Only playing part of playlist when shuffling

[Heartkinz17]

When I shuffle my playlist, it will only play some songs but not all of them. I've done some searching and it seems this happens when your playlist is over 200 songs, but mine has only 164. I have tried everything and still can't find a solution. I would really appreciate if I could actually listen to all of my music instead of just a few songs. I am a premium account and I'm on android. 

[tyler_u]

Same issue on iPhone. My list is >2,700 songs and i hear the same 50 every single day.
Also- when i am listening in the car- When i get back into the car the list resets and plays the exact same line up.
This happens when i close out the app and when i leave it open.
Every. Single. Time.

Between shuffle not being a real function and spotify demanding that the repeat function be on... i question why i pay for "premium"

[Everuby]

Hello, yes I have had similar issues, I've heard a range of conclusions from Spotify specifically only choosing certain songs because they get more of a cut from some songs than others, although I'm not sure I believe that, I notice it will always play some songe more than others on shuffle so I tend to just keep mine on to play the order they are in but start them from a different part of the playlist. I have had itunes as well and it was exactly the same. Most people I know have had similar experiences.  It's a shame you can't manually move the playlist around a bit and not play it on shuffle really.

[Peter]

Hey @Heartkinz17, @Everuby and @tyler_u,

Thanks for posting about this in the Community!

This is something we're aware of and currently working on improving.

To find out more, head over to this Spotify Answer.

Let us know if you have any further questions about this 😉

[joshp75]

Good luck. This has been an issue for years and years, and Spotify haven't done anything about it.

[atitlan]

The whole shuffle thing is ridiculous - and as people have said - it's been going on for years. 

It's really not difficult to do a shuffle:

1) Take the FULL list of songs (or their IDs) 

2) Randomise that list based on a random seed - no preferred songs bias, no recently added songs bias, no artist or genre grouping, no pushing of selected tracks/artists - just randomise the order of the list.  Now store it.

3) Download the first x songs based on space for cache

4) Play through songs in cache loading more from the shuffled list as you go

5) As each song is played mark it in the list

6) If the user clicks shuffle, the end of the list is reached, or new tracks are added to the playlist go back to 1.

It is that simple and music players have been doing it since the first shuffle appeared on CDs way back in the mists of time.

Why is Spotify making such a complete mess of such a basic feature? No-one wants a shuffle that's doing psuedo random algorithmic fiddling.  You've got all your generated playlists for that kind of thing.

If you really want to add variations on the shuffle theme then make it something that we might actually like:

Shuffle all to reset the entire list

Shuffle unplayed to rejig the current shuffle excluding the already played tracks

Shuffle by album on the albums page to play a random series of entire albums.

[joshp75]

Thank you atitlan. It's nice to see someone talking sense.

I honestly can't see any excuse for this ongoing issue.

Either the shuffle mess is the result of a deliberate algorithm which tries to predict songs or push artists or whatever. If this is the case, can they at least give us the option to turn it off. A switch between Smart Shuffle and True Shuffle.

Or, it's a technical issue. Sometimes I think what is happening is that Spotify grabs the next 100 songs from the original (sorted) playlist and then shuffles among those hundred. That would possibly explain the grouping I see. If this is the case, I don't know why they are so reluctant to fix it. It seems trivial from our side.

I've given up. If you complain enough, they just tell you that the shuffle works fine and that people tend to see patterns where there are none. I find this response a bit insulting.

[siritheodore]

They say the issue has been fixed... Not for me!

If I shuffle any playlist on my phone it only plays out of the first 10 or so songs, no matter how many times I hit shuffle and then only repeats those few songs.

Very frustrating.

[tildebrokopp]

I have the same problem. My list is only 160 songs and consists of same artist albums. Very obvious that the shuffle doesn't work when you only hear and see 3 albums on your queue when there's actually 9. Seeing as you commented 3 years ago I can only assume that they yet have to solve it. Still wondering what I'm paying for.

[qe_z7he2s-ta]

I made a playlist of 144 songs, but on shuffle only 81 play, without fail, every single time.

How is it so hard to play a list of songs, shuffled. 

I just want to listen to my music. This is ridiculous.

Gonna stop paying for premium I guess...

[qe_z7he2s-ta]

It's not fixed 2 years later lol
Guess I'll just listen to the 62 songs of my 131 song playlist forever

[lukas2415]

Cleary no improvements have been made, I'm still met with the same 20 songs in my 150 song playlist. Ditch the prioritized song list you guys are clearly making for people and actually shuffle my songs! I'm not paying $10 a month to just listen to a few songs.

[xpz08-oq_o3ro]

If Google Music still existed, I'd be using it instead. I moved to Spotify when they removed the library limitation... I thought this issue was because of how much music I had, but now that I'm seeing it's happening with fairly small playlists... ugh. What shuffle SEEMS to do is grab a random section of your playlist by artist... and then I'm stuck listening to 2-3 artists for an hour drive.

Hey Spotify: if you're not going to fix it, could you at least tell us the limit of how many songs it WILL shuffle?

[kachnak]

still same problem in so simle thing. in playlist 250 songs. after 2 hours come song which was already played. it is anoying. it is so easy make program for random play. Why so big company like spotify has problem with it?

[alexh919]

EXACTLY like i have a playlist of over 400 songs and the same music palys, i did the spotify premium for 3 months and the songs played then but when the 3 months was over the same song continued to played. ID LIKE TO LISTEN TO MY MORE RECENT MUSIC TASTE!

[Jeremy]

Hi there folks,

Thank you for your replies and feedback. 

We understand that things can feel frustrating when things don't work as you'd like them to. Rest assured that we're always trying to improve as we always strive to improve our features.
 

For now we recommend that you head over to this idea. You can leave a like to show your support and Subscribe to the idea for any updates regarding this.

Let us know if we can help you out with anything else 🙂

Have a great Friday and start of your weekend!

[msimkin]

This issue has only just started for me on a premium subscription. A few weeks ago I could play a 14-hour playlist on shuffle and never hear a song twice. That has now changed and about 20 songs play on repeat and then the music just stops. When you hit shuffle again it starts at the begin of the 20 songs you’ve just listened to. Cancelling mine and my mum’s premium subscriptions.

[HvnTerr]

0 likes ahaha. spotify needs to get**bleep** together. 10$ a month for a music provider that cannot give simple satisfaction to it's listeners. WHAT A JOKE!@!!

[melo85]

Still happening 3.5 years later...

[BigR18]

I agree, this is super annoying. As many people have complained and Spotify has done absolutely nothing, this is just yet another example of big corporations screwing there customers and not caring because they can do whatever they want.