It’s been years since I dabbled with programming, but how hard can it be for these music app developers to make a random list of your songs, and pop every played song from the list until it’s empty and then repeat.
Algorithm shuffle is garbage.
2026, and I’m still using iTunes and actual music files loaded on my phone.
It actually shuffles, plays everything in a playlist exactly once, reshuffles everything, and does it again.
i’ve been using musicolet for that and i really like it.
I don’t know about other music streaming platforms, but Spotify has a shuffle algorithm, that is deliberately not random.
What is it with streaming playlist mixes that causes them to only play the last dozen or so songs, anyway? I add ONE instrumental song to my liked tracks and suddenly it’s all Polyphia and Nito.
They prioritize songs in your cache. That way they reduce their infrastructure costs. On Spotify at least clearing your cache can force it to give you something different.
Of course there’s some self-serving reason for it. I should’ve known!
I’ve heard Amazon music will only shuffle through blocks of 500 songs at a time. So for my 700 song playlist, if I start with the first song on the list and hit Random, it will only shuffle the first 500 songs. But if I choose a song above number 200, it will be able to shuffle through all 700 songs supposedly.
I haven’t tried this out myself, but it would explain why I never hear the newest songs on my playlist when I shuffle.
My car stereo has this problem. Its randomization always results in the same list. I have to trick it by doing something random myself first.
I had just gotten Google music to reliably stop doing this when they shut the service down. I’ve been disappointed with every music service since. I don’t have the time to go download thousands of songs, as much as I’d like to. I’ve gotten really in to podcasts and audiobooks as a result
I use spicetify for spotify. There is a shuffle+ addon which adds a truly random shuffle mode.
