> no tune was played twice until all of the tunes were played...
So…not random, then?
Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
51–60 of 152 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#52Not related to the OP’s complaint, but a shocking few can shuffle by random album. Apple regressed: the iPod could but the iPhone can’t.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#53Dunno about contemporary music players, but: > no tune was played twice until all of the tunes were played That is definitely not compatible with actual mathematical “randomness”. Try rolling a die multiple times and see whether you get all six numbers before repeats. It’s very unlikely (probability of all six rolls being unique = 6!/6^6 = 1.5%) Which brings up the interesting question — what do humans actually expec…
Think of every single erroneous belief that people have about randomness. A pleasing music-randomizer algorithm obeys all of these.
The term found on a lot of music players is not "random", it is "shuffle", and this is an important distinction. The term comes from cards. Take a deck of cards, shuffle it, and turn each card over in order from top to bottom. You expect that every card in the deck will be seen once and only once; turning up, say, two eights of clubs in a row means that something is dreadfully wrong with your deck.
Humans tend to expect a similar behavior from "shuffle" modes: the same song does not repeat for a while. If people are shuffling by song, then they may also expect that performers don't repeat within a (smaller) timeframe.
Nobody expects "pick a random number between 1 and numsongs, play that song, repeat, and be perfectly happy to play Baby Shark forty-seven times in a row if that number keeps on coming up".
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#54what kind of animal listens to music in a random order?!? I have trouble finding a player that organizes by album. I just want to play to a sorted list of albums in order. No player does this.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#55what kind of animal listens to music in a random order?!? I have trouble finding a player that organizes by album. I just want to play to a sorted list of albums in order. No player does this.
Mine does:
mplayer artist/album/*Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#56Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…
Or what about this: I am indecisive about what music I want to listen to in this current moment and I want you to give me options that I will deny until I become decisive about what I want.
This is basically what want too, so I like Quod Libet's "Random Album" (and Random Artist and Random Genre) command. It simply focuses on a new album each time I press Ctrl+M, which I can play or queue up.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#57Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…
> 3. I want it to "seem" random (don't play too many songs by the same artist in a row).
That can still be random, for as long as we're not defining the variable:
from $artists choose artist randomly
from $artist.repertoire choose song randomly
play $song
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#58Not related to the OP’s complaint, but a shocking few can shuffle by random album. Apple regressed: the iPod could but the iPhone can’t.
This is something my main music player had circa 2003 when I used a linux desktop player.
Since then I've not had it any service or software I use, it's the missing killer feature for me. I want "random"/recommended albums not recommended/random songs.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#59Here's the problem: go ahead and ask a bunch of different people what they want/expect their shuffle/random button to do and you'll get a bunch of different answers. 1. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, with replacement (same song twice in a row is possible). 2. I want it to play in a truly random fashion, without replacement (each song is removed from the list once played). 3. I want it to "seem" random (…
Also, "I want 'random' songs that are musically appealing to hear in sequence." A sort of lite DJ logic, really; not necessarily modifying the songs' entrances and exits, but more selecting keys and tempos.
From what I remember, Pandora did that really well. It's been a while since I've used it, but their classification system was really cool.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#60A bit tangential, but for a while I've wanted the ability to "pin" certain songs together for the purpose of random shuffles so that they always get played back to back. One good example of this is the second half Abbey Road; if I'm shuffling some Beatles songs, I really want "Carry That Weight" to come immediately after "Golden Slumbers" (and if I'm being honest, I want "The End" coming right after both of those). I…
I have noticed that Apple Music seems to always play “we are the champions” after “we will rock you” despite them being different tracks. Not sure how that works!
Those two songs were concatenated and released as a single.
Unless you specifically want to play the album versions, Apple is likely to give you the single.