iOS: Playlists repeat songs in shuffle mode

[trjonas]

I am having this problem too. I use my iPhone 13 to play my playlists. For instance, I have a playlist with 461 songs on it, but on shuffle it seems to play around the same three dozen songs over and over.

What I've tried
I tried scrolling to the end of the playlist / all 461 songs but that didn't do anything. I deleted a handful of the songs that were very overplayed and that did get rid of them overplaying (of course) but the rest keep overplaying. And of course I've tried closing the Pandora app and alternatively, keeping it open, but no difference.

What I'm trying now 
Scrolling to  the end of the playlist and playing the songs toward the end of it in order there (e.g. not shuffling), in the hopes this will get them into the shuffle collection. 🙂 

Shout-out to tech support
I have always found Pandora's tech support excellent, and appreciate their attention to any issues we users have. While some issues aren't solved right away, they are all addressed, they have gone above and beyond for me more than once, and many other companies don't offer tech support nearly at this level. Thank you to @AdamPandora and his colleagues!

[AdamPandora]

@trjonas Thanks so much for the kind words - we really appreciate it. 🙂

Unfortunately, I am unable to provide any additional information or a timeline as to when you can expect to see this resolved. 

However, the info you've provided is helpful and I've made sure to pass it along. We'll follow up with you if we need any additional details. I've also made a note regarding your experience. 

Thanks for your patience in the meantime!

[trjonas]

No worries! I've actually been enjoying listening to the songs even just in a row toward the end of the playlist; in this meantime I can manually "shuffle" just by doing that and selecting different portions of my looong playlist. My main objective is not to hear the same songs so often and this does the trick

[benny2paws]

I have given up on Pandora and moved to Spotify.  Spotify's shuffle isn't a whole lot better but overall it is a much better streaming service than Pandora.  It has some cool features like an AI DJ.  As to the shuffle issue there is no way that they cannot create an algorithm that will shuffle through your entire playlist and play every song.  So ask yourself why doesn't it?  The only conclusion I can come up with is money.  Per AI:

Streaming services do not pay the same royalties for every song. The amount of money artists earn from streaming royalties can vary significantly based on several factors

I think the shuffle feature focuses on songs that cost them less to play.  Is this true @AdamPandora ?

Bottom line your best bet is to just put together large playlists and just play them outright with no shuffle. 

[trjonas]

I might have found something! I'll keep testing it, but it could be something for people to try.

Today I tried shuffling the same playlist on my iPhone, but the downloaded version instead of my regular collected version. (By necessity; there were storms here and wireless was down for part of the day.) I had downloaded this playlist at some point in the past and hadn't even remembered that I had.

It shuffled like a champ! It was really wonderfully random, no repeated songs, and not one of the three dozen or so songs I usually hear when shuffling that playlist. 

I'll definitely try it again tomorrow to see if I have the same result.

[trjonas]

Day Two of testing and shuffe on the same playlist continues to work perfectly when I use the downloaded version of the playlist. So great

[MariaPandora]

Hi @trjonas , thanks for letting us know!

[trjonas]

Still shuffling perfectly when I use the downloaded version of the playlist. Hopefully this workaround will work for others too!