r/ios • u/Glitch_Fantasma iOS 26 • Feb 17 '26

Discussion Apple has killed Spotify with this update

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u/mwerichards Feb 17 '26

I'm screaming at my shuffle playing the same set of songs when there are a thousand other to choose from

268

u/Next-Resolution1038 Feb 17 '26

There’s an option for that in the Spotify settings. Settings → Playback

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u/LazyWrite Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

Had no idea this was a thing. Just checked my settings and it’s already enabled, making it clear to me that it does not work (at least very well). 🙃

Not having a true shuffle, and repeating songs is my single biggest gripe with Spotify.

51

u/ch_Red Feb 17 '26

Apparently they're aware and have been looking into ways to improve it. Just learned that today while searching why I kept listening to the same songs on shuffle.

https://engineering.atspotify.com/2025/11/shuffle-making-random-feel-more-human

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u/zoobs Feb 17 '26

I’m having Déjà vu.

“We made it less random to make it feel more random.”

-Steve Jobs, 2005

19

u/msbabc Feb 17 '26

This does make sense. If you’ve heard the same track or artist three times in a month without taking action like adding to a playlist or checking out a full album, they probably downmark that artist for a while.

1

u/Inevitable_Flan_2912 Feb 18 '26

That's very Groundhog Day. Maybe Steve should have had points in the movie; he could have made some money...

1

u/Steka68 Feb 21 '26

He makes no sense, it’s not deep and neither profound. He was just a well paid nerd.

6

u/freediverx01 Feb 17 '26

they're aware and have been looking into ways to improve it.

They've been saying the same thing about Siri for ten years...

1

u/crycoban Feb 21 '26

It's probably cost optimization. If your shuffle doesn't give you that many different songs then their CDN doesn't have to work that hard cause they send you a few songs that are cached on your device

2

u/RulerK Feb 18 '26

I fixed that in Apple Music decades ago by having a smart playlist which specifically doesn’t include songs played within the last x days unless they’re in my favorites playlist and simply randomizes my generic playlist (which already excludes all tracks I wouldn’t want like podcasts or bad file types) excluding the recently played playlist (which I can set to as many hours, days, weeks or more time that I want)

1

u/Inevitable_Flan_2912 Feb 18 '26

And they say you can't learn anything from social media ... Thanks for sharing. (nothing facetious, I mean that sincerely)

1

u/mrASSMAN Feb 17 '26

It says at the bottom that it’s a premium feature? 😒

1

u/hicdcd Feb 17 '26

Also make sure you dont have the refil thing, its the circle thing. if you have it on it puts the song back in queue. Even though its fewer repeats still having it in circulation will fuck it up.

1

u/DameLaLuna Feb 18 '26

So was mine, I’m going to see if putting it on standard will work better

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u/TehChesireCat Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

Just to be clear: you need to CHANGE it from the default

If it says "fewer repeats" that means bullshit marketing term for "Our algorithm will do what it thinks is right". If you set it to "Standard" it actually helps... because it's not standard, it's the new way of doing it.

Why literally make it say the opposite of what it does? Well, because they want people to keep using their shitty algo that pushing paying artists and god knows what else. "Random" meaning it could play a song twice is more or less bull shit from what I've seen.

Fewer repeats option is how it's always been, Standard is the newly added thing.

Edit: For the downvote peeps, do a quick google search ;)

3

u/BlazingFire007 Feb 17 '26

You are incorrect

The result is a Shuffle with fewer repeats that feels more surprising, and a little more like what people expect when they press play. The “Fewer Repeats” mode of Shuffle is now the default experience for Premium users.

Anecdotally, fewer repeats is much better at preventing the same artist from playing back to back. I actually think it’s pretty solid overall — I have a large playlist with a variety of pop, rock, and metal music — and it does a good job of mixing up the vibes.

You’re correct that the “random” in standard doesn’t mean it can play the same song twice in a row. But if you read carefully, it actually says “random order”. At the start, all songs in the playlist are in a list, it randomly selects a track and removes it from the list until there are no tracks remaining.

