First World Problem: Why does the Spotify "shuffler" suck so fucking much?

[Coyote Starrk]

I have a dozen different playlists that rotate depending on my mood and what I am doing. I have my playlist for when I am down, I have several gaming playlists, and I have my guilty pleasures playlists, but regardless of the playlist and no matter how I start the playlist off I ALWAYS get the same 6-8 songs within a certain timeframe regardless of how large the playlist is. I will get a song I have heard a million times again, I go switch it to something else, and like 80% of the time I will get that same song again within the next 4-6 songs despite the playlist being 10+ hours of music because of the way the "shuffler" works. Every time. I have a 16 hour classic rock playlist but I will get the same song several times if I hit the next button more than once. It's like Spotify keeps track of the most listened to song and then gives itself a feedback loop. "Oh they played this song this many times so they must love it!" and it just gives it to me over and over despite the fact that IT is the one that gave me the song so many times in the first place. Not me.


Isn't "shuffle" supposed to mean that I get a variety of my songs? Why does Spotify insist on giving me the same relatively small selection of songs? I know that hitting "next" technically resets the playlist, but it doesn't REALLY reset the playlist. I just get the same selection again, but with just one or two songs thrown into the middle.



Stupid rant I know, but god is it annoying when I am trying to just have music in the background while I do stuff and I get distracted because I notice stupid stuff like this.

 

[OrangeNova]

'Random' shuffle on your music player is tricking you

If your shuffle setting really chose music completely randomly, it would actually feel like there were more coincidences

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Faceless_Caesar]

That was one of my main reasons for dropping Spotify. The shuffle would shuffle the exact same way every time.

 

[Flavius]

I feel like I've observed this as well, but in my case, I also feel like it's doing that because I listened to those songs more often than others, so the algorithm assumes I want to hear those more often and therefore, makes sure to include them earlier in the rotation.

I have zero evidence to back this up. Just an observation.

I resolve it by removing those half dozen or so songs from the playlist.

 

[Coyote Starrk]

That was one of my main reasons for dropping Spotify. The shuffle would shuffle the exact same way every time.

Click to shrink...

Okay so I'm not crazy!!! I swear I have had the "shuffler" play the same orders before, but I thought I was just imagining things.


It's just shit then.

 

[Clay]

'Random' shuffle on your music player is tricking you

If your shuffle setting really chose music completely randomly, it would actually feel like there were more coincidences

www.independent.co.uk

Click to shrink...

I initially misread this, but yeah, if the randomization were truly random it should repeat tracks and artists, potentially often depending on the size of the playlist. According to the article they've attempted to make it "feel" more random but sounds like they're not doing a great job.

 

[obin_gam]

This has been a known infmaous issue since Spotify v.1 back in the days.
There is a ghost bug in the shuffle algorithm that has never been adressed by the devs.

 

[Lunaray]

Huh, looks like they need to vary their RNG seeding.

 

[AlteredBeast]

Pandora does something very similar, and back in the Google Play Music days, there were other quirks.

Just give me a slider that I can adjust to make it more or less completely random.

 

[acheron_xl]

It definitely clumps a lot. I usually shuffle a playlist with about 8k songs in it, and it will play any one artist every 4-5 songs or so in a given day. Not always the same artist.

 

[Heynongman!]

My biggest pet peeve with Spotify. The fact that I hear the same songs every time I shuffle is fuckin obnoxious. My current daily playlist has hundreds of tracks on it and I constantly hear the same 20 or so in the same order every day.

 

[Emmz]

I get the same shit with YouTube music. Never got it before with Google Play Music, but that's gone now.

 

[JetBlackPanda]

Who doesn't want to hear Big e notorious thugs followed by Garth brooks every day on the way to work.

thanks Spotify!

 

[sersteven]

TLDR: Focus testing of shuffle functions shows that most people don't like truly "random" shuffles, because the fully randomized selection is a bit too random and triggers our own cognitive biases. It causes things like the same artist to appear twice in a row, or patterns that emerge that make users feel its "bad" or "not really random"

So instead they create algorithms to give you essentially a curated slightly random playlist of songs it thinks you'd like to play in a non-standard order, and every company tries to do it differently. There are some music players that do full random, but most modern music players don't. It's more of a curated playlist mixed up. Some will lean more random, others will lean towards trying to give you what the service "thinks" you want to listen to. I imagine Spotify leans towards the latter with all its analytics. I definitely notice it.

