Songs keep repeating when I shuffle a playlist

Guys. I hit on something.

I was hitting "shuffle" on a 58-song playlist. Then I would navigate to my "Up Next" list: 20 shuffled songs from the playlist. I repeated this many times. Always ONLY 20 songs added! What if it's just repeating our Up Next list, so we're not hearing the whole playlist, just 20 shuffled songs on repeat?

So, I cleared my "Up Next." I went back to my playlist and found the option to "Add to Up Next." Up Next now has 58 songs!!! Okay, but what if it just added the whole playlist, in order? Nope, I repeated this operation and the Up Next list is in a different order every time. Try this out, see if you have any success and report back!

JUST A NOTE: I have not yet listened through the long playlist to see if the problem has been fixed. But it may have been "Up Next" that's been screwing us up for (literally) years. Apple, if this is indeed the source of the problem, shame on you. First, fixing something not broken, and then your employees suggest clean re-installs because your Up Next feature has a weird 20-song limit if inputted from Shuffle? Come on guys...

That's brilliant! Worked like a charm. Thanks for sharing.

DIsregard. At first it was adding the list in artist alphabetical order. But after repeating the clear and add up next a few times, it actually did start to shuffle the whole playlist. Weird... But it's working. Thanks again.

I'm testing iOS 10 beta and this playlist is now right below main page of the song being played. Since iOS 10, I see no repeat songs coming up anymore. Before 10, I was seeing sometime duplicates and triplicates on this shuffle "Up Next" list. Maybe, just maybe, Apple is going to be fixing this when 10 is released. Let's hope. I've only been testing it for about 4 days.

LLet's hope that they did indeed fix this... Unfortunately that won't help anyone on older devices like the 4s' as ios10 is only going to be able to run on certain devices... Looks like older phones yet again get screwed! Here let's break something so that it doesnt work for you but then we will fix it but only for newer devices forcing you to upgrade or leave all together....

I believe that this worked for me! One caveat thought - I wasn't going to add each song individually to "Up Next" (what a pain in the butt), so I did it by artist. All the songs were added into UpNext - but they are in alphabetical order. I then hit Shuffle All. The Music App then asked "After playing this, do you want to play the 99 songs you've added to Up Next?" I clicked Keep Up Next - and it showed 99 songs in random order in Up Next, and then the 99 songs in alphabetical order. If I clicked "Clear Up Next" - then it was back to the old problems.

Problem partially solved. It is a real problem to sit there and add all the songs (or albums) to Up Next manually.

Not completely solved.

First - you don't have to add all the songs to Up Next. Just add one song. Then shuffle all songs, and it will ask you to Keep Up Next. If you do that, it will add all the songs shuffled before the one song that you added manually.

But the original problem I had (where during a shuffle, the Repeat button turns on and can't be turned off, and subsequently songs are shuffled but some songs start to repeat themselves) IS STILL OCCURRING.

Time to move to Cesium.

I've just upgraded from an iPhone 4s on iOS 7.1.2 where this isn't an issue at all to an iPhone 6 on iOS 9.3.2

I've noticed today that there's the update iOS 9.3.3 - after installing this i can't work out if it's fixed this issue or not, has anybody had chance to check this?

9.3.3 has NOT fixed this bug. After it had installed on my phone I selected a playlist, hit shuffle and then immediately checked Up Next only to see that my first song was already going to repeat four songs later. This particular playlist has 509 songs in it so to see a repeat so soon was really disappointing.

Yeah i shuffled one of my playlists last night and found the problem still exists!!

I heard somebody mention the app Cesium earlier in this Thread; can someone confirm that this app will shuffle my playlist and not repeat a song until i restart the shuffle?

For the 4 months or so that I've been using Cesium, it has only repeated a playlist song one or two times out of the hundreds of playlists that I've listened to in that time. Cesium has been vastly better than the Apple music player app in that regard. One note of caution though... Cesium uses the same "up next" listing as the Apple music app. The "recently played" listing will also match. Thus, switching back and forth between those two apps may cause the problem to resurface in Cesium. I've not tried doing this enough to rule out that possibility, since I hate the thought of having to go through the aggravation of trying the Apple music app again. I can't say for certain, but I suspect the Cesium app looks for the repeating playlist song problem to occur in its upcoming song list and takes steps to avoid it if/when it does. Given that the up next and recently played listings are shared between these apps (as well as some other music apps that I've tried), those features appear to be separate background features on all Apple devices. That is where the problem seems to lie. The Apple music app isn't capable of detecting and avoiding repeated playlist songs, while the Cesium app is. The same goes for skipped songs, though I've had Cesium skip playlist songs a few more times than it has repeated playlist songs. One definite Cesium advantage though, when it comes to looking for these problems, Cesium provides a count of the number of playlist songs remaining in its upcoming songs listing. Apple's music app hasn't done that since these problems started to occur back in IOS 8.4.

When you are viewing the song, at the top right just below the total song length is where the shuffle icon appears. It shows in blue when shuffle is active and white when it is not.

On the top left, just below the current time for the song is an icon with two arrows "chasing" each other. They are white when repeat is inactive, blue when repeat full playlist is active and blue with a tiny number "1" when repeat 1 song is active.

I suspect that you have the repeat 1 song option set. Tap that icon once more to turn it off. Then shuffle should work as expected.

Hope that helps. It worked for me

Yes - I get that. You should read what the problem is - the repeat icon turns itself on, and cannot be turned off. It is unresponsive.

I am so glad I found this discussion. I thought I was cracking up, or doing something wrong. I have a playlist of 400+ songs which I listen to through a Bluetooth in helmet headphones when on my motorcycle. So it is very difficult to mess about with skipping songs etc. What it plays is what I get. My problem like everyone else is that every time I listen to this playlist on shuffle I hear the same 20 or 30 songs. I recently went away for 4 days, and listened to the playlist for 20+ hours and kept hearing the same songs over and over. Arghhh!

I have tried all of the solutions above, including wiping an reinstalling, deleting "up next" etc etc and nothing works. I have just upgraded to iOS 9.3.4 and still the fault remains. The problem is in the Apple Music app, obviously.

When I look closely in iTunes, 20 or 30 or so of the songs have been played 15-20 times each, while over 100 have had 1 or zero plays. Shuffle the whole list? You're joking!

I don't want anything fancy, I don't need to see album artwork, or shuffle albums, or genra, or artists or sort classical music by composer. I just want it to shuffle my playlist randomly, without repeating. Not much to ask, surely?

A few days ago I lashed out $1.50 and downloaded Ecoute Beautiful Music Player app. It has solved my problem. It instantly picked up all the music and playlists on my iPhone, and does what I want it to do. It shuffles my playlist properly. The only caveat is I have only had it a few days.

It has a lovely simple interface, and looks good. Maybe it does other things that people want. I don't know or care. I also don't particularly care how it looks either, although it does look good. I open it, find my playlist, hit play and shuffle and put it in my pocket.

And it works.

It doesn't talk directly to iTunes that I can see. It appears to suck the information out of Apple Music, so if you are constantly downloading or buying new music that may be unpleasant for you. But it is not an issue for me. I'm a dinosaur and listen mainly to my 60s and 70 music, and have no interest in changing it. Yes, I'm a dinosaur, but a happy one.

So, in summary.......a big raspberry to Apple for not fixing this problem, and congratulation to Ecoute for solving my problem for under $2.

Cheers Almostadr

I have switched to Cesium, and so far the "repeat" issue when shuffling songs has not occurred!