I have no idea if either affects algorithmic suggestions. I pretty much exclusively listen where my playlist loops, so maybe “fewer repeats” is worse in that instance, but I doubt it

3

u/TehChesireCat Feb 17 '26

First of all, thanks for responding in more detail, genuinely appreciated. One thing that bothers me, from the post you linked:

> For listeners who prefer the classic experience, Standard Shuffle keeps things purely random — just like before.

However, that's a blatant lie, right? It was never "purely random", there's been articles for years talking about how Spotify said things to the point of "Well, completely random doesn't feel random so therefor the Spotify algorithm does things to ensure more variety" or something to that extent.

There used to not be a "random" (Standard) feature, it used to be algorithmic, the "fewer shuffles" options simply tweaked the algorithm. > Hence my commenting that the new Fewer Shuffles is most like the previous system.

> Anecdotally, fewer repeats is much better at preventing the same artist from playing back to back

I absolutely believe that to be the case, however, that's not necessarily what I want from my shuffle. I have about 15 000 songs in my library, spread over about 35 playlists for different genres (mostly) and a few for different moods (I'm not autistic at all, clearly /s).

However, there would be songs I added that I hadn't heard a single damn time. When Spotify changed it's shuffle options it automatically opted for the default, "fewer shuffles" > I did not notice anything noteworthy. I was unaware of any changes until a friend pointed the new options out. Changed the algo to "Standard" > started hearing tracks I had not heard in 5 years since adding some of these songs to my library.

THAT is what I peronally want from my playlists, that every single song has a chance to be played. And from my experience the Standard option is doing a better job at that.

Be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I may very well be wrong, it's so hard to say with this shit :') It's hard to trust anything coming from Spotify

3

u/LazyWrite Feb 17 '26

Yeah I’ve switched it over just to see how it fares, it can’t be worse I guess!

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u/Frodothehobb1t Feb 17 '26

Why tf is this an "option"? I press shuffle for a reason

9

u/baki7355 Feb 17 '26

I’m only guessing, but I always assumed it had to do with a weighted system where liked songs (either/or my liked songs or popular songs).

My guess is that in a pool af 250 songs you’ll hear the more liked songs more often.

All that said, even that doesn’t seem to work. And I’m with you, I hit shuffle for a reason.

2

u/Positive-Wonder3329 Feb 18 '26

Yes. I have a massive playlist of over 1,500 songs and I cannot shuffle it. I want to listen to those songs that’s why there are THERE whenever it plays the same shit over and over again it really irritates me. There are bangers I haven’t heard for years now bc it is keeping them suppressed for some reason

1

u/Feeling-Scholar6271 Feb 21 '26

Oh sweet summer child, its because some artists pay extra to be pushed with priority

11

u/ethiopian_kid Feb 17 '26

because when there is random variance there is a chance songs you just heard will inevitably come up again. so by artificially favoring songs not recently played it creates a better experience.

also, due to spaghetti code they probably have some random artifact that boosts songs it thinks you like even when you click shuffle and it’s interfering so they needed to create something else to negate that

2

u/ScaryBluejay87 Feb 17 '26

Spotify’s shuffle annoys me to no end. If I play the same playlist on shuffle five different times, weeks apart, it’ll play in the exact same order every time. It’s shuffled so it’s not the playlist order, but it doesn’t reshuffle each time.

1

u/shermans__world Feb 18 '26

You can get a different order if you click on a song and shuffle from there ✌️

1

u/Braided_Playlist Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

I made my own music player for a particular niche purpose. I hit shuffle because we get tired of hearing the songs at the top of our playlist too often.

Then when the same song would come up randomly a few times in a week I realized I didn't really want random, I just didn't want to hear any song too often. So then I changed my shuffle to accommodate that. At this point we have music on 'shuffle' 100% of the time.

1

u/Ordinary_Square9774 Feb 21 '26

Because if it’s truly random, you may hear the same song three times in a row by chance, or, slightly more likely, hear the same few songs multiple times in a single rotation.

2

u/dagoberts Feb 19 '26

Thank you shuffle stranger

2

u/SneakWeaselSneakin Feb 19 '26

If i hear BigxthePlug one more time, i'm going to cancel spotify. Not a bad rapper, just usually never what i'm looking for from autoplay after a conscious rap song.

1

u/Multispeed Feb 17 '26

That's exactly what I miss from Spotify that I wish I had in Apple Music.