 

[OrangeNova]

Interesting article but not relevant to what the OP is experiencing, which is likely confirmation bias.

Click to shrink...

It is though, so seeing the same things over and over again is exactly that confirmation bias, Shuffle will never be what you want, because true random is impossible, and also your brain will put patterns into it that don't actually exist.

So they do put in algorithms to make it feel more random by making it less random

 

[DevilMayGuy]

Their shuffler has very limited utility. There's a few websites and tools that will do a random shuffle for you and you can just save it as a new playlist

 

[Pai Pai Master]

I feel like Amazon Music does this shit too. Seems like it just shuffles the stuff you listen to the most.

 

[Brazil]

Spotify's shitty shuffle is the price we have to pay for its amazing discovery playlists.

 

[GenericGhost]

I feel like I hear the same songs everyday during my morning commute. And my playlist is 10k+

 

[Coyote Starrk]

My biggest pet peeve with Spotify. The fact that I hear the same songs every time I shuffle is fuckin obnoxious. My current daily playlist has hundreds of tracks on it and I constantly hear the same 20 or so in the same order every day.

Click to shrink...

It's just frustrating. I intentionally make my playlists huge for variety. I of course love some songs over others, but i don't wanna hear the same shit everytime.

 

[Stencil]

Yea I've noticed this too. It's pretty annoying. I'll just shuffle off the bat my Liked Songs (thousands! of songs) and it'll go through the same 16 songs I always hear, even when I skip through them, I'm just getting to the same songs faster. And then like a week or so later I'll start shuffling and it'll seemingly be a new set of songs it's shuffling through, and initially I'll think "Oh I havent heard this for a while" but then a few days later I'll think "oh this song again..."

 

[Thordinson]

'Random' shuffle on your music player is tricking you

If your shuffle setting really chose music completely randomly, it would actually feel like there were more coincidences

www.independent.co.uk

Click to shrink...

I remember reading about this. Users didn't like when the shuffler is actually random. It's interesting how the brain works.

 

[Flavius]

Spotify's shitty shuffle is the price we have to pay for its amazing discovery playlists.

Click to shrink...

How I see it, too. The plusses still far outweigh the minuses.

 

[suaveric]

I always wondered if they paid certain artists more or less and that would have an outcome in how often they're "randomly" played.

 

[JCH!]

I never use shuffle so I just found out Spotify's shuffle is famously bad lol

 

[Davidion]

'Random' shuffle on your music player is tricking you

If your shuffle setting really chose music completely randomly, it would actually feel like there were more coincidences

www.independent.co.uk

Click to shrink...

TLDR: Focus testing of shuffle functions shows that most people don't like truly "random" shuffles, because the fully randomized selection is a bit too random and triggers our own cognitive biases. It causes things like the same artist to appear twice in a row, or patterns that emerge that make users feel its "bad" or "not really random"

So instead they create algorithms to give you essentially a curated slightly random playlist of songs it thinks you'd like to play in a non-standard order, and every company tries to do it differently. There are some music players that do full random, but most modern music players don't. It's more of a curated playlist mixed up. Some will lean more random, others will lean towards trying to give you what the service "thinks" you want to listen to. I imagine Spotify leans towards the latter with all its analytics. I definitely notice it.

Click to shrink...

I always enjoy the fact that RNG gaming has the same problem. People complain when the outcomes are RANDOM random.

 

[Clay]

Interesting article but not relevant to what the OP is experiencing, which is likely confirmation b

Click to shrink...

It is though, so seeing the same things over and over again is exactly that confirmation bias, Shuffle will never be what you want, because true random is impossible, and also your brain will put patterns into it that don't actually exist.

So they do put in algorithms to make it feel more random by making it less random

Click to shrink...

Yeah, sorry, I misread the article for a second. It said Spotify had specially altered their algorithm to avoid the repeats you would expect to occur if it were actually choosing tracks randomly. I guess they just didn't do a great job at that? So the OP is experiencing some mix of confirmation bias and incompetence?

