queue169

Q: Songs keep repeating when I shuffle a playlist

On every iPod and iPhone I've ever owned:

I open a playlist and set it to shuffle. It does. I pause a song, put the device away, and press play a few hours or days later. The device remembers what I've already played so I don't hear the same song twice until I get through all, say, 250 songs on the playlist (unless I select a different playlist, manually select a song on the playlist, or close the iTunes app on my phone). As an illustration, using my iPhone 6 (still on iOS 8.3) last month I spent a week of commuting time, about 45 minutes a day, listening through a playlist and never heard the same song twice.

 

On my iPhone 6 since updating to iOS 8.4 (12H143):

I open a playlist and set it to shuffle. It does. I pause a song, put the device away, and press play a few hours or days later. It doesn't seem to remember what it's already played, so I end up hearing the same set of about 25-30 songs (with occasional randoms thrown in) every time I pause, put it away, and press play a few hours or days later.

 

Why doesn't Music seem to remember what it's already played? Is there any way of fixing this, or working around the issue so I don't have to keep hearing the same songs on a playlist?

 

On a possibly related note, I just connected my phone to my computer, and noticed that several of the songs that keep getting repeated show up in iTunes as having never been played. Has Music/iTunes stopped counting, or is this feature just not working any longer?

iPhone 6, iOS 8.4

Posted on Jul 23, 2015 9:12 PM

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Q: Songs keep repeating when I shuffle a playlist

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  • by OOLIE19,

    OOLIE19 OOLIE19 Oct 21, 2015 12:51 PM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 21, 2015 12:51 PM in response to queue169

    I am glad I am not alone, this has been driving me nuts since this summer!!  All my songs are stored on my iPhone.  1 of my playlist has just over 1000 songs and I am maybe at best 20 percent through it.  I checked the number of plays and I have several songs that have played 5 times and a bunch have played 3 times while most have never played.  I should be able to listen for 3.2 days without repeating and I have repeats within 3 hours.  This is music play 101 that seems to have Apple tripped up.  This is just plain embarrassing that this has been going on for months and they can't seem to fix it.  What a joke!!!!

  • by Steve-O23,

    Steve-O23 Steve-O23 Oct 22, 2015 12:06 AM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (13 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 22, 2015 12:06 AM in response to queue169

    Same issue and I reported this a number of times during beta testing, only to be told they couldn't replicate the problem.

     

    I have a few thousand tracks in iCloud Library, but still hear a certain number (quite a few) of the same ones every single day, whereas there are others I won't hear for months on end.

     

    I also get this issue when I remove a track from My Music/iCloud Library while in shuffle mode. The app will "re-shuffle" but essentially just goes back to the start of the same "shuffled" list but with a few other random tracks thrown in - so I have to listen all the same songs all over again.

  • by rs691919,

    rs691919 rs691919 Oct 27, 2015 11:01 AM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 11:01 AM in response to queue169

    Add me to the list of the frustrated.  However, I think this may have actually started happening in iOS8.  I am slow to update my iOS usually, and I was on an older version of iOS8 on my iPhone 6.  I do not think that the music app at the time allowed you to see what was "upcoming" in the list or indeed what had previously been played.

     

    I have about 1000 songs stored locally on my phone, and I do medical procedures 5 hours every morning while playing music over a bluetooth speaker.  I like to randomize the entire list of songs so that I don't hear the same thing for 4-6 weeks on average.   I thought I was going crazy hearing the same song every few days, but I also listen to music a lot at home and thought that maybe I had heard the song at home.  Then, one of the nurses I work with often asked me "do you listen to this song every single day?".  Now that I've updated to iOS 9 a few weeks ago, it's been clear that previously played songs were being repeated, and eventually the app devolves into starting the playlist from the beginning (now I can see the evidence of this since I can see the history).  Very frustrating.  Haven't seen anything to suggest 9.1 will fix anything.  But I think that this has been going on since the change to ios8. 

  • by EchoBaby,

    EchoBaby EchoBaby Oct 27, 2015 11:42 AM in response to rs691919
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 11:42 AM in response to rs691919

    @rs691919

    Funny you say that. For me I noticed  the screw up after the first patch 9.0.1. This is nuts. It is frustrating. I love the random shuffle too. I don't want to hear a song today that I heard yesterday especially if I have over 1500 songs. Maybe we need to send numerous emails to apple care in order to be heard. It's annoying to have to keep looking to see what's up next and what was just played in the history to see what repeats. Plus the __of __ is still an absent feature so for someone who likes continuous unrepeated play you won't know when the heck the shuffle has ended or started over smh. This ***** donkey balls. Sorry I digress lol.

  • by OOLIE19,

    OOLIE19 OOLIE19 Oct 27, 2015 3:03 PM in response to EchoBaby
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 3:03 PM in response to EchoBaby

    I know for a fact mine began after Apple music was added at the end of ios 8.  Before I would play a playlist for weeks and then all of a sudden it would just not go to the next song and I realized the playlist was done so I would start over.  Now this never happens.  I notice the problem isn't if I play the list for a long time continuously, but it just happens if I stop the playback leave the car and go back later that day or the next.  It seems after the pause it doesn't know how to pick up with where it left off or remember the original shuffle order so it doesn't repeat.  Apple Music is to blame in my opinion directly or indirectly, as I  never had this problem for years until Apple Music.

  • by EchoBaby,

    EchoBaby EchoBaby Oct 27, 2015 3:46 PM in response to OOLIE19
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Oct 27, 2015 3:46 PM in response to OOLIE19

    @OOLIE19

    Yes yes yes yes I agree with you. I noticed the same thing. A lot of Tom Foolery happened after the crappy Apple Music update. Messed up shuffle, album art, album tagging, etc etc. It's annoying.