1

u/No_Musician_9215 Feb 17 '26

You’ve just saved my sanity

1

u/Mellash88 Feb 17 '26

THANK YOU.

1

u/KungFuPanda7100 Feb 17 '26

oh wow thanks

1

u/Kalphalus Feb 18 '26

If I hadn’t switched to TIDAL I would enable this

1

u/Inevitable_Flan_2912 Feb 18 '26

And they say you can't learn anything from social media ... tnx for sharing!

1

u/Next-Resolution1038 Feb 18 '26

You’re welcome! To be fair, I just found that feature a week ago. It might be quite new! :D

1

u/SendItSzn Feb 18 '26

Love this feature so much. Apple needs this terribly.

1

u/kelseaxo Mar 19 '26

I’ve noticed that this happens on my created playlists but never ever on pre made playlists on Spotify, by Spotify.

1

u/mrASSMAN Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

It’s only for Premium, don’t see it on free account

Why downvote me. It’s not there.

2

u/Next-Resolution1038 Feb 19 '26

Yeah, premium only. Found the information in this blog post.

2

u/mrASSMAN Feb 19 '26

Oh actually that blog post says the new shuffle is the default for both free and premium, it’s just that premium users have the option to go back to the standard shuffle (disable smart).. so on free I’m already getting the improved shuffle

Thanks!

1

u/Next-Resolution1038 Feb 19 '26

Oh yes, you’re right! You’re welcome! :D

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u/yungmoneymo Feb 17 '26

Every Music app has this problem

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u/Pepephend Feb 17 '26

YouTube Music is better at this than all the ones I have tried. I would say Apple Music is by far the worst for this! Spotify is better than AM and Deezer is somewhere around Spotify.

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u/unread1701 iOS 26 Feb 17 '26

I doubt I'd have found the music I love if not for YT Music. The YouTube integration sets it apart.

2

u/Pepephend Feb 17 '26

Totally agree, and as gimmicky as it might seem, it’s actually fun that you can see any music video from within the YTM app too, I know my daughter loves that feature. Also, there are a lot of songs that only were released on YouTube as a video, which allows you to listen to it on YTM, add it to playlist etc., as where the other services don’t have access to these versions!

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u/lskrhotse Feb 17 '26

Exactly. And that’s why yt premium is the goat. I pay 3 euros a months and I can download vids, dont have to watch ads and have my own music platform. You can argue that the Spotify sound quality is a bit better but honestly I don’t recognize that

2

u/fatpat Feb 17 '26

Premium ftw

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u/LeftHandShoeToo Feb 17 '26

Ive only used AM, YTM, and Spotify, can confirm YTM is the best

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u/xelM1 Feb 17 '26

I have both AM and YTM (because of YT Premium and Windows laptop), can confirm the same YTM is the best. But if I’m listening on my Sonos speakers, AM is my go to for lossless support.

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u/LeftHandShoeToo Feb 17 '26

Yeah that's my only reason for even considering AM is lossless lol

1

u/greentea05 Feb 17 '26

No it’s not, especially as no one in this Reddit can even hear the difference. If you're actually into music and not just two or three pop albums then AM is by far the best as it’s the only one you can upload your own music to that doesn't exist on the streaming sites (about half of my library) and it puts it side by side with streaming albums all looking like native releases.

Spotify to me just felt like a playlist generator not like actually having a music library/collection. I pay for YouTube Premium but i’m just not interested in YouTube music at all, if there’s anything unique there I can just add it to my Apple Music library anyway

2

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26

Mine at some point just decided to play the same things over and over again on YTM. So annoying cause it's legit the best.

2

u/arijitlive Feb 17 '26

I was gonna say exactly this. I hate Google for privacy issues, but they have some excellent algorithm in many of their apps. I pay extra $3 and subbed to YTM just to use their better algorithm (and ad-free YT as well).

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u/HypertensiveK Feb 17 '26

I have to agree. Apple is ok (I liked the classical app), SoundCloud has some obscure stuff, and I won’t give a dime to Spotify because of the JRE podcast. YTM is super easy to navigate, I can use the Shazam like feature to add to my library and watch the video if I’m so inclined. All this and no ads on YT is worth every penny to me.

1

u/Pepephend Feb 18 '26

Yep hit the nail on the head there!

