Spotify and randomness that isn’t really random. How to make Spotify really shuffle your music?
You might be listening to a song or album on repeat right now, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy a casual session from time to time. It’s a good way to rediscover the music you have in your library, titles you haven’t listened to in a while.
Spotify and randomness that isn’t really random
That being said, if you use Shuffle on Spotify a lot, you might notice something odd. Spotify’s randomness doesn’t seem very random. In truth, it’s more like choosing names than anything else. Instead of listening to a real mix of songs, we often listen to similar titles when they don’t match, over and over again. Why is that?
It turns out that Spotify itself slows down random playback. For the platform, random should offer different names, but not too different. The idea is to force you to view pages randomly, but with elements that are similar in some way. Think of this feature a bit like a DJ who stitches the titles together with polished transitions so as not to take you from a calm romantic ballad to a touching rock title.
Sometimes this is welcome. It’s good to have songs that follow each other and sound the same. But most users value shuffling precisely for this randomness. Choosing songs that sound the same every time means that many of your songs won’t play and the rest will play very often.
Another problem is that this mode of operation is enabled by default. You will try to use shuffle thinking that Spotify is shuffling your playlist without realizing that the game is rigged from the start.
How to Make Spotify Really Shuffle Your Music
To solve the problem, you need to disable the offending feature, namely Automix. On an iPhone or Android, go to the app’s settings and select Playback. On the desktop, click on your profile and select “Settings”. On all platforms, click the button next to Automix to turn it off.
And if you miss your Spotify DJ, you can always turn Automix back on by following the same steps below. At the end of the day, an accident really has to be an accident, so you never know what song will be next.