 

[OrangeNova]

I always enjoy the fact that RNG gaming has the same problem. People complain when the outcomes are RANDOM random.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely, Humans are idiots when it comes to "Hey, this might be a pattern, I'm going to fixate on that and make it a pattern, regardless of any other things that would say otherwise"

Yeah, sorry, I misread the article for a second. It said Spotify had specially altered their algorithm to avoid the repeats you would expect to occur if it were actually choosing tracks randomly. I guess they just didn't do a great job at that? So the OP is experiencing some mix of confirmation bias and incompetence?

Click to shrink...

No worries! it's bit dense and the source isn't the greatest for reading

 

[Heynongman!]

TLDR: Focus testing of shuffle functions shows that most people don't like truly "random" shuffles, because the fully randomized selection is a bit too random and triggers our own cognitive biases. It causes things like the same artist to appear twice in a row, or patterns that emerge that make users feel its "bad" or "not really random"

So instead they create algorithms to give you essentially a curated slightly random playlist of songs it thinks you'd like to play in a non-standard order, and every company tries to do it differently. There are some music players that do full random, but most modern music players don't. It's more of a curated playlist mixed up. Some will lean more random, others will lean towards trying to give you what the service "thinks" you want to listen to. I imagine Spotify leans towards the latter with all its analytics. I definitely notice it.

Click to shrink...

I want the option to have a fully random playlist that doesn't involve using a third party tool. Give me a Chaos toggle.

 

[XMonkey]

It's pretty bad, ya.

 

[meowdi gras]

All these digital services try to control what you consume. Which is why I try to download every piece of media I like onto my hard drive as a raw file. Else, I purchase them on disc. I hate corporations micromanaging my choices.

 

[deimosmasque]

When I was a kid I had a multi disc CD player that and a shuffle setting that would not play a song a second time unless it had played every single song on every CD once. I miss that.

 

[abellwillring]

I always get slightly annoyed when I have a playlist, I hit shuffle, and then I get the same artist two songs in a row.. but then I realize that technically every song in the playlist would have the exact same chance to come up next if it were truly randomizing them, so it makes sense. What it should do is do that and then weight vs recency of the artist and do a second roll so to speak to make it seem more random.

 

[Kasai]

Yeah, I have issues with Spotify.

My discover weekly is almost always comprised of the same 10-12 songs out of a list of maybe 200 I've noticed. I spend a lot of time listening to it, and it's always more songs that I've had in the past. Shit, I even get songs I tell Spotify I don't like and have to tell it no over and over.

And the randomness sucks. I listen to my entire library on shuffle all the time, and it just plays the same 40-60 songs in a different order almost every time.

I want the chaos of true random. I know what I'm signing up for, just give it to me.

 

[ForgeForsaken]

One thing that drives me nuts is I'll create a list with say 3 albums. It will then basically play each album in random order but mostly doesn't mix the 3 albums. So album C in random order, then B, then A.

 

[Izkda]

TLDR: Focus testing of shuffle functions shows that most people don't like truly "random" shuffles, because the fully randomized selection is a bit too random and triggers our own cognitive biases. It causes things like the same artist to appear twice in a row, or patterns that emerge that make users feel its "bad" or "not really random"

So instead they create algorithms to give you essentially a curated slightly random playlist of songs it thinks you'd like to play in a non-standard order, and every company tries to do it differently. There are some music players that do full random, but most modern music players don't. It's more of a curated playlist mixed up. Some will lean more random, others will lean towards trying to give you what the service "thinks" you want to listen to. I imagine Spotify leans towards the latter with all its analytics. I definitely notice it.

Click to shrink...

This is it OP, if you want a true shuffle you can use Spicetify on desktop https://github.com/khanhas/spicetify-cli/wiki/Extensions#shuffle

 

[davepoobond]

The radio always plays the same songs, you would think you'd hear new songs more than 50% of the time but it's maybe 1%

 

[MilkBeard]

Yeah I've had a problem with the Spotify shuffle for years. One of the big problems is that there's a bug where it will only shuffle between 50-100 or so songs on the playlist. There are little tricks to fix it but sometimes it just happens for a while and it's annoying.

I haven't had it happen recently though.

 

[Futureman]

My only issue with Spotify is that it ALWAYS resets the default to shuffle songs and enable repeat. Seems to happen across desktop app, phone and web player for me.