  • by wetsprocket,

    wetsprocket wetsprocket Nov 3, 2015 8:14 PM in response to EchoBaby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 3, 2015 8:14 PM in response to EchoBaby

    SO here's my input.  I use my iPhone to play 12-14 new albums (150+ tracks) on shuffle each week in my car.   I Bluetooth to the factory stereo.   The display on the stereo gives me a track number, so even though the playlist is randomized, I get a running count on how many of the songs I've heard, and the assigned track number stays consistent until I reshuffle.   So if I note that piano man is track 17 and if I want to hear it again without screwing up the shuffle, I can go back to hear #17 and then skip forward to wherever I was without causing a reshuffle. 

     

    SO this is what I've noticed (this is an example.   The actual numbers are different every time):   the app plays track 1,2,3,4,5 and then plays 2, then goes back to 6-14 like nothing happened.   Then it'll go back to 6,7,8 and then pick up again at 15-25.   It isn't reshuffling, because the track numbers all stay the same.  It just decides to go play those tracks again.   If I skip forward through the replays, I eventually get to the end of the playlist.  

     

    One anomaly is that a few times it was displaying all of the replayed tracks as track #62553.  

  • by whodatwhere,

    whodatwhere whodatwhere Nov 4, 2015 8:08 AM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2015 8:08 AM in response to queue169

    How has this not been fixed? It's ridiculous. I have days worth of music and am hearing the same song within 30 songs. Before this terribly broken update there was a playlist counter ie 1 of 1000 and you could expect that the remaining 999 songs were unique. For whatever reason this was abandoned and the music app is broken. Music is the only thing keeping me in apple ecosystem, looking rough these days.

  • by whodatwhere,

    whodatwhere whodatwhere Nov 4, 2015 8:35 AM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2015 8:35 AM in response to queue169

    We should all submit complaints via- https://www.apple.com/feedback/ as well.

  • by Jarathen,

    Jarathen Jarathen Nov 5, 2015 7:04 AM in response to whodatwhere
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Nov 5, 2015 7:04 AM in response to whodatwhere

    I submitted this thread and issue overview to support via email as well.

  • by OOLIE19,

    OOLIE19 OOLIE19 Nov 5, 2015 10:43 PM in response to Jarathen
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 5, 2015 10:43 PM in response to Jarathen

    I hope it works!!  I have spent hours making a Spotify playlist that won't repeat.  It will use data but I am so sick of this nonsense.  I will never put a penny into apple music as it has caused this.  "DO NOT REPEAT"  I think the first mp3 player could manage that.  Apple is trying to jump into bigger ponds but has lost track of the vision of being the best at what you do and has fallen to mediocrity.  world branding will only sustain for so long  and then the stock holders will see what I see.  USED TO LOVE APPLE BUT NOT SO MUCH NOW!  This is the worst MP3 player I have ever owned and I spent $800 on it never again!

  • by cpd1980,

    cpd1980 cpd1980 Nov 7, 2015 5:08 AM in response to queue169
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 7, 2015 5:08 AM in response to queue169

    Just adding my voice to the list of complaints.


    I tend to have a couple of hour-long car journeys each day and like to shuffle a 300+ song playlist to help me through them. This problem started for me when I updated to iOS 8.4 earlier in the year, which I believe was when the Music app incorporated Apple Music.

     

    Since then, it seems to just cycle through a limited number of songs before looping back around, playing those same songs in the same order and never playing the majority of songs in the playlist. It's not just playlists that are affected by a broken shuffle either - I've tried to shuffle all songs by a particular artist and it will just frequently play the same songs and omit other songs entirely.

     

    Another issue that I've also had since 8.4 is that music playback will just stop when bluetooth streaming to my car stereo. It was 100% reliable until then, but post 8.4 it's been consistently broken. Bizarrely, it seems to happen in the same places on my journey - I suspect it's related to phone signal or signal interference, but my music is all set for offline playback so no idea what the problem is.

     

    All in all, though, the Music app (which, when it comes down it, is a HUGE reason as to why I've remained locked into Apple's ecosystem) has been absolutely rotten for my needs over the past half year; it's been a cause of frustration of one kind or other on pretty much every single hourlong drive to/from work, and doesn't seem to have even been acknowledged by Apple, let alone looking like being addressed any time soon. The thing is, if a primary reason for me to own an iPhone is fundamentally broken, then I no longer have a reason to own an iPhone...

  • by Sparky87,

    Sparky87 Sparky87 Nov 7, 2015 6:37 AM in response to cpd1980
    Level 1 (14 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 7, 2015 6:37 AM in response to cpd1980

    It's nice to see there are finally more people who are posting about this. And for all of those just noticing it now, it is a problem that started with 8.4 when the first changed their Apple Music app. This wasn't the first thread that I had seen but the other thread kind of died off. what would be nice is if Apple stopped sweeping this under the rug and acknowledge the **** problem and fix it! If I recall this has been happening since June! All that ever happens when you call support is they give you the same old replies, "have you tried restoring your device? Starting from fresh?" Blah blah blah. None of this will fix it, the problem is in the **** app programming! FIX YOUR S H I T!

  • by Sparky87,

    Sparky87 Sparky87 Nov 7, 2015 6:38 AM in response to Sparky87
    Level 1 (14 points)
    iPhone
    Nov 7, 2015 6:38 AM in response to Sparky87

    Really? They sensor the word d a m n? ***

  • by OOLIE19,

    OOLIE19 OOLIE19 Nov 7, 2015 9:53 AM in response to cpd1980
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 7, 2015 9:53 AM in response to cpd1980

    "The thing is, if a primary reason for me to own an iPhone is fundamentally broken, then I no longer have a reason to own an iPhone..."


    This is exactly where I am now!

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