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Repetitive "Shuffle my music" // keeps playing the same songs


Userlevel 4
I used to use FLOW all the time, but it played the same music over and over, sometimes one song would play twice in 15 minutes. When I recently discovered "Shuffle My Music" I was happy because I could see what was going to be played and it wouldn't repeat anything (at least not for the 50 songs of the playlist). However, "Shuffle My Music" still suffers from issues FLOW had, namely only playing one or two specific songs from favourite artists and playing the same songs every time. If I pressed "Shuffle My Music" multiple times you can be sure that 80% of the songs in any playlist would be in every other playlist.
So, my question: how do I fix My Music? How do I get FLOW or "Shuffle My Music" to have variety? How do I get more than one song from an artist (no matter how many albums and songs they may have) to play?
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Best answer by Pia.Deezer 4 December 2019, 13:01

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156 replies

Userlevel 2
"Shuffle My Music" is a joke. It plays only very small subset of my favourite albums. It also plays songs from albums I have removed from my favourites (and no, I don't have those songs in any of my playlists nor have I liked them).

And why on earth would cleaning the cache have anything to do with this? Same songs and albums are chosen on mobile and both of my 2 computers.
Userlevel 3
I love the idea of a function such as "Shuffle my Music" but both on my Android and on the web client it keeps on shuffling the same 50 songs, day in and day out.
Is it just me?
How do I refresh it?
And why do you limit it to 50 songs?
Userlevel 1

The response should be ‘its just how our app DOESN’T work’.  People have been formally and informally complaining of this for over a year with zero response. It’s among many Deezer “features” like random massive volume swings (useless leveling) or countless ‘live only’ or ‘cover’ versions of songs instead of original artist high quality studio recordings. Only the handful of folks at Deezer seem to have trouble understanding why the rest of the world finds these issues problematic with streaming music services. 

Userlevel 4
well @Ana. thanks for some info. i find it ridiculous that i now have to go through all of my favourite artists and click favourite on every single one of their albums, but hopefully that will lead to better shuffle playlists
Userlevel 1

Hello,

Indeed, Favourites > Shuffle My Music is pretty shocking.

Even if you want to keep that broken-ish feature as is, why can't we get an additional button for unlimited, uniform distribution random play on the whole favourites library? You could even let the users (opt in for advanced features and) write/manage multiple custom shuffle rule sets (e.g. true random on my lib but without metal or classical, true random on my lib but jazz only, etc.).

NB: I’ve also noticed that there are sometimes (not hard to repro) short sequences (say, 3-5 songs) that are repeated (once) during shuffle (shuffle > (...) a b c d e f g d e f g h i j k l (...))

I get that the devs are hard at work on tricky scale/streaming problems, but you could spare a few for UX / to build some direly needed features.

Thanks

 

Userlevel 1

Hi,

I've been using Shuffle My Music (web version of Deezer) / Flow (web) / Shuffle My Music (but on the Android app) a lot during the lockdown and I still can't fathom how it's such a mess (well actually, I work in software, I can, but that's not the point ;-))

  • You'd think Flow would pick stuff outside of my favorites, and Shuffle would not, but no, actually the 2 (well, 3) features seem to do
  • Even worse, Shuffle sometimes seems to go where it pleases, ends up playing like 80% outside of my favorites…
  • Song picking algorithm does not produce good results to me, it basically behaves like I have 100 favorite tracks instead of 1000 albums, too much songs in common in one shuffle session vs. another one...
  • Shuffle on Android somehow seems a bit different vs. web (a little less repetitive (?), also does not have an “end” (i.e. next gets disabled at some point) like the others), but maybe it's just me...

 

 

Userlevel 4
Well that didn't last long. The "Shuffle My Music" gives me most of the same songs every time. I went and added every single album of my favourite artists - no change. Before you ask me to clear my cache, I have tried on multiple different machines and still get the same songs, over and over again. I even had one song show up multiple times in the queue!
I am not a paying subscriber to deezer, so maybe this is just "you get what you pay for", but there is no way I would ever subscribe and pay for a service that is so clearly broken.
Please help with “shuffle my music” it does not work the way the name says
i have emptied the cache and it still plays the same 20 or 30 songs
i have a couple of hundred albums which means a couple of thousand songs
IT DOESN’T WORK
Userlevel 1

The problem is only the same tiny selection of songs are played all the time.

