Why YSK: Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it. It's better to find a free alternative, both for your wallet and for your peace of mind.
I'm just waiting for the day I can shuffle playlists on Newpipe then I could use it as my primary music app. Right now though you can only play all in order unless I'm missing something
You can do that in NewPipe. Just start playing a playlist, tap on the "now playing" notification to open the play queue, and then hit the shuffle button
You can actually shuffle a playlist but it is not intuitive whatsoever. So open a song in a playlist and then swipe down the video to collapse it and click the three dot menu thing. This takes you to the play queue which has a shuffle button at the bottom.