I like the feature request, but is it? How many people are saying "I think I'll switch to Tidal" over a subtle feature like this? How many people prefer the faked shuffle way?
What are the odds that Spotify originally did a true shuffle, then at some point A/B testing "proved" that the modified shuffle improved some metric? Not to mention that putting a thumb on the shuffle function lets them manipulate plays and maintain the sweet payola revenue.
I assume it's related to revenue somehow. They could hide true shuffle somewhere deep in settings, not on by default, whatever..
I spend a good portion of my time changing playlists and restarting playlists just to get around their fake shuffle, and I still end up hearing repeated songs. It's extremely frustrating. I even tried out Amazon music, ready to make the switch, but my family members don't want to move with me, so I'm just dealing with Spotify for now. May end up paying for my own Amazon/Other music service as well.
I think you're proving my point: Even you, someone who cares enough about the issue to work around it, continue to give them your money.
I don't think what they're doing is my preference, but you can find complaints about the shuffle algorithms for every major music playback platform.
What would be a more generalized solution might be to pick up the "Smart Playlist" concept that iTunes has had for a long time, so you can work around the repeats with a "Last played > 2 days ago" filter.
I am one of those people who prefer the fake shuffle. I like how it kind of shuffles but still "knows" what I want to listen to.
There is a decade's worth of music in my Liked Songs and my taste has changed over time, so I don't want to listen to most of that music at a given moment, but I still want to keep it there for archival/nostalgia purposes
Holy shit I thought I was crazy because I use the web client and on a playlist with over 20 hours of music I hear the same songs on a few hour listening session. I have to hard refresh the website every day to get it to function (I keep my PC on but close my browser) so this must reset the alg.
While you’re at it, how about ability to listen to a folder of shuffled playlists on mobile? Would also be nice to be able listen to a folder of playlists sorted by recent adds. Less shuffling of the UI and some real feature requests implemented please.
I appreciate that the engineers at Spotify wrote this post, but not because it's a novel solution or because most software engineers don't know this stuff (well, some don't I suppose). However, I find it and others like it helpful to engineering groups that exist outside of tech companies.
Why? It gives those groups and their technical leads something to point to when discussing trade-offs, timelines and investments in technology with product teams or more senior engineering leadership whom might not have had a background in software engineering and architecture. "Don't take my word for it, look at what the engineers at Spotify, et. al. wrote about this topic."
Public service notice: Employing these patterns in small companies that don't have any need for the complexity is an anti-pattern.
I'm going to disagree with your last point because it should add the caveat that it makes sense when working with third party libraries. It makes sense to implement a wrapper with senseable defaults that comprises of +80% of use cases
I can agree with that wholeheartedly and admit to the practice myself...particularly with libs with a large surface area or which are used in many other places in the company.
If only Spotify cared for users' input on the app, the app would feel/look/act much differently.
Example - I hate "recommendations". Some time ago I could minimize them, now I cannot any more.. so the-ir garbage is visible.
For any Spotify folks that read this.. anytime you build something, if you REALLY care for people's opinion, go ahead and add a On/Off/Show/Hide/True/False switch on the settings. Duh.. I hate what you do with the app!
Vote with your feet. Stop using Spotify. Dust off your carefully-curated collection of music files and your favorite player. Find music review blogs or internet radio stations that you like. Start buying files again. Start buying CDs again and ripping them yourself.
Spotify does what maximizes profit for Spotify, and after almost twenty years of expanding to dominate a lot of the online music space, this is not going to match up much with maximizing its likelyhood to surprise and delight your ears.
It's been something like 5 years with no significant improvement to UX and library management. Loading your library is clunky and slow. Playlists are a nightmare to manage because you can't create any folders or organization.
I'm so annoyed with Spotify, but my library of 5k songs is tied up there, and I'm not a big fan of the alternatives that tend to be missing artists I want. It's so time-consuming to try to collect my own personal library of all this music.
If anyone has suggestions or reccs for ways to migrate from Spotify, I'm open to options.
> Playlists are a nightmare to manage because you can't create any folders or organization
The desktop app on Mac allows for folder creation. While not looking very hard, I wasn't able to find the same functionality on iOS. Would be a nice addition to iOS if it is not available.
I should specify that the folder limitation seems to only be on the mobile app. There's no point in organizing with for folders if I can't use them on mobile where I primarily use spotify.
I definitely feel the same. Like I am being force fed ideology when I just want to listen to music. I can't even ask for recommendations based on a selection, but they went ahead and destroyed the home view instead.
Spotify is really one of those products that just gets worse and worse. Their CTO should get fired.
Hey, maybe another tip, maybe facade pattern could be used to make the next song button play the next song during searches? Maybe the facade pattern could be used to subtract unwanted artists/genres from the search page? Maybe the facade pattern could be used to implement a non-fake shuffle? Can the facade pattern be used to stop artists with too few monthly plays from being stiffed? Maybe we could use the facade pattern to let users see a full list of songs attributed to artists, rather than using to click into lots of albums that usually only have one song? What about using facade pattern to fix the issues users have been complaining about for years?
[1] https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/All-Platforms-Op...