Shuffling has a bug


When I say "Alexa, shuffle "
Alexa responses with "Shuffling from Spotify"
But then Alexa plays the first song (not shuffled).
Thinking that maybe it has to start with the first song, I say "Alexa, skip"
Alexa plays the second song (not shuffled).
Then if I say "Alexa, shuffle"
Alexa responses with "Shuffling " and the next song will be random (or shuffled).

Reproducible every time. I really don't think this is the intended behavior. I do not have any non-Sonos Alexa device so I do not know if this is only on Sonos or if it is a wider problem.

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4 replies

Userlevel 7
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Hey there, RVADon. Thanks for posting! I tried this out in the lab here and was unable to reproduce this. When starting off with "Alexa, Shuffle" I get the response "I'm sorry, I cannot do that". If I want Alexa to start shuffled playback from Spotify, I would need to say: "Alexa, shuffle (album, playlist, artist) in the (room name)."

Does this work on your end? I'm thinking the command "Shuffle" is so generic by itself when not paired with any other command words. Once it's realized you are playing from Spotify, then it seems to work as expected.
I occasionaly get this exact response
Hey @Keith, I see what happened. I had a placeholder for the name of the playlist within the less than and great than brackets. In any event, my post didn't make much sense without those placeholders. So below is a revised version of the post.

Assume I have a playlist named tomato.

When I say "Alexa, shuffle tomato"
Alexa responses with "Shuffling tomato from Spotify"
But then Alexa plays the first song (not shuffled).
Thinking that maybe it has to start with the first song, I say "Alexa, skip"
Alexa plays the second song (not shuffled).
Then if I say "Alexa, shuffle"
Alexa responses with "Turning on shuffle mode" and the next song will be random (or shuffled).
For me, Alexa says "turning on shuffle mode" but then it still plays music from the same 3 or 4 bands every single time. Out of a huge playlist. It shuffles between like the first 20 songs on the playlist. It's very frustrating.