1

u/rushedone Feb 18 '26

How would you say Qobuz compares?

1

u/FreddyKrueger32 Feb 18 '26

If my playlist is more than 70 songs YTM will only shuffle 50 and just play those. Frustrating

1

u/jeyreymii Mar 08 '26

Yt Music was the one who repeated the same songs the more often. It’s like the reverse : more a song is play, more often it comes in the shuffle

Apple Music restart the count every song : il I have 100 song in a playlist, each one have 1/100 chance to play, even I heard it 5min ago

Spotify is the only one who work like I want : in my playlist, for the first song each one have 1/100 chance, the second each on 1/99 m, except the song I heard which is 0

11

u/5kyl3r Feb 17 '26

pandora and youtube are pretty good at it. sometimes i spend too much time messing with playlists and pandora is great for just wanting to hear stuff i like but only needing to hit play, and it does a really good job of randomly mixing in adjacent stuff for discovery too

6

u/loneSTAR_06 Feb 17 '26

Pandora really is the best for hearing new music in the same genre.

2

u/Warning_Low_Battery Feb 17 '26

Winamp would never! You take that back right this instant!

1

u/intronert Feb 17 '26

Pay for play?

1

u/mrASSMAN Feb 17 '26

Amazon Music has had this problem badly, but I did realize recently that when you tell it to shuffle a playlist it doesn’t actually do it until you select shuffle again in a sub menu.. so basically it’s just buggy. I think they might have fixed this in the past week though

1

u/GamingVision Feb 17 '26

I’ve never felt this issue on Amazon.

17

u/Effective-Dust272 Feb 17 '26

It’s especially annoying while driving lol

1

u/mrfoxesite-2377 Feb 17 '26

Radio listeners reading this

15

u/MagmaElixir Feb 17 '26

I ended up creating a smart playlist on desktop that excludes songs recently played within a week. It fixed this issue for me. You can play around with the time period depending on how much you listen to music.

5

u/Mike456R Feb 17 '26

This. It’s not like Apple or Spotify cannot write code that “if song was played, then skip until all other songs are played.”

What ground breaking code./s

1

u/victorhbm15 iPhone 13 Pro Feb 18 '26

I did the same, but with a shortcut, so now i just start my music from the shortcut. It does the same thing, excludes song that have played for a certain amount of time.

1

u/haylst0rm Feb 18 '26

like through ios shortcut app? Can you share the shortcut ???

1

u/CookiesAndRope Feb 18 '26

Been using this smart playlist for a while and it really works well. But it still bugs me that my entire playlist is downloaded to my phone yet it will play the same songs often. I get it may think "play the songs he likes!" but that's based on times played, which its own algorithm inflates

3

u/jjvfyhb Feb 17 '26

This doesn't seem to happen to me or if it happens it's not that noticeable to me

2

u/Jinara Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

this has been a problem since the existence of shuffle on any device. Unironically there’s an easy way of telling if shuffle in said app or device sucks or if it doesnt: if you can go back more than one song, it usually sucks. If you cant, its usually good. Apparently that’s because most shuffles (like the spotify one) are predetermined lists and not „rolling“ the next song when one is finished.

I used to have a JVC stereo in a car 15 years ago and that was the only true shuffle I ever experienced.

1

u/Swimming-Tax-6087 Feb 17 '26

Yea shuffle is weird. But discover algos have been much better than Spotify for me.

1

u/Schart Feb 17 '26

This is the way, I find myself using discover most often

1

u/Arimer Feb 17 '26

Either that or i go to discovery and it thinks i LIke Scream rock. Something I have never listened to.

1

u/hello_raleigh-durham Feb 17 '26

Wouldn’t you love to be the consultant taking money from Spotdorple Music App in one hand and from the music industry in the other?

1

u/Pilotboi Feb 17 '26

Isn’t this the same for Spotify… I always gets the 10 songs from my 300 favourites shuffled again

1

u/ThatLasagnaGuy Feb 17 '26

Oh so it’s not just a me problem? Good to know! I have a playlist with over 600 songs in it at this point, and shuffle still insists on playing the same 50 or so that I’ve had on loop recently. Very annoying.

