My FiiO M9 does a real good job at random. But the UI leaves a lot to be desired.
Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
71–80 of 152 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#72Here'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 (…
I would expect from a random playlist function to shuffle the playlist once randomly (or using a good PRNG with long period) whenever the function is called. Option 2 sounds closest to this, but there is no need to remove anything, the player always plays the next song in the list.
It's odd to hear that this is not standard, given that it's a standard algorithm. Maybe memory limitations?
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#73Here'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 y…
Do you have a source for that claim?
For me, random means: "I want to hear every song in this selection exactly once, chosen randomly". Random should mean uniformly distributed and I don't care whether the same artist or album is played back-to-back. I feel like this is exactly what "shuffle" has meant for decades before some UX quack at Spotify headquarters decided they knew better.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#74Steve 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…
If I remember correctly, the encryption performed by the Enigma machine was cracked largely because they would never repeat the same character twice in a 3 letter key. The Allies discovered this and it was a big help in their code breaking efforts.
My point being, even mathematicians might mistakenly believe that repeating a song or artist is less random. The creators of the Enigma machine were not dumb, but they believed that repeating letters would be more predictable and thus less random.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
Do you have a source for that claim? For me, random means: "I want to hear every song in this selection exactly once, chosen randomly". Random should mean uniformly distributed and I don't care whether the same artist or album is played back-to-back. I feel like this is exactly what "shuffle" has meant for decades before some UX quack at Spotify headquarters decided they knew better.
So... what you're saying is that you don't want to hear the same song too soon after hearing it before?
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#76Here'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 y…
Lack of RAM? Make an array of pointers or ints or whatever corresponding to the current order of songs, then lookup each new song as the current song ends. Maybe 1kB RAM...
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#77Spotify (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…
I also suspect this is the case. I also feel like it's part of the reason Spotify has aggressively wiped out easy discovery of user-curated playlists in favor of their own playlists. Just about every playlist you see when browsing around is one authored by Spotify. It used to be that you could find lost of community-made content in the Browse tab. If you want a good, user-maintained playlist now, you have to know its exact name in order to find it. There is no community behind the platform anymore, only an algorithm that maximizes margin for the company.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#78Here'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 (…
There’s another dimension... the playback mechanism. I think that some of these solutions actually make some sort of hidden playlist to accommodate garbage Bluetooth integrations in cars.
I’ve definitely seen scenarios where I’ve heard the same random play order due to some fuckery with a car Bluetooth connection.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 y…
Do you have a source for that claim? For me, random means: "I want to hear every song in this selection exactly once, chosen randomly". Random should mean uniformly distributed and I don't care whether the same artist or album is played back-to-back. I feel like this is exactly what "shuffle" has meant for decades before some UX quack at Spotify headquarters decided they knew better.
Thats why the feature is usually called "shuffle" rather than "random". Then if you stop to think about it a bit, the expected meaning is reasonably clear.
Re: Ask HN: Why are modern music players so bad at playing music in random order?
#80Here'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 (…
Further complicating things, lots of people will say they want 1 or 2, but really want one of the others, because they don’t really understand what randomness looks like.
Lots of music players started out with true randomness and then dialed it back because people complained that it wasn’t very random.