Is Spotify’s shuffle actually random? User finds 72-song repeating sequence
A listener's deep dive into streaming history shows exact song queues playing back-to-back on consecutive days.
An intriguing discovery was made by a Reddit user named Driftking_88, who meticulously tracked their listening habits on a 2,000-song playlist. Frustrated by the feeling that Spotify's shuffle feature was merely cycling through a handful of tracks in an endless loop, Driftking_88 decided to delve into the data to determine whether the music streaming giant was actually randomizing playlists or serving up identical sequences.
After painstakingly analyzing their extended streaming history, the user stumbled upon a 72-song sequence that played twice in the exact same order on consecutive days. This striking finding led the user to suspect that Spotify's shuffle algorithm might be caching playlists or reusing shuffle seeds, instead of genuinely randomizing the listening experience.
The discovery of such small repeated blocks, including a case where 27 out of 30 upcoming songs matched an earlier queue, further suggests that Spotify's shuffle feature could be falling short of its randomized promise.
Written by urgent.news from Android Authority's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
