this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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and that is what spotify actually does: https://engineering.atspotify.com/2025/11/shuffle-making-random-feel-more-human
... And here I am, expecting "shuffle" to be a random ordering without repetition at all, like a silly person apparently.
This, the Shuffle function should play every song exactly once, just in a random order. This is what cd players have been supporting since the late '80s.
It is a very simple algorithm but Spotify turned it into something complex that barely works. By default, in large playlists, it will heavily prioritize some songs while others are almost never heard. People have complained about this for years and there is an option in the settings for it now, although I am not yet sure if that setting really disables all of the "smart" algorithms Spotify has associated with shuffle.
that is exactly what it does
the fewer repeats is for when you listen to the same playlist multiple times, not for the sequence itself
You mean "shuffle" like when you shuffle a deck of cards and have exactly the same cards still but in a different order with no single card repeating because you started out with a deck of cards and why would there suddenly be an extra card or 5 of the same face value in the deck because that's just crazy talk? That kind of shuffle?
Yeah sorry, Spotify doesn't do that.
My problem with Spotify shuffle was that it always ended up throwing a similar order of songs. The same group of songs would end up in the same general position on the playlist every time. It's not random, and it stands to reason that people doesn't actually want real random order. But it was super obvious, noticeable and quite annoying to hit the same songs at the same time on your walk every single time. They even admitted publicly that their shuffle function sucks.