle is shuffle, not random. It’s quite obvious this dealer doing the shuffling is rather crooked...

[sakbo767]

Apologies for the v late reply and if it has already been mentioned but I think I may have figured out when exactly this happens!

For me it only happens when I'm controlling Spotify from a device that it isn't playing on. If I'm using the device it's playing on it works fine. Is this the case for anyone else? 

This kinda makes sense (despite being very annoying) because the device controlling it will only be able to hold data on the first 50/100/however many songs as it's easier for it to cope with the information.

[YuvalOlsha]

Yes! Ok I realized this too. Seems pretty solved now!

[batenjan]

I had this same problem. I realized it was only happening to me when I was connected to my google home. As soon as I was only playing on the desktop, the shuffle worked as expected. But i dont even have to reshuffle, the second i play from the speakers it updated it to be only the top songs of the list. 

An example when sorted by artist alphabetically

before connecting to speakers:

after: