[All Platforms] Option to have a true shuffle

[jonathanleyerle]

So I’ve been noticing more and more recently that Spotify’s default shuffle feature doesn’t fully shuffle your songs. It does some sort of grouping to try to get similar songs together based off of what I’m sure is dozens of factors. Every time I shuffle a playlist (the one I noticed this with the most is ~100 songs and 6 hours of mostly full albums) it will group the songs mostly or completely together by album/artist, and given the number of times I’ve re-shuffled and checked the order there’s no way it’s just a coincidence. They also generally seem to be in the same order as well. If I hit shuffle play on a playlist it’ll generally put the same artists at the beginning every time.

With larger playlists of albums I am really not a fan of this shuffling method. If I have 6 hours of music on a playlist I will hardly ever have 6 hours to actually listen through the whole thing, but when I do listen to it I would like to hear all of the music on it equally, and not just the artist or two your algorithm likes to shuffle to first.

Anyways, I’m a reasonable man, all I’m asking for is an option to have a true shuffle (take all songs in the list, put them in a random order, and once they’re all played reshuffle them and play them again). Make it premium only if you want. I don’t think you should scrap the current shuffle algorithm because it sucks. Looking at some of the suggestions on here it seems like some people lobbied hard to have it that way. Just add an option for a true shuffle for those of us that don’t care about potentially getting the same song twice in a row.

[Slick001]

Have any of the brains at Spotify realized that the shuffle feature is less than ideal--playing the same songs over and over again by the same artists, while some songs never, and I mean NEVER get played or prioritized?

Can someone please work to implement some kind of de-prioritization algorithm?

An algorithm that marks a song that has played in a shuffled playlist to not be able to play again UNTIL EVERY SINGLE SONG ON THE PLAYLIST AND IN THE SHUFFLE HAVE PLAYED AT LEAST ONCE. This would directly solve the issue of hearing the same songs get shuffled and thrown to the top every single time, also hearing the same songs twice before hearing "less popular" songs even once. The current algorithm in place is extremely lazy and pretty much forces the user to abandon the shuffle feature and handpick their own songs. MAKE THE SHUFFLE FEATURE A REAL SHUFFLE FEATURE AGAIN, STOP BEING LAZY

[avintegrator]

Anything you can do to make shuffle work as an actual playlist shuffle will be greatly appreciated.  Continued lack of progress will cause me to give up pretty soon.

[Mookpsu]

Humans will be living on Pluto before Spotify implements a true random
shuffle. This thread is over 4 years old with 122 pages of people begging
for it and still nothing so what does that tell you.

As I type this I am celebrating St Patrick's Day by listening to my custom
Van Morrison playlist on Amazon Music in a true random shuffle. It's real
and it is spectacular!

Moderator Eni, any input on your end???

[missalue]

I love curating playlists and it is beyond frustrating to shuffle and hear the same songs played over and over and over again. What is the point of creating playlists if the algos are going to dictate that only a select handful of songs or artists should be played? This happens even on playlists I have with 5-6 hours worth of music - I will still only hear the same songs and have no way of getting to the others. I can't believe what should be such a simple feature is completely botched due to these algo preferences. It's an awful experience for true music lovers. 

[Mookpsu]

Not for Amazon Music subscribers

[rozeboosje]

What's the point of moderators merging other threads into this one if this is just a black hole in which these requests come to die?

[zx6dude]

3,390 votes and over 4 years later, and no answer from Spotify I think it's fairly clear that Spotify doesn't care about this feature or about its customers. Spotify: At least have the guts to say that this is not something that is happening, that's better than being ignored or being told stupid things by support like: reinstall Spotify. Reinstall Spotify. Really?! How is that going to fix an issue I have across all my devices?

[JasonWThompson]

As a professional software engineer, I don't see why this isn't an option. I get that you want to precache songs, but can't it cache the next song as the current one is playing? How is having a true random more difficult than playing through a long playlist in order?

If we can't get a true shuffle feature, could we get a randomized reorder playlist button? That'd way it has a fixed shuffle to solve whatever technical problems you have in shuffling while simultaneously allowing playlists to be randomized.

[rozeboosje]

"a randomized reorder playlist button"

Why does that sound familiar?

Oh yeah, Amazon Music's "randomise playlist" option.

[New user]

VERY FRUSTRATING~