Songs keep repeating when I shuffle a playlist

I don't know how people are saying it used to be great. I've got an older iPod Touch still on iOS 6. It has NEVER shuffled correctly. I'm dealing with it still. I have a Christmas playlist that contains all single songs and albums of Christmas music. There are 39 albums and over 200 songs represented. Not only do I hear the same songs over and over, but I'm only hearing songs from about 4 albums in the playlist. It is infuriating - and it has ALWAYS been like that when I try to use shuffle. 😠

Mine is a fourth generation iPod Touch, and every year I try to shuffle my Christmas playlist (it's the only "repeating" one I have) I get the same thing. It's even more distinct - it basically shuffles songs out of four of the 39 albums, and EVERY NOW AND THEN a random one from another album. But 90% of the time it is out of those four, and many times it will be 2 or 3 songs out of the same album back to back. I do not have that issue on iTunes on my computer - I'm just running 10.7.5 on that. I've checked everything I can think of - all songs are checked to be played. I'll even manually skip songs and it is still stuck on those same albums!! It's very frustrating - to the point where I end up stopping the shuffle play and just pick and album and cycle through them. 😟

That's no help. My repeat is always off for the playlist, which is over 1000 songs. I'm currently playing the playlist now which is playing songs I heard yesterday. I guarantee I did not hear 1000 songs since yesterday. What is apple's problem? Not only is this a stupid issue that apple needs to fix, but apple also needs to add an option to playlists to let you resume where you left off. Meaning that if I leave a playlist to play a particular song/album, I should have the option to go back to a playlist on shuffle and continue from the last song that was played.

That didn't help me either. If you mean that little "ying/yang" looking oval arrow thing on the right that goes from "repeat" to "repeat 1" - that's not on, and hasn't been on, for my playlist. thanks for the attempt though.

WWell everything works just fine for me all issues have been fixed on my end. I forgot to mentor earlier that I also contacted apple support and they walked me through the whole process. So good luck.

I honestly don't remember every single step we did. He was going back and forth with a rep from beats and Apple Music that I almost gave up till he suggested to make sure playback was on where you left off or last played so you won't have to start the playlist again and then I told him how do I get the one song that play 40 times in a row, then suggested the repeat(1) was off. Then from that point on I haven't had any problems. Best suggestion from me would be to contact Apple and tell them what's going on. They'll help you.

FJimenez1 I think you need to go back and reread what this post is about. We aren't having the issue of 1 song repeating over and over back to back. We are having an issue where in a playlist of 1000 songs or even 200 songs,when shuffle all is selected after say 9 or 10 songs have played one of those songs we just heard will be replayed. With shuffle all you should never here the same song twice until all the songs have been played randomly. And if you have ever used this on an extended period of time you would have noticed the same problem. This isn't a problem with our devices nor with our settings. It is a fundamental flaw with the software, there's a glitch and the refuse to fix it let alone acknowledge it. So your "fix" will not work, as it stands nothing will work because none of us have the ability to reerite the software.

As Sparky87 mentioned, this is about Shuffle not remembering which songs have already played and which have yet to be played. The introductio of Apple Music has broken the Shuffle feature, so now instead of saying "Playing Song 1 of 45", for example, it just has the Shuffle icon set to on and merrily shuffles away, repeating songs and sometimes even repeating the order of those songs.

I've been Shuffling with ease since my first iPod 20GB, and this is not how it's supposed to work. I have an old iPod Touch on iOS6 and it Shuffles correctly, showing the total number of songs in the Shuffled selection and how far into that selection the listener is. Current Shuffle doesn't operate this way.

This reminds me of when check/uncheck stopped working correctly and instead of packing up my songs and leaving I just went to iTunes Match to better control over what went on my device. Apple slowly taking away features that power users enjoy to serve up their own vision of what today's music listener wants, which is apparently the same ten songs from a curated playlist over and over again.

I honestly thought my head was messing with me the first few times this problem happened to me. My playlists range from 350 songs to 50 songs each and often times I find myself questioning whether or not I've heard song recently because I love the feather of shuffling a playlist and not having songs repeat themselves as I listen. I thought I was the only one with this problem! I'm glad I'm not and I hope Apple fixes it soon. I listen to music for ~4hrs/day at work and the shuffle function is used a lot! (btw I'm on an iPhone 6 on ios 9.1).

In the meantime, has anyone downloaded a good alternative music player app, while apple gets its head out of its ios? I downloaded the free app LISTEN today and it seems to be ok. Nothing slick, but I'm now hearing songs on shuffle in my playlist that I have not heard in a long time. It does seem to drain the battery a little.

I never updated my iphone 6 until recently, which I obviously am regretting. I can't believe people have been having this problem for roughly 6 months now. If apple doesn't fix this problem, there is NO WAY my next phone will be an apple.

I'm curious to know any alternate iOS apps that you guys have found as well with a working shuffle.

Really I'm just looking for one that shuffles properly and tells you what track you are on (example: 34 of 420). This way I can verify its playing through every track before looping around. The same way iPods function. Any ideas?

At first glance, i thought it did too. However after getting in the car later this morning, I'm not so sure. Back to automatically playing the first song in the "A's" then the 2nd, 3rd, etc. Too bad, Apple dropped the ball... again 😟

Well today was my first day of having Good Luck with shuffling a playlist in what now seems like forever.

I did two things. First I upgraded to IOS 9.2 last night. Then I made a NEW playlist of roughly 400 songs. I successfully played 55 songs today (on and off all day) from that playlist without having a single repeat. It may have been because of the upgrade, it may have been because of the need to make a new playlist after all this apple bs, or it may have been due to both. Not sure, but it sure was nice not to hear a repeat. I'll be adding more songs to this playlist, which I believe means it will be re-shuffling, but I'll report back if this issue rears its ugly head.

Well, an update fix won't help me since my iPod Touch is stuck at 6.1.6 or something like that. I'm not a software coder, but I do know random number generators have been out a long, long time and I would assume something like that would be at the heart of any kind of randomizing (shuffling) behavior. I actually did what you suggested - took my Christmas playlist and made two new ones (instrumental & vocal). I played the vocal one today and got the same sort of behavior. It started playing from 3 separate albums (multiples from each) and every now and then some random song outside of those three. But that playlist had about 10 albums in it. I guess I just have to concede that the code for shuffle in iOS is crap - as well as the version of iTunes (12.2) that I have. Last night I was using those new playlists on my computer (where I am now, again listening). The blue shuffle arrows are on, and it is literally playing the songs in sequence. I've tried skipping songs, turning it on and off (in the window and in the playlist header) to no avail. It's like the code for shuffling doesn't even exist. Seems this should be something very, very basic. so sad.😢

A quick point on some earlier posts - the hardware you're using is irrelevant. The issue is with the algorithm used in the app/OS to 'randomise' tracks.

I've been testing a bit since 9.2 came out. There seems to be slightly more variation of songs being picked, but it still seems to be favouring a certain number of albums/artists/tracks as it was before. A slight improvement, but still not great and a number of other bugs still present.

- Removing a track from My Music doesn't continue with the shuffled tracks, but takes you back to the beginning of the list and plays everything all over again.

- A couple of times today I've had a track playing and midway through it just starts playing the next track over the top.

- Still issues with matched tracks i.e. wrongly matched, changed /incorrect artwork etc.

6 months in and there are still fundamental issues with the app and the way in which key features are coded/written. A massive shame. Something that could have been so good is just SO bad.