Why Spotify Playlists Never Truly Shuffle
Video Overview & Insights
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The solution exists imo, its called making more and specific playlists lol
sources:
https://thetab.com/uk/2021/11/17/spotify-shuffle-explained-228639
Don't use Spotify guys it's made by Satan
angry user: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Please-stop-marking-shuffle-complaints-as-quot-not-an-issue-quot/idi-p/1772030
the spotify algorithm: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2014/02/how-to-shuffle-songs/
spotify home algorithm: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2020/01/for-your-ears-only-personalizing-spotify-home-with-machine-learning/
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tl:dr computers are bad at randomness and Spotify wants to use a simple algorithm for randomness, since things like mt76 or whatever in c++ are heavy on CPUs, and things like random with seed based on unix timestamp are very light, same with XOR shift based randomness
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I went on a road trip earlier in the year. We made a playlist that was 20hrs long. We didn't reset it at all. It still played the same 20 songs every day
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On spotify I just reshuffle if I no longer like it or delete artists that I don’t want to hear over and over. I like Spotify better for heavy music but I’m still figuring out how to support streaming less while also building a charting business
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I also noticed that in a playlist that had like 300 songs, the app chose something like 100 songs and played those in the same order over and over again. It decided at some point that no other songs were shuffled in.
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I have 322 songs on my playlist and there's a handful of songs on there I've heard like 50 times and there's some that I don't think have played once. What sucks is the ones that played 50 times are some of the worst songs in the playlist and the songs that never played are some of the best ones
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━CHAPTERS━
Yes, true random IS ACTUALLY WHAT I WANT! GIVE IT TO ME!
00:00 Spotify's Shuffle is Broken
02:30 Shuffling isn't "Random"
The whole point of shuffle is to pair unrelated songs in unexpected ways. If I wanted to listen to a curated playlist, I'd listen to a curated playlist.
03:16 We Don't Want Random Shuffle
04:53 Experimenting
10,000th comment >:p
09:26 How the Algorithm Works
12:05 Has The Spotify Algorithm Changed?
watching this in 2026 and seeing D4vd as the cover for Spotify top songs :X
12:45 Humans Suck at Probability
13:57 How to Fix the Bad Algorithm
good news! the solution is to just stop using spotify!!
16:40 Conclusion
Why isn't spotify's shuffle feature actually a random shuffle? why is it an algorithm? Why doesn't the algorithm suck???
9:00
Based on my shitty google calculator math that i think is generally accurate, on average, in a playlist of 50 songs, 4.294967296 songs will not come up in the top 10 on average in a truly random algorithm. So there's a good chance that that's random chance.
tags: #spotify
Why are you in my playlists category this isn’t music just related
More User Perspectives
My issue is not that there's an algo shuffle, my issue is that the algo shuffle is the only option lol
Why don't they just give us an option between true random and algo random? Everyone would be happy then.
Online songs is one of my favorite songs from blink-182
@bobbydabuilder67I kept getting "Optimist" EVERY SINGLE TIME I PUT MY PLAYLIST ON SHUFFLE
I HATE THAT SONG 😭 IT'S ONLY ON MY PLAYLIST BCZ I NEEDED TO LEARN IT 4 YRS AGO😭
I'm a teacher, and I have a 16hr playlist that I play at school. I shuffle it when the day starts, and I hear the same exact songs during the same class periods every day! My students don't believe the playlist has 290 songs.
@clairemarie9792For those who don't know, (I don't know how long this has existed) but you can change between true random and the algorithm random. It is naturally set on the algorithm random though
@TableTaeFallReal like I have this long playlist and it shuffles the same like 5 songs
@Justarand0md3m1g1rlPls I commented this without seeing the full video and realizing my situation is exactly like the half and half playlist situation- half my playlist is one artist and the other half is a couple songs from various artists
but the first seven or eight songs on shuffle are NEVER from the artist that makes up half my playlist 💔
I have a playlist of about 80 songs I was listening to… the same song played every day without fail for almost 2 weeks! For about a week it played FIRST!!
@PootisHasBeenEngagedAnd now we have smart shuffle.
I hate it.
:D
its been 8 years
@OrionMeadows-y2jIt’s not even effective at not giving a different artist because I will get clusters of ten frank ocean songs in a 7 hour playlist
@__StarFishIt would be nice to be able to start songs from the bottom like a button to switch the songs from the bottom to the top
@Bythedeckmusic@16:40 What is that ORBA din?...
@jb31842i had a glitch on Spotify mobile where the shuffle always reset to the EXACT SAME song order, without fail. i tested it. even if you played a specific track off the playlist, it would generate the exact same order of songs to follow it 😭
@eliabrowning3628is it random now it's been 3 years
@saturnite_nitey1
@cesarguzman7347Your Artiphon bitly link in description has a 404 error.
@Vagitarian01Shuffle is 100% designed to play your least streamed / most skipped songs first. Whenever I shuffle a playlist it always plays the songs I never listen to to try to force me to skip and annoy me into buying premium. They think we don’t know about their tactics, but we do.
@sparrowwilson4514bro ill be singing a song and then i would play the playlist that has that song and it would pop up-
@eternalaytI never noticed this, my playlist chooses the most random things, even from the same artists consecutively, and adds things, but this is probably the previous version you're talking about, and now it's not like this, idk¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@candeladallafontana813711:09 Am I stupid or isn't 2014 + 13 years = 2027 and the video was released three years ago in 2026?
@AshEllerVadso... no solution. just deal and hope the makers of spotify fix it. great.
@rpj187I am pretty sure that there is a setting in spotify to have a "true random" shuffle. However, it is really deep in the settings.
@4NG3L-y6y11:14 😭🤣😂
@l3lackRockthis video is 3 years old. well thats enough internet for the day.
@cheeze_bytez7706for me shuffle would pick an artist in my playlist and give me back to back almost all of their songs
@ketchupdaddy7384Me who don't use Spotify:
@Mr.ChaosPollensAllAround14:57 caught me off guard, that shit is way to real
@Skyt1leI have 5450 odd songs on my playlist. I DO WANT true random because the likelihood of the randomness being a negative in this instance bothers me less than not hearing 98% of my playlist regularly because I have to listen to the same 20 songs spotify picks every day. It's still going 3 years after your video :(
@green95911:15 Tbf she's 32 so she kind of just looks old for her age if that image is legit. I say this as a someone half her age
@thecatinthehat1256:08 yeah I was kinda wondering why my 400+ playlist I had since middle school was only giving me 3 songs…
@Vladikus_the_clownThis is genuinely why I dropped Spotify.
@TieflingTearsspotify for the love of god if i’m listening to the same artist over and over again do NOT interrupt my listening to give me someone i dont know. 💔💔💔💔💔💔
@s1lver_lyre