This should no longer happen in flow discovery mode. Songs played there come back after 28 days at the earliest.

Userlevel 7
Badge +1
Hi there, sorry about that. I have had information from the devs that they are changing the way the music is selected. We can only ask for some patience at this point and thank your for your feedback!
shuffle mode needs sorting out on this app because ive got over 2000 songs and it only shuffles so many and plays them again need to sort it out so ot plays all my somgs on shuffle
Userlevel 7
Badge +8
I have the same problem with Shuffle My Music and Flow, i.e. repeating the same songs, albums and artists too early, although I have several hundreds of favorite artists, albums and songs in my library as well as dozens of playlists with 2k tracks each in it. I think this might be caused by my Deezer listening history which leads to a feedback loop, because I mostly listened to Flow and Shuffle My Music in the past, so my listening history is based on them, and my so-called Top Songs (the ones I've heard the most) are simply a result of that behaviour.

Anja asked to provide some screenshots in another thread, so here are six different ones done last Saturday, Sunday and today showing the upper and lower half of my play queue in the web player when starting Shuffle My Music on these days.

Saturday morning, 1:



Saturday morning, 2:



Sunday morning, 1:



Sunday morning, 2:



Monday noon, 1:



Monday noon, 2:



Another possible reason causing this might be that labels can buy some form of "powerplay" for their artists, so they are pushed on theoretically randomised radios. Anyhow, it's really annoying to hear the same #1 top hit from each artist again and again, e.g. "Urgent" by Foreigner. I wouldn't even mind their #2 or #3 hit once in a while instead, but this is too much.
I play deezer from my browser on windows 7 and get the same problems as everyone else. I have many artists favourited and like many assumed that flow would play tracks from these artists. But I just get the 'hits' only over and over again.

If I have favourited an artist or album then surely any of the tracks from this artist or album should be available to flow? For example I have blur and radiohead as favourites, both have released many albums but all I get is Parklife every now and again.

If streaming services are supposed to replace the typical music collection then they should work like the typical music collection and play album tracks not just the hits.

Maybe Deezer should consider giving the listener some options for Flow rather than making the decisions of what I want to listen to for me. For example have options on a sliding scale such as,

Play more album tracks
Play more chart music
Play more hits
Play more suggested artists not in my favourites
etc

I also find that if I play a mix from an artist page that this is also very repetitive in terms of its content. The songs are just the same 'hits' that I've heard over and over again. If I listen to a mix of a given artist I want to hear songs related to his artist that I might not have heard before. I don't want to hear the hits from similar artists that I no doubt already know. Deezer and similar services are a great opportunity for people to widen their musical knowledge but not if all they hear are the hits.

I have 190 artists as favourites, how many tracks have these 190 artists recorded between them? I don't know but I bet there's enough tracks between them for many days of uninterrupted music without any repeats. That's what flow should be.....
Hi!

I'm experiencing the same issue in the app (using Pixel 3). While the playlist and the playing order are not always 100% identical, it's clear that the same artists/albums/songs are favored over others. Some songs/artists that I've added to my music are never played.

I tried clearing the cache of the app, but that did not help. Maybe clearing the storage will do the trick, but I'm reluctant.

Pretty sure it's always been like this.
Things are better through the browser.
Userlevel 4
Badge
Hi @ymns3321 @unklehomer sorry about that. So you basically get the same selection of songs every time you use the the "shuffle my music". Was this different before? Have you noticed a change in behaviour? Which devices are you using and which version of Deezer do you have installed? I will need more info to be able to pass this on.

Hi Flo,

My environment is Android 8.1.0, app 6.0.8.1 currently, but this behavior was there in earlier app versions also.

Yes, the selection is the same, just plays in random order. The selection itself can persist for some time (hours, days) and then changes. To me, it seems like the shuffling source comes in batches from the backend and it seems like the first batch is always the same. After the first batch (or selection, sorry i may be not clear here because of lack of language knowlege) is played, it seems like the next coming tracks are random.

