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Does Spotify's shuffle kind of just... suck?

TheDanimal

TheDanimal

победитель победитель куриный ужин
Member
Oct 25, 2017
854
I've been listening to one of my playlists over the last couple of days, and I always feel like it picks one half of the playlist to shuffle through. I either get what I've added recently, or I get to hear what I've had on my playlist forever. Has anyone else experienced this? Or am I just crazy?
 
Psychotic_Mantis

Psychotic_Mantis

Member
Oct 27, 2017
497
I have always hated their shuffle and radio. Shuffle always seems to play the same songs in a row even if I sort them differently. It's odd.
 
G_Shumi

G_Shumi

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,118
Cleveland, OH
Yep, I've noticed it too. When I add songs to my playlist it plays those first. Not sure why. But after the first round of shuffling it shuffles it up better.
 
Piston

Piston

Member
Oct 25, 2017
11,154
I have an 800 song playlist that I constantly get the same 200 songs or so from. I always get surprised whenever I hear a song I haven't heard in a while.
 
Ramuh

Ramuh

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
839
Fuck I thought I was the only one. Im in the gym and it keeps trying to play the same songs/band.
 
OP
OP
TheDanimal

TheDanimal

победитель победитель куриный ужин
Member
Oct 25, 2017
854
nsilvias

nsilvias

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,676
How big are your playlists? Artist ratio?
I use to have this problem but it got better as i added more music (a little over 1 thousand). it's still bad but at least it's not playing the same artist twice in a row anymore. it helps that i frequently add new music to the playlist.
 
Thatguy

Thatguy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,207
Seattle WA
I think they have different deals with different artists so when you hit shuffle you give them the ability to play the "cheap" songs in their library. Turn it off or make short playlists that will go through the whole thing. All the streaming services do this. I think it's shady.
 
Joe

Joe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,584
Yeah, it does. Everyone I've talked to has the same problem. I remember looking into it like a year ago, and plenty of people had crunched the numbers to show its not playing songs at equal frequency, like you'd want, but Spotify is just like "nah, it's fine."
 
Jpop

Jpop

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,655
TheDanimal said:
I've been listening to one of my playlists over the last couple of days, and I always feel like it picks one half of the playlist to shuffle through. I either get what I've added recently, or I get to hear what I've had on my playlist forever. Has anyone else experienced this? Or am I just crazy?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I swear the shuffle will alwasy shuffle the songs in the exact same order.

I hit shuffle but the same songs are always played after one another.
 
HustleBun

HustleBun

Member
Nov 12, 2017
6,075
It's been atrocious for years, infamously so. People have even creates third party applications and websites to manually shuffle your playlists. That's absurd to me.

Usually Spotify handles these complaints by locking threads on their forum or just claiming that everything is fine.

...but for years, I've had the same issue. Spotify only shuffles between two first letters that are close in the alphabet, like below:
VHG4TXZ_d.jpg


That's from a playlist with over two thousand songs. I wish they would at least acknowledge that it's an issue.
 
Applesauce

Applesauce

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,505
Whenever I get back in my truck on the way back from the grocery store or some other place, it loops the same songs that played on my way there. I have to restart the shuffle all. It definitely sucks. I wish Apple Music did handoff as well as Spotify, I'd switch back without hesitating.
 
AyaisMUsikWhore

AyaisMUsikWhore

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,733
Yup. I have a playlist with over 1000 songs and it still plays the same songs I hear all the time. I am always surprised when a song I haven't heard in a minute comes on. This sucks and i wished they fucking fixed it.
 
Sai

Sai

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
5,597
Chicago
absolutely. i have a bad habit of adding part of whole albums to my playlists, but so many times, it'll play like 4-5 tracks in a row from the same artist/album. like...it's shit.
 

Deleted member 29464

Account closed at user request
Banned
Nov 1, 2017
3,121
I have similar issues but wasn't sure if it's just me imagining it. I find songs of the same genre always play in succession. Three jazz songs in a playlist of over 100 songs, they all play one after the other.

Edit: I wonder if there is some research that says people don't prefer true randomness and thus some weird algorithm is used that would supposedly please most people.
 
sleepInsom

sleepInsom

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,569
It sucks, and there's pathetic that it hasn't been fixed yet. I believe by default it tries to prioritize sings that were more recently added. I believe this may be fixed by sorting using title instead.
 
TheFireman

TheFireman

Banned
Dec 22, 2017
3,918
Tidal has a significantly worse version of this issue, or it did when I had it (right after TPAB dropped). It clearly only shuffled within a very small range of the total playlist.
 

Deleted member 4292

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,885
It is the absolute worst on Chromecast. What a fucking nightmare.

On PS4 I don't have any issues though.
 
BlackJace

BlackJace

The Fallen
Oct 27, 2017
5,450
Don't think I've ever encountered this on the desktop or mobile Android version. It's happened a lot on Playstation however.
 

Deleted member 8468

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
9,109
Yeah, it's pretty terrible. I've moved to playlists on shuffle, which mostly mitigates the problem if you don't have a bunch of the same band/ album.
 

Zej

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
908
I rarely shuffle. Full album playthroughs or specific songs for me.

I wonder if it shuffles differently depending on if you're a subscriber or not.
 

Deleted member 33057

One Winged Slayer
Banned
Nov 14, 2017
1,636
Yup, I remember when I had Spotify I would shuffle a playlist I made of over 1000+ chill-hop instrumentals. It would play the same 30 songs every time. :|
 
Scuffed

Scuffed

Member
Oct 28, 2017
10,815
I read that they had a new algorithm or something they were testing with the pc app only. I have noticed the pc app shuffle is pretty good but on all other devices it's really bad.
 

Wiped

Banned
Nov 2, 2017
2,096
I believe it's not a straightforward shuffle and it's weighted towards songs it thinks you'll like/are more likely to like based on other users and popularity etc who like the same songs. Which is stupid given you made the playlist.

I don't really use playlists I just listen to albums in order, cos I'm old.

Except daily mixes. I love daily mixes but GOD Spotify has put the same damn song on my daily mix every day and always plays it, to the point where I've come to hate the song and removed it from my library (yet it still comes back). That song is Stereophonics - Mr Writer.
 
Bebop242

Bebop242

Member
Oct 28, 2017
395
Yep the only real issue i have with Spotify. Even shuffling a bands discography is bad. I did this a couple days ago with a band with 4 albums and it just constantly played songs off 1 particular album.
 
Earendil

Earendil

Self-Requested Ban
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
255
It's been a problem for years apparently, and they have no desire to fix it.
 

Michilin

Member
Nov 14, 2017
1,365
It's atrocious, how a company that's filling an IPO is unable to get this function right if hobbyists can do it? On the PC you can actually select all songs and paste as links in plain text, use a randomizer and them create a new playlist shuffled
 
miscellaneous houseplant

miscellaneous houseplant

self-requsted ban
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
306
The shuffle sucks for sure.

Also, why is there no "Add to End of Queue" option? I often want to set up a queue of multiple albums to listen to. But no. The "Add to Queue" option is actually a "Play Next" option. And god forbid you decide you don't want to listen to what you added to the queue. Because it will always go back to the list of songs you added even if you try to play something else. You have to either remove all the songs you added or skip past them all in order to listen to something else. Ugh.
 
Coyote Starrk

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
52,774
You are not crazy.


I listen to Spotify constantly and yes Shuffle is broken. I seem to get the same 35% of my playlists.
 
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