Sucks if you listen to a lot albums straight through and don't want shuffle on. Wish it would just remember my preference.

 

[AlteredBeast]

Here's the feature I have always wanted out of a music player, let's call it "Album Play continue"

Like, say she came in through the bathroom window comes on a playlist, I want to be able to press a button to continue that song where it is on its own album, and once I'm done listening to that albums songs to go back to shuffle. Like give me the Abbey Road Suite, and when I'm done listening to it I press the album play continue button and it throws me back into where I was in my Shuffle.

There are hundreds or even thousands of songs that I will hear while I am shuffling and I think to myself, I'd love to hear the next song that's on this album, but unless I get out of my Shuffle and physically go to the album and restart the song In album play mode, I am unable to do so, and then when I go back to shuffling, I have to listen to a bunch of songs that I probably already heard today...

 

[Deleted member 6263]

It is the absolute worst, I agree.

I've been listening to my playlists in alphabetical order, it's the only way I know I'm hearing more than the same 35 songs over and over.

 

[Autumn]

I hate that they randomly mix in a Harry Styles song or Taylor Swift song.

And it's always the same one, watermelon sugar.

 

[Whitemex]

can't be worse than Youtube Music's

 

[Izkda]

Here's the feature I have always wanted out of a music player, let's call it "Album Play continue"

Like, say she came in through the bathroom window comes on a playlist, I want to be able to press a button to continue that song where it is on its own album, and once I'm done listening to that albums songs to go back to shuffle. Like give me the Abbey Road Suite, and when I'm done listening to it I press the album play continue button and it throws me back into where I was in my Shuffle.

There are hundreds or even thousands of songs that I will hear while I am shuffling and I think to myself, I'd love to hear the next song that's on this album, but unless I get out of my Shuffle and physically go to the album and restart the song In album play mode, I am unable to do so, and then when I go back to shuffling, I have to listen to a bunch of songs that I probably already heard today...

Click to shrink...

You can do this by adding the album songs to the queue.
The songs manually added will be played in order and after that it will continue with the shuffle.

 

[Richietto]

While I don't have too much of an issue with it it can be annoying when my general playlist has 2500 songs and I get 6 Paramore songs in a span of 10 songs. Like come on.

 

[Bladelaw]

When I was a kid I had a multi disc CD player that and a shuffle setting that would not play a song a second time unless it had played every single song on every CD once. I miss that.

Click to shrink...

THIS FUCKING THIS
This should be the definition of "Shuffle" Otherwise you should just call it "random" or something.
Shuffle implies a deck of cards. Each card is a song, you "shuffle" them, then as you play or skip a track that card is removed from the deck until you're out of cards, then you...SHUFFLE THEM AGAIN GOD DAMMIT.

This pissed me off so much I wrote my own fucking music player when I still used MP3's

 

[echoshifting]

This is why I make smaller playlists

I think Spotify works much better with a 100-200 song playlist than with playlists that have thousands and thousands of tracks. I pick a chunk of themed songs or albums and retire playlists pretty regularly. Works much better for me than just listening to a list of every song I've ever liked.

 

[FinalArcadia]

Sometimes I forget I have some songs in a playlist because they never play unless I do it manually. It really is annoying. I also think that having like tiers of favorites could help? Like, you favorite a song, but then some you could set as "top faves" or something. And then those get weighted a little more in the shuffle, then favorites thrown in, then everything else to break up the other two groups (top fave plays, a few normals, a favorite, few normals, top fave, and so on). Wouldn't really make things more random in the shuffle, but it might help tailor it so that you're hearing a better shuffle for your tastes, idk. I certainly have songs in my playlists that I would like to hear more often than others, even if I enjoy every song in that playlist.

 

[AlteredBeast]

You can do this by adding the album songs to the queue.
The songs manually added will be played in order and after that it will continue with the shuffle.

Click to shrink...

The key word here is manually :P

First world problems, I know, but just a click able "on/off" album continue button would go a long way for me. Or even an "artist discovery" button, which would pivot the next few songs in a row to be all from the same artist as the current one playing, and then back to shuffle.

 

[Deleted member 24079]

If you want to see some horrible shuffle programming check out YouTube Music.