I dont notice any problems with the first selection content (the one which gets repeated) - it doesnt seem to play only popular tracks from my library or something like this. It's always just a random library tracks - exactly what i expect it to be :)

Also, shuffling only downloaded songs is working fine and always play random songs.

I can provide any additional information if needed.

Hi @timh we are very sorry that the “Shuffle my Music” feature algorithm is not perfect yet. I can assure you that the feedback has been passed on to the product team several times. They had to focus on other features but I just asked for you again and will let you know as soon as have more info.

In the meantime, I highly recommend that you simply shuffle your favourites, listen to your Flow, listen to the new playlist Top 2019 :wink: or shuffle your own playlists on other days for more variety. 

Itis now 4 years later and the problem is not solved.

So I sorted on Track and put shuffle off thinking it Deezer will play in Track order…..no...it plays in A:bum order. How boring!!

4 years later since this thread was started and i’m still getting the same songs over and over in my “infinite” flow… not sure what’s going on, but there are millions of songs out there, and my flow is not interested in bringing very many of them to me…  do i misunderstand how it’s supposed to work?

 

thanks

Userlevel 7
Badge +3

Hi @timh we are very sorry that the “Shuffle my Music” feature algorithm is not perfect yet. I can assure you that the feedback has been passed on to the product team several times. They had to focus on other features but I just asked for you again and will let you know as soon as have more info.

In the meantime, I highly recommend that you simply shuffle your favourites, listen to your Flow, listen to the new playlist Top 2019 :wink: or shuffle your own playlists on other days for more variety. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +8
Thank you, Anja. There are several songs coming up at least every day, so you can find them three times in my screenshots. This rather makes me hate them than liking them anymore, so this can't be the intended behaviour.😉 And even if the songs may change, they come from the same albums and artists far too often.
I've got ths problem. I only set Deezer up last week and I was very excited with the prospect that Flow would open up all sorts of new music to me. Instead I get the same couple of dozen songs on a loop. So now I am frustrated and bored. In a week there are some songs that I must have had abiut three or four times a day and some from my favourites that I have never yet heard. Flow is a nice idea poorly executed.

As other I don’t like flow as it keeps playing tracks that I don’t like.

So I’ve created list of my 2250 favorite tracks and then I shuffle them.

However many tracks are played again and again and some are never played.

Can you please use the history of the played tracks to avoid playing too much of the same track when shuffling favorites?

Can you also please add a discovery slider to flow? The idea is that if discovery slider is 0 then only favorite tracks are played and if the slider is at 100 % then only non-favorite tracks are played (but based on the recommendation depending on the favorites).

 

Hi,

Also feedback from my side: I was so glad about this 'Shuffle my music' feature because I expected to be able to mix my favorite songs, my albums and the other playlists from Deezer editors I subscribed to.
But like the others mentioned, this 'feature' played some songs so frequently that I am in real danger to dislike my own favorite songs, which is crazy!!
Currently I created a big list with favorite songs + all my albums + some Deezer playlists I like and I shuffle this list and I'm much more happier! But I'm very angry I had to do this when I should have used 'Shuffle my music' feature!!
Conclussion: I don't like using 'Flow' and 'Shuffle my music' because they play some songs much too frequently while never playing many other songs (even from my favorites, which is totally strange)!
The new 'improvement' with more variations of Flow is also stupid in my opinion, I already use mixes for this (Pop, Metal, etc) and they work well. Flow is a great idea, but have only one Flow and make it well!
When ever I close the app I go back to a new shuffle when I reopen it . This means I seem to hear the same songs too often which is getting tiresome. There are other apps that allow you to continue where you left off , closed app or not . Also the same between devices allowing you to seemlessly contine with the same song on your other device and not repeating over and over again the same selection . I have about 1300 songs to listen too on my playlist that I shuffle but it seems to shuffle the same ones . I reckon I here only about 20% of the songs as I close the app when I’m done or at least I forget to leave it on as it’s so easy to swipe it away .
The app in question is not Apple Music .
Userlevel 1
Hi @Patryk Pozniak so sorry you are not happy with this. Our developers are working on this part at the moment, but we do not know when the changes will be live, but hopefully soon and we can win you back ;)
Okay. I'll give you a chance. If everything will be fixed let me know and I'll give it a try 🙂

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