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Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

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Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#61

Post by mrweasel »

crb wrote: post #36

Steve Jobs in 2005: "You know we've gotten a lot of people that say our shuffle's not random. Well it really is random but sometimes random means you've got two songs from the same artist next to each other. Just happens randomly sometimes. And so what we've added is smart shuffle to actually make it less random - if you want. Even though people will think it's more random it's actually less random and what it is, in…

I always got the feeling that the original iPod Shuffle would randomize your songs ONCE, and that's why people where complaining. So when you loaded up your Shuffle, the software would order the songs randomly, on a playlist, for that set of songs. The Shuffle would then reshuffle the songs, when new one where added or removed, but only then.

That theory also explained the disconnect between the complaints and Apples response. Apple would indeed be right that the music was randomized, but not continuously, as consumers expected.

It was never clear to me what the issue actually was, perhaps we really don't understand randomness.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#62

Post by kbenson »

OJFord wrote: post #57
patmcc wrote: post #15

Here'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 and then of course with the #2 variation on both variables.

You will get very weird results from that depending on your song library. If you have every song from a prolific artist, and one to two songl you like from a few other artists, you'll get a nice random distribution among artists, but not among your library. For very lopsided libraries, such as people that just started a service and maybe have added one or two full artist catalogues and a smattering of other songs they like that they thought of (which I imagine isn't all that uncommon, it's the state I commonly find myself in on a new service), it will result in a lot of repeats and ignoring a bunch of your library.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#63

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

My side project is a media player (music, images, videos). I'm not happy with any music player, so when I get frustrated with them, I work on mine, trying to solve the issues. Being able to choose a shuffle mode is one big difference in my player. You can choose from lru, random, similar, least skipped.

I like least skipped mode because I usually skip past the same songs. The more I skip them, the less they are played.

Similar mode is nice because I notice I skip music depending on what mood I'm in, and I have a tendency to just put all my music in one giant playlist. If I'm in a picky mood I put it on similar shuffle and if I listen to a song all the way through it'll play a similar song it hasn't played yet. If I skip a song, it'll use the last one I completed.

Another big thing is being able to see the next song coming up, and being able to dismiss it. So you can refine the next in the queue while you listen through the current song.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#64

Post by kstenerud »

patmcc wrote: post #15

Here'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 (…

80% of people mean this: I don't want to hear the same song too soon after hearing it before. How soon is "too soon"? Probably anywhere from 50 to 200 songs.

Easiest solution that gets you 99% there would be to make a shuffled list, run through the whole thing, then shuffle again. The only reason why this wasn't done in the past was lack of RAM, which isn't an issue anymore.

Or if RAM really actually is an issue on your embedded device, use a Debruijn sequence.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#65

Post by Renevith »

kleer001 wrote: post #59
Fellshard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, this is still true, and it's great. Within the songs and artists that typically play on my Pandora stations, it will play similar songs in clusters, with the exception that it won't play the exact same artist twice in close succession. This makes the playlist a lot better (in my opinion).

The only quirk I've noticed is when the same person has multiple bands... I've had it play Jack White or Les Claypool 4 times in a row, for example.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#66

Post by TulliusCicero »

patmcc wrote: post #15

Here'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 (…

Excellent post. Reminds me of the old Warcraft 3 days when some players would be like, "I got Undead four times in a row, this isn't random Bli$$ard!!!1"

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#67

Post by Qwertystop »

saghm wrote: post #30

A 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, too, want this -- I mostly listen to game soundtracks, and sometimes two tracks according to the OST (or the unofficial rip) really felt like one in the game, from when they played. Other times I really do just want to specifically play part two of whatever, though, so if I manually concatenated them I'd need to still keep the originals around; if I did that, I wouldn't be able to just play through the entire album linearly without a repeat. So yeah, being able to pin in a shuffle would be good.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#68

Post by kbenson »

kleer001 wrote: post #59
Fellshard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I switched from Pandora to Spotify a couple months back because my daughter wanted Spotify and they have a family plan, and I didn't want to pay for both services. I really, really miss Pandora, to the point I may pay for it separately (and I don't listen all that often), specifically because I love how their radio station type format works. If they had their "play this exact song I want" offering working before Spotify entrenched itself, I can't imagine why anyone would choose Spotify over it.

I'll probably spend a bit more time trying to get Spotify to work as I want, but in general it's resulted in me just listening to less music. I guess that's good for Spotify, since they're still getting paid (but not if it makes be question why I'm still paying them).

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#69

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

wonderhamster wrote: post #54

what 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.

Symphony (found it on F-Droid a while ago) claims to do this but it didn't seem to work well for me.

Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?

#70

Post by hadrien01 »

fevangelou wrote: post #34

Spotify (and I assume others) doesn't exactly serve a random playlist, but one that favours/returns more revenue back to them. So older releases, "burned out" songs and so on. Create a playlist with 10 songs, add 8 before the 90s (e.g. Cure, U2 etc.) and add some newer ones (after 2000 - e.g. Radiohead). You'll be living in the 80s for most of the time... If you search the Spotify forums, there are a few posts on the…

One way to mitigate that is to play music in alphabetical order, it's more random than "random" and you can listen to artists you wouldn't ear with the "random" order
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