Songs keep repeating when I shuffle a playlist

The shuffle feature works very much like the way a casino dealer would shuffle a deck of cards. The music is shuffled into a random order and then you will hear everything once all the way through. However, if you reshuffle the playlist then you're essentially putting all the songs which have already played, back into the upcoming tracks which may be quite soon after already hearing it prior to shuffling.

Hope this helps!

But the problem is that isn't how it's working. Of course you will get tracks crop up again when you re-shuffle, but these are the same tracks (out of thousands) every single time. There is a fundamental issue with the algorithm being used.

Yep Kyle that is the way it worked for years until apple music. If you were counting cards now you would find 16 Kings in a single deck that is why everyone is so ******!!!

guess you can't say p i s s e d lol

NO Kyle this doesn't help anyone here, nobody is reshuffling their playlist the music app doesn't know how to shuffle properly anymore at all. This problem has been going on since June and apple won't acknowledge it as a problem, anyone who calls or makes a report gets told that it's their phone that's the problem and not the software. I have been having this problem on my iPad and I have since wiped and started from scratch and it is still doing it.... Most of us hit shuffle and let the music go and don't touch it again yet in a playlist that's supposed to last 26 hours with no repeats it's repeating after 30 Minutes if not less.

wetsprocket wrote:

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.

This seems to be the best example of what the problem is in my opinion

Amen.

I have this exact same problem, too. After playing around with it for quite a bit, I think I found a way to properly shuffle a playlist.

Let's assume for starters that I'm not currently playing anything, and the Up Next queue is empty.

- Go to the Playlists view in the Music app

- Start the playlist

+ Tap the playlist thumbnail, or

+ Tap the 3-bullet icon on the right, and tap Play Next, or

+ Tap the 3-bullet icon on the right, and tap Add to Up Next

[Near as I can tell, if the queue is currently empty, all three of those options behave identically.]

- Bring up the player screen

- Tap the little Up Next icon to bring up the Up Next screen

- It'll read: "UP NEXT: FROM {playlist-name}"

- Tap clear, and confirm by tapping "Clear Up Next"

- Tap "Done" to get out of the Up Next screen

- You should be back in the player screen with whatever song currently playing

- Go back to where you started the play list from and this time use only either of:

+ The 3-bullet icon on the right, and tap Play Next, or

+ The 3-bullet icon on the right, and tap Add to Up Next

- Bring up the player screen again

- Tap the little Up Next icon to bring up the Up Next screen

- It now reads: "UP NEXT: {# of songs} SONGS"

It seems to me, once Up Next gets into this "mode" where it shows the upcoming song count instead, that the playlist is properly shuffled and it shows all songs in the Up Next list.

When it's only showing "FROM {playlist-name}", Up Next only shows the first 20 matches it found from that playlist. Maybe I'm imagining it, but I think when it's in this "mode" it's not properly shuffling the songs, but only picking them randomly without accounting for past songs. It also seems to favour my higher rated and "hearted" tracks, because it's those ones that seem to be repeated more frequently.

It gets even weirder if you don't clear Up Next the first time. Let's say you didn't clear the queue when it was in "FROM {playlist-name}" mode, and then added the playlist to Up Next using the 3-bullet "Play Next" option. You still put it in the "{# of songs} SONGS" mode, and I assume it's shuffled, but if you now clear the queue, it doesn't actually clear the queue, it only clears out the 2nd sets of songs you added, and puts it back in the "FROM {playlist-name}" mode.

So it seems Up Next isn't just one queue, but two. A default one that's context aware (i.e. it initiates differently depending on how you start playing a song; via Songs, Artists, Albums, Playlists, etc...), and a second one that you can manually add to that takes precedence.

I think it's that first (or "outer") queue that isn't shuffling properly. So when you re-add the playlist the second time, you're adding it to the second (or "inner") queue in an explicitly shuffled order.

P.S. Don't get me started on how broken the Back button is! Maybe a better person than me can figure it out, because I can't make heads or tails of it.

This actually makes sense. I feel like Shuffle isn't truly random but circles around given genres, artists, or albums when I Shuffle All. And both implementations you outlined align with my experience since Apple Music went live.

It's like Apple wants a Smart Shuffle that's more like the radio, when NO ONE WANTS THAT.