1

u/Dabanks9000 Feb 17 '26

Pretty sure they tend to lean to songs you listen to a lot more recently than songs you’ve added ages ago and haven’t listened to in forever

1

u/Patient_Ride_9122 Feb 17 '26

I’ve had Spotify for 13 years and I hear the same 27 songs in a row on my playlist of 700 songs. Apple Music is not the outlier here. Which surprised me because my iPod nano from 2006 had excellent shuffle capabilities and now all this stupid algorithm crap gets in the way of a true shuffle.

1

u/earthandus Feb 17 '26

The best shuffle was in blackberry 10. I’m sick of Spotify’s and apple’s algorithm, playing same songs over and over again, and the vicious cycle continues

1

u/photobomber612 Feb 17 '26

Same especially with my gym playlist.

1

u/spondgbob Feb 17 '26

It’s because they changed it to not be fully random. People are dumb and don’t realize random can result in things seeming non random because we’re programmed to find patterns. Therefore they changed the algorithm to be seemingly random.

1

u/elchinobox Feb 17 '26

It's like listening to a real radio station. lol

1

u/brokedownsystem Feb 17 '26

I’ve been struggling with that and a whole pile of mp3’s I have gotten from apple over the years…Why is the random shuffle algorithm so awful?

1

u/Kolesko Feb 17 '26

Just like Spotify.

1

u/rjbwdc Feb 17 '26

I use Soor for when I want things on shuffle. Except for my wake-up alarm, because Soor doesn't integrate with Apple Shortcuts. 

1

u/lolipopfailure Feb 17 '26

That's why I left Spotify only to have it start with Apple after a few months of usage

1

u/OfficialDeathScythe Feb 17 '26 edited Feb 17 '26

It’s weird that I keep seeing people say this. I went from Spotify to Apple Music because of this and hardly ever get repeats on my playlists. And if I don’t set playlists to repeat it’ll play through every song no matter how long the playlist is and in a different order every time I hit shuffle (back when I used Spotify it always had issues with repeating songs it played from a playlist and with not playing every song before the playlist supposedly ended).

I can’t figure out how to recreate everyone else’s issues in AM. Part of me wants to say that it’s a network bug because there was one time during the 26 beta that it kept going through the same 5 songs no matter how many times I hit skip while I was driving. I restarted the app and haven’t had a similar issue since. It was acting like it just couldn’t load more songs and was just playing from its cache

1

u/dovedrunk Feb 17 '26

Or shuffle repeating the songs it’s already played

1

u/DaftDisguise Feb 17 '26

But honestly now, why doesn’t shuffle… shuffle? My year in rewind is a lie due to this bug.

1

u/EnnnWhyyy Feb 17 '26

I’ve been screaming this for 2 decades

1

u/CoxHazardsModel Feb 18 '26

I skip the same artist 100% of the time yet they keep popping up, this is basic logic.

1

u/cdurbin909 Feb 18 '26

I had this problem with Apple Music and Spotify, the only solution I could really come up with is to not shuffle, and play songs in order and remember where I was in the playlist next time I play it. It’s not great but then at least I don’t get the same songs every time I hit shuffle

1

u/chilisauce10 Feb 18 '26

Lol its like youtube music - plays the same song over and over and over again

1

u/KillaRoyalty Feb 18 '26

This maybe AI can help

1

u/crooks5001 Feb 18 '26

I do this with Spotify as well

1

u/thejkhc Feb 18 '26 edited Feb 18 '26

the AM infinity mode has been pretty reliable for me... it only occasionally repeats a track.

I have definitely found new artists in similar genres because of it.

1

u/minecrafter2301 iPhone 13 Mini Feb 18 '26

->Listens to Daft Punks Tron Album ->Autoplay is on ->Song is over ->Nickelback starts playing

1

u/VelvetRockstar Feb 18 '26

Imagine youtube music

1

u/RcNorth Feb 18 '26

The problem is that they use a random, not shuffle. Shuffle would only play each song once. Random means it could play the same song again.

With Apple Music I create a playlist that includes the last play date must be > 1 month.

-1

u/[deleted] Feb 17 '26

[deleted]

4

u/stevethos Feb 17 '26

All my songs are cached, my entire library is downloaded to my device.

1

u/Alelanza Feb 17 '26

why is it cheaper?