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

[律です]

I used to have Apple Music too but I felt like it had less songs of the genre I like and switching again now‘d be so much effort,,,

[ws1482]

4 YEARS LATER AND I AM STILL HAVING THE SAME PROBLEM!!!!!

[mainframe51]

I have the same problem when casting to Chromecast Audio. Please fix

[l23x4]

Same issue here.

No matter how many songs are in the playlist. Only the same 20-30 songs get's played.

[律です]

I have 160 songs in one playlist I guess and it kind of settled now. I tried to avoid playing the same songs manually so spotify plays them automatically. I played the whole playlist during night so spotify could guess I have no longer any preferences so it could play every song now.. I guess? Well it kinda worked for me

[Yono669]

did someone find a way to fix it/ contacted someone in the Spotify staff about it?

[RickRocknRoll]

I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe you can explain a bit more,
but to be honest nothing we do will fix this issue. It's 100% a Spotify
responsibility to make this work and based on this thread they don't really
care.

[elsid]

Never start playing music by choosing a playlist name. Instead, select a specific song within that playlist and start from there.

[mainframe51]

THIS! IT WORKS! THANK YOU SO MUCH

(Never start playing music by choosing a playlist name. Instead, select a specific song within that playlist and start from there.)

[elsid]

The other thing is: always choose a DIFFERENT song to start a playlist. If you choose the same initial song, you will likely get the very same “random” songs you had last time. Choose songs from the beginning, middle, and end of the playlist. Or choose a song you are pretty certain you have not heard recently.

[Paulotorre5]

It worked I guess
Tnks!!!

[pr0pag4nda]

Just tested the shuffle button on top of my songs (iOS app) once again, and it really seems to be random playback! 

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any proper release notes about spot updates to confirm this, but it looks like they finally fixed shuffled playback!

Every time I hit the shuffle button, a random song, picked out of all songs, starts playing and even the queue seems to contain complete random tracks from a-z now. Just as I would expect a shuffle function to work!

[discbuyertoo]

I find, as do so many others, that shuffle is not random, not even remotely random statistically speaking. I understand that it is difficult to produce a truly random pattern with a computer but a good algorithm should be able to approximate to it. I also recognise that this could well require a lot of computing power, too. I am not sure how Spotify can fix/improve this though they should, judging from all the comments.

I have quite long playlists, my two main ones both have over 900 songs and over 60 hours playing time. I listen to these whilst doing paperwork so I do not want the same few tracks to reappear frequently, sometimes every couple of hours it seems, when there are there are so many on the playlist.

I expect that this next suggestion has already been posted - but my workaround is to arrange the playlists in order of song title and switch off shuffle. It works pretty well, except when I have several different versions of the same song.

[elsid]

To get Spotify to shuffle an entire playlist, never start playing music by choosing a playlist name. Instead, select a specific song from within that playlist and start playing from there.

And the next time you start that same playlist, choose a different initial song (or you will likely get the same songs playing as you heard the last time). Instead, choose initial songs you are pretty sure you haven’t heard recently, and/or mix up your initial songs by choosing from different parts of the playlist: first part, last part or middle of the playlist.

Of course, don’t forget to turn on “shuffle”.

This process works for me to randomize any playlist, 4,000 songs to 100 songs, in both OS X and iOS. I don’t have experience with anything else.

[elsid]

I hope you are right. But in case not…

To get Spotify to shuffle an entire playlist, never start playing music by choosing a playlist name. Instead, select a specific song from within that playlist and start playing from there.

And the next time you start that same playlist, choose a different initial song (or you will likely get the same songs playing as you heard the last time). Instead, choose initial songs you are pretty sure you haven’t heard recently, and/or mix up your initial songs by choosing from different parts of the playlist: first part, last part or middle of the playlist.

Of course, don’t forget to turn on “shuffle”.

This process works for me to randomize any playlist, 4,000 songs to 100 songs, in both OS X and iOS. I don’t have experience with anything else.

[discbuyertoo]

Many thanks for that advice, it is both clear and helpful.

It is what I think I do, though, so I am a bit mystified.

I play the songs from playlists that I have built myself and I play them from my computer, not from a phone, but that shouldn't make any difference, should it?

I will check that I am being systematic about it in the future and I hope that will be an effective fix.

Thank you again.

[RickRocknRoll]

I've been on this thread for years now, and finally got a disappointing response from Spotify Support.   Sorry to say, but apparently Spotify will only randomize 100 songs. You can mess around by changing the order of your songs by title/artist/album etc, but eventually you're still stuck with the same 100 songs on each one of these 'sort' options. 

So, I can have thousands of songs in a playlist, but still no way to shuffle them all. 

Anyway - here's what Customer Support posted - Hope you find this useful. 

Hello Rick,

Thanks for reaching out to us. We understand you're unable to listen to all of your songs when on Shuffle play. We'll be glad to shed some light onto this. 

The thing is the shuffled tracks are only selected from those first 100 tracks. However Play Queue lets you quickly order and arrange the songs you want to hear in advance You can add or remove tracks or albums, and change the order they play at any time so when you go and use Shuffle play, you'll have the mix of the songs you want to hear. 

Hope this info helps. Let us know if you need further assistance. 

Thanks,

Hachie

Spotify Customer Support

[discbuyertoo]

Thank you, Music Fan, that is very helpful to know.

[pixidrizzl]

This is really disappointing.  Thank you Music Fan for sharing Spotify's response with us.

[Uscthurston]

What a waste of a feature... I wonder if they only shuffle 100 songs max because of financial reasons. Spotify has been progressively making their apps worse in the interest of 'promoting' artists and their own curated playlists. Maybe this is just another way for them to control what we're hearing.

Google Play seems like a better choice every day