But I will share your tips with my wife, Bob. She has a work playlist and it drives her nuts to see it repeat so soon. It took me a minute to figure it out, but I did, and I see what you mean. This could be GREAT for making playlists work and allow me to use playlists the way I did for years before this.

Yes, it makes sense in that very Apple-ly way that they do things. They're trying to be helpful, and when they nail it, it's awesome. When they don't, though, it's the worst thing ever! 🙂

Bob Although your hints and tricks may be helpful, that's too much effort and work for something that we shouldn't have to put this effort into. Let's not forget That the program is broken and needs to be fixed and apple isn't doing ANYTHING to fix it, **** they aren't even acknowledging it.

Now another thing that has been a problem in conjunction with songs being repeated or skipped is songs not continuing from the point they were last played. Literally just this afternoon I was editing some metadata on some new music and found some options in iTunes that I found bothersome. Each individual song file now has 2 clickable options. Those options are "continue playing where left off and" "skip song in shuffle" so now, it seems, we have to manually go into each song file and allow or un allow this... I wonder if this may be part of the problem....

It's part of Apple's larger movement away from dedicated music fans towards casual fans and "smart shuffling" seems like an extension of it.

Wired just did a whole piece about how they're moving away from the type of library curation many of us used to enjoy.

http://www.wired.com/2015/11/itunes-alternatives/

Jarathen, i didnt read the article yet however you would think that this newer cra ppier smart shuffle system would be a clickable option instead of forcing it down our throats! I like managing my own library and having a proper shuffle system.

Yes. It's atrocious. I hate it. I used to manage my music manually in iTunes and I loved it. Then my devices stopped syncing properly and I went with Apple Match. Now I'm on Apple Music and I like the selection, but the implementation is still rough, and Shuffle ***** hard.

Based on my previous observation about there appearing to be two Up Next queues (an "outer" one and an "inner" one), I think I have a slightly firmer grasp on what's going on with the Back button.

Like before, I'll start with nothing playing and an empty queue. I'll use playlists for my example because, like me, I think that's all that anyone in this thread cares about.

Pretend I have two playlists called Alphabet1 and Alphabet2 with the following songs:

Alphabet1:

A

B

C

D

E

F

Alphabet2:

G

H

I

J

K

L

[I won't bother shuffling because it's immaterial for this demonstration.]

- I start playlist Alphabet1

- A starts playing and Up Next shows B, C, D, E, F

[Alphabet1 is now playing in the "outer" queue.]

- I skip ahead through A and B

- C is now playing

- I go back and 3-bullet "Play Next" on Alphabet2

- C is still playing but Up Next now shows 6 songs (G, H, I, J, K, L)

[I'm still in the "outer" queue.]

- I skip C

- G is now playing

[I'm now in the "inner" queue.]

- I skip G

- H is now playing

[Here's where things get weird.]

- I hit Back, and it takes me back to C!

[I'm now back in the "outer" queue. When G finished playing (or was skipped), it was removed from the "inner" queue. H then became the front of the "inner" queue. Hitting back past the front of a playlist normally stops, but because we're only in the "inner" queue, playback defaults back to where we were in the "outer" queue. Thus C.]

- I skip C

- I is now playing

[It would seem skipping back through the "inner" queue also removes that song from the "inner" queue, so H was removed when I skipped back, making I the new front of the "inner" queue.]

- I hit Back and I'm back at C again

- I hit Back and now B is playing

- Back again and now A is playing

- Back once more and everything stops.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that we can properly shuffle a playlist by adding it to the "inner" queue, but we completely lose the ability to use the Back and Forward buttons in a non-destructive way.

And to add insult to injury, when a song finishes playing from the "inner" queue, it gets listed in History, but you can't get back to it using the Back button because it's been removed completely from the queue.

This has got to be a bug. There's no way this is supposed to be the intended behaviour. I'll file a bug report. Hopefully with more detail of what's going on, they'll be able to fix it.

I think I just stumbled upon another bug. When I skip forward through a song in the "inner" queue, and then skip back to go back to the "outer" queue, and then just let it play naturally without skipping forward, the next song it selects is the original first song in the "inner" queue (the one I skipped forward past). Up Next shows the next will be the next song in the "inner" queue, but once this original first song finishes playing, it just stops playing. Probably because it fell into whatever weird timeline the original first song I skipped was put into (a playlist of one?) and playback stops because it reached the end.