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gleeok
gleeok
Contributor I
April 3, 2026
Answered

Apple Music playlist shuffle order

  • April 3, 2026
  • 11 replies
  • 286 views

Hello! I have an unusual issue with my Sonos speakers and Apple Music.

I set separate alarms for each day of the week to wake me up to a different playlist. In the Sonos app, I specify that I want the playlist shuffled.

This worked well with Spotify - each time the alarm started, it’d reshuffle the playlist in a different order. However, with Apple Music, I’ve noticed that the playlist is shuffled, but the order remains the same each time the alarm plays. For example, with a playlist of 50 items, each time it’ll start playing song 26, then 15, then 32, etc.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is there anything I can do to change this behavior?

Thanks!

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Best answer by Corry P

Hi ​@gleeok 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I am sorry to hear of this issue you are having with Apple Music content being shuffled, but not randomly.

When a Sonos speaker (after being told to by the app) gets in touch with a music service and asks for a Playlist to be played shuffled, that is what the speaker says to the service - it is up to the service’s own logic to shuffle the playlist, and this explains why you see different results across different services. Spotify will randomly shuffle the playlist track order each time, whereas Apple Music will perform the same shuffle each time.

This does mean that there is no way that you can set an alarm that will play Apple Music content randomly shuffled, I’m afraid - the only way of getting a different shuffle order each time is to use a service that uses randomised logic to perform the shuffle, like Spotify.

Of course, you could also provide feedback to Apple Music directly that you would prefer it if the logic they used was randomised each time.

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

11 replies

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Stanley_4
Stanley_4
Grand Maestro
April 23, 2026

Has anyone looked at the shuffle order for a Sonos queue and looked to see how random the initial and any additional shuffles are?

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